Thursday, June 14, 2007

Accessible Websites

The web is a place where information should be available and accessible to all regardless of any disability. Originally, the Internet was created to be accessible without a mouse, and even without the use of eyesight. Unfortunately, Accessibility took a back seat to creating more graphically appealing websites that showed off the design talents of its developer.

Website Accessibility

The web is a place where information should be available and accessible to all regardless of any disability. Originally, the Internet was created to be accessible without a mouse, and even without the use of eyesight. Unfortunately, Accessibility took a back seat to creating more graphically appealing websites that showed off the design talents of its developer.

Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) companies are required by law to make their services available to people with disabilities. A website is deemed as a service and thus needs to comply to the act, so it is important that your website is compliant with the DDA.

Why should I make my website accessible?

It's the law, but you should also make your website accessible for ethical reasons, ensuring that you site can be enjoyed by everyone. Additionally, making your website accessible has many business benefits as well, so there is a strong business case for accessibility.

The Business Benefits of Web Accessibilty

The statistics for people who would have problems with an inaccessible site show the potential client base that your organisation could be missing out on.

# 10 million people in Britain have rights under the Disability Discrimination Act in the uk (Source: Disability Rights Commission)
# 1 in 12 men, and 1 in 200 women, has some form of colour blindness, totaling 9% of the UK population (Source: Institution of Electrical Engineers)
# There are around 2 million people in the UK with a sight problem (Source: RNIB)
# 9 million people with hearing inpairmenet in the UK (Source: RNID)

Making your website accessible will open your business to the millions of people who would have problems trying to view your site if none of the accessibility guidelines were followed. As you can see that's potentially a lot of people who may not be able to use your site.

Search Engines Like Accessible Websites

Building websites with web standards and with accessibility in mind creates better websites. These sites load faster and are much easier for search engines to index. Web crawlers or spiders that are sent our by search engines to index your site are in essence blind users, making your website accessible helps your natural search engine ranking, meaning more people will be able to find you via Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines!

Reduced Website Maintenance Costs

Accessible, standards compliant websites save money. Separating the content and the presentation means presentational and layout changes that affect the site as a whole only have to be changed in the stylesheet file, making the site easier to manage.

Naturally Increased Usability

There is a clear overlap between accessibility and usability meaning that the general usability of your site will improve by implementing an accessibility strategy. This usability gain is for all your website visitors, not just disabled users.

Who does Accessibility Benefit?

A major myth regarding accessible websites is that accessibility only benefits blind users. The fact is that an inaccessible website can impact people with varying types of disabilities. For example if your site requires the use of a mouse, then you're discriminating against those who cannot use a mouse. Building accessible websites benefits everyone. The whole point of accessibility is that it makes your site available to all, not just people with disabilities. Add to that the usability benefits that creating an accessible site can have; you are benefiting not only your disabled visitors, you're benefiting all your visitors!

Is Accessibility Expensive?

Not really when you put it into context. As with doing any task, there is always a cost associated, whether it is financial or time there is still a cost of doing it. Accessibility is no exception; there will be a cost involved to ensure your site is accessible to all visitors because you have to make sure that your site has been built in a way that accommodates people with disabilities.

Sites that are inaccessible, can be "fixed" and be made more accessible to disabled users, which will take longer, and cost more, but in the main the design and physical layout of the website can stay the same. The key to keeping the cost of accessibility down is by planning for accessibility from the beginning of any new project. To include a plan of accessibility in your overall website development strategy means that accessibility will be built into the site as you would any other feature.

Accessibility can get expensive, as the organisers of the Sydney Olympics found out. The Maguire v. Sydney Organising committee case highlighted what can happen when you do not plan for accessibility. The estimated cost of making the thousands of generated pages accessible was in the region of $2.8 million Australian dollars and the original complainant was awarded $20,000 Australian Dollars in compensation. Its not rocket science to identify that trying to fix something that has not been built properly in the first place is going to cost money, but planning for it from the beginning is going to limit this cost.

Does my site have to be dull and boring to be accessible?

Building an accessible website is much the same as building an inaccessible one. From a design point of view they are the same, the only difference is that one of the sites has been built to take into account accessibility considerations, and the other hasn't. The only element that will limit your sites design is your designer, not accessibility considerations.

