I found myself with a little extra time on my hands tonight. (Actually, I have a pile of things to do but was looking for a reason to distract myself for a few moments.) So, I headed over to check out what was new at the Cleveland Web Standards Association site. What follows is not supposed to be a negative reflection on them at all. I think what they’re doing is great. However, after running their blog page through the W3C validator, I had to sit back and scratch my head.

The idea to validate came to me while perusing their pages. So, I gave it a go. Home: check. About: check. Blog: uh-oh! As you can see from the screenshot, their blog page failed the W3C validator as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. 18 errors!

Most of the errors had to do with improperly nested tags, which I suppose could be a result of the blogging platform(s) the writers are using. But one that did surprise me was the misuse of the alt tag. (It was used on an anchor tag.) I didn’t look at the all of the errors in detail, and from personal experience I know that one error can cause cascading errors, which may be the case here. Still, a little surprising. (Just to be clear, the blog page is actually a collection of content from various local Web development blogs, not from the site itself.)

Again, I don’t mean this as a cut on the Association, or the individuals that are writing the content. I just think it’s a good reminder for all of us, as developers, to make sure that our pages validate. (You never know who might be looking! : )

This test was conducted at 7:30pm on Monday, January 12th, 2009.

My point?  No, I’m not saying orange and teal are out for site design.  I’m saying: consider your user, consider usability, and consider accessibility.  On a broad level, does the design, (colors, layout, etc.), suit your user(s)?  Narrowing things down, is the site easily readable?  Will the user’s eyes begin to hurt after reading only a few lines of text?  Consider, too, the possiblity that your user may be, for example, color blind.  Are there still clear indicators of important items?  (Such as headings being indicated through text size and weight.)  Or are you relying on colors where you shouldn’t be.  I’m not saying don’t include them.  But I am saying not to rely on them.  Finally, there’s the user that may access your site through a screenreader.  Are your images standards compliant, using the alt tag for textual explanations of the picture?  This is one way to make browsing your site by impaired users easier.

I’ll be writing a more detailed post on how to make your site more accesible, usable, and overall standards-compliant.  But, I thought this would provide some interesting discussion info for now, as well as giving some background on moia.  Let me know what you’re thinking below.