Book Image

UX for the Web

By : Marli Ritter, Cara Winterbottom
Book Image

UX for the Web

By: Marli Ritter, Cara Winterbottom

Overview of this book

If you want to create web apps that are not only beautiful to look at, but also easy to use and fully accessible to everyone, including people with special needs, this book will provide you with the basic building blocks to achieve just that. The book starts with the basics of UX, the relationship between Human-Centered Design (HCD), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and the User-Centered Design (UCD) Process; it gradually takes you through the best practices to create a web app that stands out from your competitors. You’ll also learn how to create an emotional connection with the user to increase user interaction and client retention by different means of communication channels. We’ll guide you through the steps in developing an effective UX strategy through user research and persona creation and how to bring that UX strategy to life with beautiful, yet functional designs that cater for complex features with micro interactions. Practical UX methodologies such as creating a solid Information Architecture (IA), wireframes, and prototypes will be discussed in detail. We’ll also show you how to test your designs with representative users, and ensure that they are usable on different devices, browsers and assistive technologies. Lastly, we’ll focus on making your web app fully accessible from a development and design perspective by taking you through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Benefits of ensuring your product is accessible


There is often resistance to creating fully accessible websites, as it is seen as expensive and unrewarding because most target audiences include only a small percentage of disabled people. This in itself is a misconception, as the percentage is not as small as stakeholders think. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 15% of the world is disabled. This is rising because of aging populations and rapid spread of chronic diseases. In addition, at any point, part of any audience will be temporarily disabled and have special needs when accessing websites.

Besides ensuring equal access for disabled people, there are additional benefits to making sure that your website is completely accessible. We describe some of them here:

  • Improved usability: As we have shown previously, designing and developing for accessibility and universal access is designing for usability. If your website works beautifully for people with special needs, it will work...