1<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 2 "https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3 4<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 5<head><meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="content-type"/> 6<link href="https://authoritating.com/20240413041602cs_/https://universalusability.com/files/styles/main.css" media="all" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> 7<link href="https://authoritating.com/20240413041602cs_/https://universalusability.com/files/styles/print.css" media="print" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> 8<link href="https://authoritating.com/20240413041602cs_/https://universalusability.com/files/styles/mobile.css" media="handheld" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> 9<title>Universal Usability: About the site</title> 10<link href="https://universalusability.com/about" rel="canonical"/></head> 11<body> 12<div id="banner"> 13<a href="/index.html"><img alt="Universal Usability: A universal design approach to web usability" height="52" src="https://authoritating.com/20240413025826im_/https://universalusability.com/files/graphics/universal_usability_logo.gif" width="350"/></a> 14</div> 15<ul id="navigation"> 16<li><a href="/index.html">Home</a></li> 17<li><a href="/resources.html">Resources</a></li> 18<li><a href="/access_by_design/index.html"><cite>Access by Design</cite> Online</a></li> 19</ul> 20<div id="main"> 21<div id="main_div"> 22<div id="content"> 23<div id="content_div"> 24<h1>About the site</h1> 25<p>Universal Usability launched on November 16, 2006, two days after World Usability Day. Its initial purpose is to provide access to the online version of my book, <cite>Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers</cite>. In the long term, I would like to broaden the scope of the site to include articles and input from others, and to provide access to more extensive resources for designers interested in adopting a universal design approach to web usability.</p> 26<p>I am author of three booksâ<cite>Web Style Guide</cite> (with Pat Lynch), <cite>Web Teaching Guide</cite>, and <cite>Access by Design</cite>. When I write a book, I also do the design and typesetting. My books are heavily illustrated and I like having control over how the text and illustrations work together. I also enjoy the craft of book design. In fact, a friend once posited that I write books so I can design them. Heâs at least partially right.</p> 27<p>I have a history of making my books freely available online. <cite>Web Style Guide</cite> was a web site before it became a book. When we started publishing a print version, we continued to publish the book online. When the second edition came out, we revised the online version with the new content and provided handy features like âPrint this pageâ and âPrint this chapter.â</p> 28<p>From a economic perspective, this approach may seem foolish. Why would people buy a book when they can get it for free online? Arenât we throwing away potential royality income? These questions are difficult to answer without a means for comparisonâa version available only in print and another available both in print and online. But <cite>Web Style Guide</cite> has sold over 120,000 copies, and has been translated into Chinese, Czech, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. So even without a comparison, I would venture that the book has sold better than it would have without the online version. But even if that were not the case, the fact is, I write to be read, and publishing books online means more people read them.</p> 29<p>But thereâs another reason for publishing onlineânamely, universal usability. As a publication channel, the web has many benefits over print. People can adapt web content to meet their needs and preferences. People who canât get their hands on a book because of limited availability or resources may have a better chance of accessing it online. Also, the online version has functionality that isnât available in print, such as search and links. With its focus on universal usability, there was never any question as to whether I would publish an online version of <cite>Access by Design</cite>. 30 31<p>Unfortunately, thereâs no âConvert to Universally Usable Web Siteâ functionality built into InDesign, the application I used to design the printed ver
31sion, and clearly a web site for a book on universal usability must model its own principles and guidelines. So when it came time to design the online version, I rolled up my sleeves and set about exporting the text and images and reassembling the book as <span class="initialism">HTML</span>.</p> 32<p>For those interested in the nitty gritty details, it turned out to be easier to export plain text and add markup then to export text in any other format. For the figures, I saved pages with illustrations as <span class="initialism">PDF</span> files so I could capture the annotations. Then I imported the <span class="initialism">PDFs</span> into Photoshop for cropping and saving. I saved the screenshots as GIFs since JPEG compression produces artifacts around the edges of shapes and text, and I used BBEdit to combine the text and graphics and to build out the site.</p> 33<p>I wonât tell you how much tweaking and fussing went into site design and markup. Suffice it to say that it took me more than a year, off and on, to get to the point where I was ready to launch the site. Now that the site is launched, I am working on adding features and focusing the expertise and attention of the web development community on the subject of universal usability. I also hope to get and respond to suggestions that will help me improve the usability of the site. Please email me at <a href="https://authoritating.com/20240413041602/mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>, and thank you for turning your attention to this site and to universal usability.</p> 34</p></div> 35</div> <!-- END CONTENT--> 36<div id="sidebar"> 37<div> 38<div id="search"> 39<div> 40<a href="https://www.google.com/search"><img alt="Google" border="0" height="53" src="https://authoritating.com/20240413041602im_/https://www.google.com/logos/Logo_40wht.gif" width="128"/></a><br/> 41<form action="https://authoritating.com/20240413041602/https://www.google.com/custom" method="get"> 42<label for="searchfield">Search:</label><br/> 43<input name="sitesearch" type="radio" value=""/>Web<br/> 44<input checked="checked" name="sitesearch" type="radio" value="universalusability.com"/>Universal Usability<br/> 45<input class="input" id="searchfield" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text" value=""/><input class="submit" name="sa" type="submit" value="GO!"/> 46<input name="cof" type="hidden" value="GALT:#999;S:https://www.https://authoritating.com/20240413025826im_/https://universalusability.com/;VLC:#72038a;AH:center;BGC:white;LH:60;LC:#03428a;GFNT:#999;L:https://www.universalusability.com/files/graphics/uulogo-google.gif;ALC:black;LW:400;T:#999;GIMP:#999;AWFID:4e9369bdf3e2fb5a;"/> 47<input name="domains" type="hidden" value="www.universalusability.com"/> 48</form> 49</div> 50</div> <!-- END SEARCH BLOCK--> 51</div> 52</div> <!-- END SIDEBAR --> 53<ul id="footer_navigation"> 54<li><a href="/about.html">About the site</a></li> 55<li><a href="/changes.html">Change log</a></li> 56<li><a href="/help.html">Help using the site</a></li> 57<li class="last"><a href="/copyright.html">Copyright</a></li> 58</ul> 59<p id="footer">Copyright 2006 <a href="https://sarahhortondesign.com/">Sarah Horton</a><br/> 60<a href="https://universalusability.com">universalusability.com</a></p> 61</div> 62</div> <!-- END MAIN--> 63</body> 64</html>
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