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Design
Many designers require their draft to be displayed on a per-pixel basis. Designers with a focus in printing products may expect that their web design appears on the screen of all users as it does on their own. Many are surprised, if they can hardly recognize their design on other computers.
Optimize your layout not only for resolutions of 1024 by 768 pixels. There should also be a layout for 800 by 600 pixels and 640 by 480 pixels. These lower resolutions are often chosen by visually impaired users. The web designer should decide how the website should look like after increasing the font size: Which columns should be made wider? When should an area wrap? Fancy fonts should be avoided. These fonts can only be included into web pages as images. Internet Explorer 6.0 cannot zoom into images. Some browsers can zoom into images but the zoomed images are chunky and raw and therefore hard to read. Hence type images should only be used in logos.
Images and symbols make contents vital. For many users content becomes more understandable. This especially supports people with reading and concentration weaknesses. It is important that the images and symbols are easily noticeable and big enough.
Many visually impaired users change the colour settings of the browser. Users affected by glare choose a dark colour for the bright background and a bright colour for the dark type colour. Because transparent images cannot be recognized if background colours are changed, transparent images should be avoided.
When selecting the colours, you should take care that there is enough contrast between foreground and background colour. A strong brightness colour is important but you should avoid bright, white backgrounds as this could glare and disturb reading. During design phase you should consider that some users cannot recognize some colours. Most commonly is the red-green-blindness that affects about 8% of the population.
Text on background images is more difficult to read. The contrast between text and image is lower in some areas and the image can distract from reading. Background images should be avoided.
Users with limited experience or manual disabilities can be unable to use drop down menus and so these should avoided. If the website owner requires this kind of menu then alternatives for navigation should be provided as well.
Websites should be concisely designed. Colours and images contribute not only to a nice design but their use can improve orientation. Links that open new windows could be annotated by an appropriate symbol.
The current navigation point should be visually highlighted so that the user can tell where they are. Emphasis can be provided by a symbol or bold face. Over the content area the navigation path should be displayed and the path displays passed navigation points. At the bottom of the page there should be a link to the top of the page.
For internet usage, fonts without serifs such as Arial, Verdana or Helvetica should be chosen. These fonts are web standard and can be recognized by visually impaired people more easily.
During design the expectations of internet users should be considered. In most cases the navigation is placed on the left or at the top of the page and the user will look for the navigation in this area. People who are visually impaired with a restricted view field may only be able to partly view the site. A layout that takes this into consideration is important as it lessens the time required for searching.
Users expect that links are underlined and that previously visited links are displayed in a different colour from unvisited links. If links are not underlined and are only emphasized through another colour in the continuous text then they can not be recognized by colour blind users. Colours which are common for links, should be not changed.