Some of the basic recommendations on how to make a website more useable and accessible include keeping Web pages easy to read, avoiding visual clutter – especially extraneous content – and ensuring that the primary purpose of the Web page is immediately accessible with full keyboard navigation.

There are many organizations and online resources that offer Website owners and authors guidance on how to make websites and pages more accessible for the blind and visually impaired. The W3C publishes numerous guidelines including Web Content Access Guidelines that are helpful for Website owners and authors. Broad adherence to these guidelines is one way of ensuring that sites are universally accessible.

Enter Google labs Accessible Search

http://labs.google.com/accessible/

Called the Google Accessible Search, the search adds a small twist to the familiar Google search and finds the most relevant results as measured by Google’s search algorithms, but also sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts. So when users search from the site, they’ll receive results that are prioritized based on their usability.

In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully – pages with few visual distractions and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op’s technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.

We look forward to this developing and making the web more accessible. And the Co-op developing into making algorithms more favourable toward accessible web sites, like the ones we make at Callender Creates.

Matt Cutts answers Google questions: – Which is more important: search engine optimization (SEO) or end user optimization? – What spam detection tools would you recommend? – Does cleanliness of code (W3C) help at all?

Myths, Large Site Launches, and Google Images

Matt Cutts answers Google questions: – Myths: 1) sites on the same server, 2) IP, or 2) including off-domain JavaScript – Launching sites with millions of pages: how should I do it best? – Google images: updates on the horizon, and current Google Images technology

RSS is changing the way we consume information online.

In addition, it has also provided thöusands of new content sources for the online publisher. RSS is simply a file format similar to XML that is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be easily understood by web publishing software and content aggregators.

By using RSS feeds, you can enhance the content on your site without ever writing a single word. And remember, on the Internet, content is King.

Want to put Amazon products on your site, updated news from the New York Times, financial advice from Motley Fool, or press releases from PRWeb?

This is all possible with RSS. No matter what type of information you are looking for, RSS can provide you with a constant stream of updated content for your web site.

To search for an RSS feed to enhance your own website, go to Syndic8.com. You can even mix and match a variety of rss feeds at RSSMix.com.

You want to make sure your site is indexed by the search engines. If your site has numerous inbound links from other sites, the Web spiders will find it automatically. Web spiders “crawl” the Internet monthly and update an engine’s database of sites.This is a quicker way of being found by the big three search engines. Rather than just building it and they will come, especially if you are an ecommerce store!
Be warned don’t submit more than once in 24 hours as it may be seen as spamming.

You can promote your web site this way by submitting your URL, homepage and/or content pages.

One way of analysing how many pages have been spidered in your web site is typing “site:www.yourwebsite.com” into Google.

The big three search sites have forms for submitting Web addresses:
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Yahoo!: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
MSN: http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

“The Web 2.0 Show is a podcast about emerging technologies commonly referred to as “Web 2.0″. They focus on interviewing the developers and entrepreneurs who are creating the next generation of web services and media delivery. With their goal to help you figure out where the web is headed.”

They say they are “hard at work developing some cool projects”. Why don’t you listen to their podcasts maybe we can learn something together…

We would like to let you know that the “PAS 78: a guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites” can be downloaded free from the Disability Rights Commission.

It offers guidance on how to develop a website which is user-friendly for disabled people.

“The ‘PAS 78: A guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites’ (published March 2006) is for those responsible for commissioning or maintaining public-facing websites and web-based services. It was developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the DRC.”

These guidelines will not tell you how to make an accessible web site, however PAS 78 covers areas such as:

• How disabled people use websites
• Defining the accessibility policy for the website
• Web technologies
• Accessibility testing and maintenance
• Contracting web design and accessibility auditing services.

It gives recommendations for:

• The management of the process of, and guidance on, upholding existing W3C guidelines and specifications
  
• Involving disabled people in the development process and using the current software-based compliance testing tools that can assist with this.

It is applicable to all public and private organizations that wish to observe good practice under the existing voluntary guidelines and the relevant legislation on this subject and is intended for use by those responsible for commissioning public-facing websites and web-based services.

For more reading on PAS 78 and WCAG2.0 check out the @media2006 Notes: The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0 over at Muffin Research