Web design
Once in 2011 I put out a request for pointers on how to improve the homepage at EnergyTeachers.org. Some web designers said the existing look was very dated, and suggested a multi-column layout. I took an informal survey by looking at hundreds of web pages, and decided most pages are poorly designed, breaking many rules of readability and accessibility. It is not very inspiring to look to the web for examples for our site. Here I'll list some of the rules and egregious errors involved.
Readable text
Grey text on white or black is not good. Text must either be high contrast in color or level. The most readable text is black on white, the next best is green on black, and then the worst is grey on grey. It's amazing how many people who call themselves "professional web designers" use grey on grey, and even get paid for it.
See disturbing trend of low-contrast text.
See our gallery of unreadable text on web pages.
Myth that non-standard style leads to success
It's amazing to consider how the most popular sites on the internet don't bother with any of the stylistic trends. Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo:
- Their content fills the page, instead of those horrible fixed width multi-columns that are too narrow or too wide for many situations.
- They use black or blue text on a white background. They don't go to color conferences and decide that mauve on cherry is the new cool way to make a user work hard to read content.
References
"Contrast(Minimum): Understanding SC 1.4.3" in "Understanding Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0" by W3C. http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-contrast.html