If you don't believe me, simply take a visit to the Zen Garden website and see for yourself what can be achieved with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XHTML. As long as your site takes into the consideration accessibility guidelines then there is no limit to what you can produce from a design perspective. This misconception that accessible sites are dull and boring come from the fact many people think that text only versions of sites are there to fill the accessible gap. In reality, just because a site is text only doesn't mean it is accessible, in fact, building another version of your site brings a level of segregation, as people who need your site to be accessible, are being forced to use another version. Text only pages should only be used as a last resort if the main site cannot be made to comply with accessibility guidelines.

How do we "Get Accessible"?

Your website design company should be able to help you offering advice and guidance to make sure your website is accessible. If they are using web standards to produce websites, chances are they already have good practices in place and may have already included accessibility design into their workflow.

About the Author
Rob Modica is the managing director and founding member his own web design agency. He is passionate about accessible web design and an advocate for the use of web standards across the industry.

Making Free Money from Your Web Site

There are a plethora of free website providers out there who offer basic internet website space for a small fee. This fee usually does not include what it costs to store information on the web, but this is normally not a very expensive thing to do.

There are a plethora of free website providers out there who offer basic internet website space for a small fee. This fee usually does not include what it costs to store information on the web, but this is normally not a very expensive thing to do.

Making money from your free website can be done in a variety of ways. If you want to provide a special interest site, you can have search engine optimized content that will draw business from search engines. Once your visitors have reached your site, if they click on the banners and links of ads that you sponsor, you can get paid per each time your ads are clicked.

Normally this fee is just in the cents. Ten to fifteen cents per click is normally considered the average amount that is paid per click, although there really is no sure fire way for you to find out how much each click from each sponsor will pay you. The key to making money from your free website is to find a way to get attractive enough content to where your visitors will come to see your site and what you have to offer. If you can drive enough traffic to your website through search engines you will be able to get enough traffic from ads to garner enough clicks on your ads to where you will actually have enough revenue from your ad sponsors to generate a check. Google AdSense seems to be the best provider for this type of advertisement for your free web site.

If you are looking at making money from your free website, it is important to remember that nothing will happen overnight. Just stick to it and remember that the amount of work you put into your site is relative to the amount of revenue you get from it.

About the Author

My name is Samuel Colon, Online Business Man, the owner of http://www.realmoneysolution.com and http://www.ganardinerodesdemicasa.com, your online resources to make money at home. Helping people to generate extra income with a comprehensive list of ideas. An opportunity so you can work from home with an online home based job.

10 Tips for Using Private Label Resell Rights

A popular way to earn online today is by using private label resell rights programs. They can help people of all business levels from newbies to advanced online Internet marketers leap ahead with successful businesses. Here are 10 tips for using private label resell rights to benefit your business:

1) Go through all of your training materials and / or private label resell rights guides that come with your products. And go back over them regularly. You want to get THE most out of your program.

2) Go through every item you are given and make use of it. Let nothing go untouched. Put everything to work for your business.

3) If you don't understand something, ask! And remember, there are no dumb questions. Learn more, earn more.

4) Give your private label resell rights content a unique selling position. Make it stand out by revising it, adding your own special content like digital photos, graphics, additional textual content, quotes, stats, etc.

5) Do a little 'something' every day to use and promote your products. Don't let getting busy get in your way.

6) Get help! No need to go it alone. You want to grow your business, so reach out! If you're afraid to hire help or don't have the available funds, think about teaming up with a fellow business associate and do a joint venture together. One of you assembles everything online, for example, while the other focuses on marketing.

7) Find a mentor or coach who has been there, done that. Seek advice and follow it. A good place to start is with your private label program operator. See if he or she can point you to successful members using the system.


8) Package bonuses with your products. Shoppers love a good deal, so give them one. Entice them with a bundled report, audio and video.

9) Add freebies to your marketing campaigns. Many people still shop online for freebies. So entice them to opt-in to your autoresponder article series by offering a free report, ebook or other electronic download made from your private label resell rights materials.

10) Automate! Let your computer and Internet marketing systems do all the work - or at least as much as possible. Dig in and learn all the components of your autoresponder, for instance, and learn how to set up forms to automatically capture leads. Learn how to set up a forum to 'grow' your sites and a branded 'thank you' page to sell back end items with enticing sales copy and great shopping cart navigation and buttons, even an affiliate program to recruit your own sales team... and a whole lot more.

