A Guide to Web Accessibility for Designers, Content Managers, and Developers
There's a lot of web accessibility information online, but it's not always easy to get a concise overview of best practices for WCAG/ADA compliance for your team. As a result, I've created this brief handbook on web accessibility. Table of Contents Introduction Why Accessibility Matters What It Means to Have an Accessible Website How and When Designers Should Think About Accessibility How and...
Which Aria Attributes Should I Use? Accessibility and Aria Tags for Common UI Patterns
In this post, I've attempted to track down and document best practices recommendations for creating accessible versions of various UI components: Choose a UI component to see accessibility and aria attribute recommendations: Hamburger Menus / Push Menus Accordions Dropdown Menus Hamburger Menus / Push Menus The "hamburger" menu, where an icon or button triggers a flyout or "push menu" from the...
Rules for Implementing Top-Level Section Landing Pages
I have strong feelings about how top-level pages in your navigation should be a) designed and b) incorporated into the flow of a website. I think they’re often implemented in a sub-optimal way, so I’ve written my thoughts here. I’ll summarize these rules concisely for those of you just browsing, but I’ll unpack my thoughts a bit more below: Top-level pages should serve the exclusive purpose of...
Solving UX Challenges for Hospitals and Health Systems
The public website ecosystem for large healthcare organizations often comes with uniquely complex challenges. Multiple physical locations in an organization’s network often leads to a scattered array of websites with separate databases, siloed content organization, different visual experiences for patients, and distinct brand identities. All of this confusion fights against the goals of a...
How Prospective Undergraduates Navigate Websites — and What They Expect From College Content
At Eastern Standard, we do a lot of work in the higher education space. And, as a firm that is passionate about user-centric design and content strategy, we've done a lot of research into the browsing behavior of prospective undergraduates: the digital natives who have very different expectations and habits from the previous generation. Here are a few high-level takeaways from some of our...
Connecting to Instagram and Other Social Media in WordPress Using Advanced Custom Fields
As a web developer, it’s not a stretch to say that social media feed integration has become a de rigueur project spec for any new website I take on. Clients realize that when done right, these feeds can increase traffic, boost revenue, and improve engagement with their brand. When working on the WordPress platform, there are many different approaches to take — some of which are more desirable...
To Create a Web Component Library, Think Like a Lego Master Builder
To develop for the web is, by nature and necessity, to be a problem-solver. While my personal path to web development has taken many turns (including photography, 3D animation, and game design), none has been more foundational to my knowledge of good programming principles and problem-solving skills than Lego. My hobby of designing Lego cars — one that lives at the intersection of design,...
Digital First — Rethinking the College Viewbook
Over the years, we have worked with many colleges and universities on a wide array of marketing materials, and we have found one common denominator when it comes to traditional student viewbooks: They tend to look and sound the same. The formulaic approach that so many colleges take to this printed brochure geared towards incoming students generally includes uninspired photography — students...
Building Component-Based WordPress Sites
Components can be thought of as discrete, reusable building blocks that make up larger design systems for the web. Because they are developed with modularity in mind, editing or even removing a component will have a low impact on the rest of the system. This makes our Wordpress sites easier to test since we’ve developed each component independently of one another — and also makes parallel...
Progressive Decoupling With Drupal 8 and ReactJS
One of the things I really enjoy about the work we do at Eastern Standard is that we get to evaluate new (or new-to-us) technologies on a regular basis. Every new project is a chance to discover or revisit a wide range of technologies and methods that might help us bring to life what our clients and design team have been visualizing for weeks. But even as my team posts links to new libraries,...
- 1 of 3
- next ›