Accessibility & Design Philosophy
Inclusive design is a way of designing a website with user accessibility as its priority. Rather than only working to overcome barriers, successful inclusive design helps prevent creating the barriers from the very beginning. Establishing and maintaining an accessible website is essential to ensure that my entire audience can easily navigate and interact with the elements of my website. When a website is designed with accessibility in mind first, the entire site works more efficiently: “The best time to consider accessibility is at the start of a project when defining the product purpose. When accessibility is part of the purpose and built in from the beginning, the product works better for everyone” (Horton & Quesenbery, 2013, p. 39).
Audience is King
My blog posts are centered around the lifestyle and food choices of runners, so my audience will presumably be people who are runners. Some of the information in my posts can stand alone and be appreciated by others outside of the running community, as well. It was my goal in the creation of my website to ensure that I designed with all of my potential audiences in mind. If a website doesn’t begin with the goal of making the content accessible to all audiences, it will inevitably exclude groups of people. By designing with accessibility, I am ensuring that anyone, no matter their background, abilities, or history, can read and navigate my website with ease. I did this by creating a website wireframe, being intentional with the placement of the navigation bar, and making sure that the website is accessible on a mobile device.
Framing the Website
One of the things I did to create an accessible website was begin with a wireframe for the layout. Wireframes are a great way to begin conceptualizing the features of a website: "By taking the time to create a wireframe when building or redesigning a website, you can focus on the user experience as a separate (but connected) piece of the puzzle" (Osman, 2023). My vision for the website was that it would be as simple as possible while also providing the necessary information in a pleasing way. It is imperative that “each element in the design is necessary to the overall information and functionality. Simplicity provides a sense of unity to the elements of the design” (Horton & Quesenbery, 2013, p. 107). There is nothing worse than a website that has an overflow of information with no clear goal. The goal for this website was to make the content accessible and pleasing to look at. I did this by putting the project abstract on the homepage, which orients my users and explains the purpose of the website. The project abstract links to my blog posts and gives a brief introduction for each one.
Uncluttered and Unbothered Navigation
I decided to place the navigation bar at the top. I thought about putting it above and below the hero image to limit the amount of scrolling that users would have to do, but I decided that it would be better to have one navigation bar at the top to prevent the website from looking cluttered.
Hamburger Helper
When users view the website on a mobile device, a hamburger menu (the button with three horizontal lines on top of one another) appears to help users access the same information that would have been in the navigation bar on the desktop version.