There are a lot more tips to using private label resell rights. Tips plus the training provided by your private label resell rights program and your other auxiliary marketing tools can help you put everything together - fast and easy- so that you can start or jumpstart your online business...and run it!

About the Author
Paul Kleinmeulman is the foremost private label rights expert. Find out more about private label rights via the best FREE private label rights course available.

The Things That People Throw Away

Scientists are arguing about whether it is possible that the levels of carbon dioxide will increase to values double and even quadruple present values. Soon the Democrats and the Republicans will join in the debate. The rising of carbon dioxide levels could happen over a peroid of decades. Evidence gathered from ice cores and after 1958 from direct atmospheric sampling shows that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has been increasing for over 200 years. Before 1800 the density was about 275 parts per million by volume. It is about 355 parts per million by volume. This increase is believed to be due to the combination of increased burning of fossil fuels and before 1905 to deforestation. The total source is estimated to have been increasing at a high rate at least until 1973. From 1973 until 1990 the rate of increase has been much less. Growing trees can help cut down on green gases. This is where we enter the equation.

Highland Hill Farm of Central Bucks County Pa is a unique kind of a farm....We are urban farmers and dumpster divers. Located in Bucks ... a fast growing urban area north of Philadelphia where we have learned to live with urbanization and new homes that sprout from the ground like freshly planted corn. We believe that the few farms that remain must help in recycling and reusing items in our communities. It is not practical to use our land to grow beans. Taxes alone on each acre of land is greater than the sales revenue that come from an acre of beans ( a know gas producer). So we have had to find higher and better land uses.

We have registered with the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Resources as a place where you can drop off your unwanted items such as old tools, tractors, plumbing and construction supplies, farm implements, fencing materials, usable nuts and bolts.... well you have the picture, things we can use around our farms. If we can't use them maybe we can send it on to someone else that can. We are always looking to trade nursery stock and seedlings for your surplus. Why discard your surplus?...We will recycle it or reuse it. Email us with your surplus materials. We may be able to make trades. am worse than a used car salesman, you can't insult me!!!

I once put an ad in the paper that said, "If it's free it's for me". I had to stop the add because I collected so much stuff. Ads do work. The problem with this ad was it was not specific enough to target what I was looking for. Over time and years I then started to swap and barter the free stuff that I got for things I really wanted. I had hundreds of broken lawn mowers and hundreds of gallons of old unwanted paint. I had enough paint to dip a house if needed. Disposal now became an issue. Thus I came up with the idea of trading and barter.

Now I did not invent this wheel but I had enough of them that it appeared I might have. So barter has become a means of swapping and exchanging my surpluses for other people's surpluses. Since I am in the nursery business I also have plants that are surplus. I may plant 1000 trees expecting to need 1000 and find that I have 500 more than what I need. So offering these trees on the web for barter has been an effective means to move dormant inventory. Besides this is a great way to meet new customers. When they have surpluses and I can move their dormant stock, we both win. Here is a sample ad that I ran on my web site seedlingsrus.com :

Trades Wanted

We are always looking to trade nursery stock and seedlings for your surplus. Email us with your surplus materials. We may be able to make trades.

Construction materials and equipment...doors, windows, boards, hardware
Plumbing supplies...pvc pipe and fittings, water pumps, heaters, copper pipes and fittings
Hunting and fishing gear...ammo, reels, rods, tackle, boats, canoes, paddles
Snakes...Click here to read why!!!!

Hand tools...saws, drills, hand power tools, blades cuttershammers, wrenches, tool boxes
Farm implements...out door power equipment, tractors, wagons, fertilizers, pesticides, unused cans of oils and lubs
Farm supplies...shovels, rakes, farm bells, an anvil, blacksmithing tools, generators
Fencing materials such as woven wire and split rail fencing, fence chargers, barbed wire, wire, nails, nuts, bolts, surplus pavers,
Palletized stone, field stone, flagstones, rocks, boulders
Household items such as wooden furniture, tables chairs, cabinets and dressers
Livestock..pigs, goats, cows, donkeys, chickens, peacocks, sorry no sheep(I don't trust myself with them).

Now why I like snakes:

The reproduction rate of most mice and rats is far greater then most people realize. Rats for reproduce at a rate of almost 200 babies from just a single specimen. Now imagine if you missed that one mouse or rat...2 years in a row. The numbers begin to climb very fast to a huge number.

