Cedar Crest College – Episode #72
Site Scores:
| Site | Visual | Information | Code | Overall |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cedar Crest College | 60 | 65 | 65 | (190/300) 63% D |
Today’s Tip:
When ever you have images on your site that are part of the content or that you think are important enough to be read by a search engine or screen reader you should always supply the alt attribute on the img tag. If you have an image that is part of the design and you don’t want it to be referenced just include the alt attribute but keep the content blank. Otherwise if you omit the alt attribute completely the screen reader will still read that there is an image, but a blank alt attribute (alt=”") will not be read at all.
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Tags: episode
April 7th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
Checked out the website and was wondering if Cedar Crest is a women’s only college? And if so, why do they hide the fact?
Realise this is probably not the case = which iI find problematic as their images are predominantly women =- not my style. I give two thumbs up for a good mix of racial types, but one thumb down for lack of gender equity in promotional images.
April 14th, 2009 at 9:20 am
Hey there!
I certainly appreciate your interest in the Cedar Crest College website. I certainly wouldn’t describe a css based site as old school, or something as subjective as aesthetic opinion as 1990s. 1990s style would be more in terms of pervasive drop shadows, rounded corners, and underlined links.
As for all the javascript you are looking for, I can only say concise, rapidly loading code is not a shortcoming, it’s a goal.
I agree alt tags are essential. The styles on the page were temporary and have since been moved to a linked stylesheet. The idea that someone obviously versed in CSS would retype a tremendous amount of text to make it all caps is not worth addressing.
Our usability testing showed us users distrust apply and inquire links outside of admissions pages. Even if they click them, they tend to go back through the admissions navigation to confirm that they are using the correct form. Users are content using the primary navigational trail to a task because they are then confident they are not missing something. The defunct cedarcrest site gradually became a quagmire of navigation trying to provide for every user eventuality. With this site we have chosen to take no link lightly.
This was just the beginning of our redesign process. Going forward you will see the addition of rss feeds, additional streaming audio and video, blogs, interaction with social networking media and much more.
Thanks again for your interest in the Cedar Crest College website!
Paul Pastrone
Webmaster
Cedar Crest College