Besides protecting your trees and shrubs snakes will help reduce the threat levels from rat droppings and urine which is left behind to contaminate any place they have been. Rodents are known to carry diseases. Anything from salmonella, rickets , rat bite fever, tapeworms, and organisms that may cause ringworm .

So, now you know why I capture and collect snakes for our nurseries and farms. If you don't want your snakes, bring them to us we will barter.... your snake for nursery stock. see http://www.seedlingsrus.com/TradesWanted.html

http://www.zone5trees.com , http://www.highlandhillfarm and http://www.seedlingsrus.com and http://www.greengiantarbs.com http://www..HuntingRelics.com Delete Reply Forward Spam Move... Previous | Next | Back to Messages

About the Author

http://www.articles-hub.com/Article/133332.html

The Upside Down World Of Web Branding

Some of the best ideas for web branding defy logic. For instance, if you were to develop an ecommerce site you might well seek to establish your business name as the primary branding feature. What if your business name is less important than you think?

Developing a catchy slogan seems to be an important step in branding? What if your site visitor is mostly interest in what you do or what you have to offer?

In some ways the best ideas for web branding turn the tables of conventional thought and leave the entrepreneur standing on his 'proverbial' head.

Would it surprise you to learn that the most common elements prospective customers look for is the immediacy of information that allow them to connect with your site as a provider of their need? Frankly, many of these prospects are interested in your company name only after they determine if you can help them.

By placing the 'what we do or sell' before the 'who are we anyway' online business may discover visitors will spend more time with the site and that may ultimately result in a satisfied customer.

Look at it this way; I am looking for a company that sells grommets in bulk. The search engine I use tells me there are over 2.5 million sites that have to do with grommets. Now, if an online business that is selling grommets has performed proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques I can be fairly certain some of the best grommet stores are going to be displayed first.

However, if all I find on the opening page is a fancy logo, slogan and a paragraph or two about how the grommet store came into being I may well be tempted to hit the 'back' button and continue my search somewhere else.

Most online visitors don't want to spend a lot of time learning to navigate a new site, especially if it turns out to be a site that does not ultimately meet their needs.

By all means, develop an attractive logo that represents your business well, but let the branding take place in the immediacy of information. If you are able to answer your prospects most basic questions quickly this will likely impact them in a greater way than attractive flash design that supplies little relevant substance.

Branding is always about more than the logo and nothing less than a positive impression.

Does this alter your thinking about how to brand your business? What can you do to take a positive step forward?

About the Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

Under Development: Low-cost Site Progress

Developing content for a website can seem a bit intimidating. However, one of the easiest ways to get started is to simply get started.

If you are developing your website through a template-based web host you can develop the bare bones of the site and finesse as you go.

What this may look like is a 2-4 paragraph home page with a few additional pages that may say "Under Development". While I have always recommended research and planning ahead of time, sometimes a reasonably priced template-based web host can help you move forward in assembling your ideas either for new customers or as a means of defining who you are as a company and what you are attempting to convey to your potential customers.

You should work to clearly define what you either provide as a service or the product(s) you will be offering.

Since knowledge-based sites are some of the best marketed sites from a purely SEO standpoint it makes sense to acquire suitable material for your site.

A freelance writer can assist in developing a comprehensive knowledge-based resource for your visitors, but you actually have two options you may wish to consider first.

1) Supplied Content - It is entirely possible that any companies you work with have existing literature about the products you will be selling. In many cases these suppliers will grant permission to use their articles or descriptions on your website at no cost. They often make them available because they have an interest in your success and may be best acquainted with the product or service you will be making available.

2) Free Content - There are numerous online article supply stores that feature a significant stable of expert authors that can write from a variety of authoritative perspectives. It is likely you can find complimentary articles that can provide both SEO enhancements along with solid information. The best news is these articles are free.

It is conceivable that after finding the material you wish to use on your site and then working with a template-rich web host you may discover the site you were wanting was actually the one YOU developed.

The tools for site design have been maximized and yet distilled in such a way that even beginners are finding it possible to self design an ecommerce website. The end result is often a low-cost way to develop and maintain the website. It is also possible to use this same environment to effectively manage present and future growth in a low-cost, ecommerce-friendly environment.

About the Author

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com