Faith and Web

It’s one of the easiest of web practices and yet I see it violated every day. I’m talking about the W3C’s guideline to make link text meaningful vs. links that say “Click here.”

If you send me text to post on the web including a “Click here” link, I can guarantee you two things. First, I will gnash my teeth and maybe even wail. Second, I will exercise my web diva prerogative and edit your copy. I will do what it takes to turn it into a meaningful link. Fortunately it’s not hard.

But first you might ask, why isn’t “click here” meaningful? The answer is the context. In a particular rendition, yes, “click here” makes sense. If you are looking at it in Internet Explorer on a monitor, chances are it will make perfect sense.

But what if you’re a search engine? What are you supposed to be indexing? Search engines these days are smart, but they aren’t that smart.

Or what if your vision is impaired and your screen reader only renders links for the site? That’s the way many vision-impaired people go through sites, because it makes navigating the web much more efficient. The result is your reader says, “Click here.” That’s it. Click to where? And why? There’s no way to know short of reconfiguring your reader and going into a laborious process of wading through whatever else is on the page. What are the chances you’ll do that? And what will you think of the site in general?

So how do you, the web editor, make the link meaningful? Almost invariably the text that really should be the link is in a phrase right before or after the offending “click here.” Thus, “Click here to find out more about my church” becomes simply “Find out more about my church.” Better yet, summarize what this “more information” is. “More information” is often equally meaningless. How about “Information for church visitors” or “Church FAQ”?

What’s the end result of this simple change? All of your very different audiences will be happy. A search engine will have something to index, the screen reader will report accurately what the link is, and the person on Internet Explorer 6 will not only understand it, but will understand it more quickly. You will have condensed and clarified where the link goes. You’ll have made the link meaningful. It’s a beautiful thing.

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Yesterday I discovered Code like a girl, and have been dancing on air ever since. I’ve always, since just a baby web diva, fiddled with code until it looked just right, picking up after the likes of Dreamweaver, not to mention Word. Until yesterday, the closest I’d come to affirmation of my seemingly compulsive tendencies to tidy code was an absolutely astonishing book on Internet Art. It’s filled with wonders such as code that shapes and mailing lists to counter the “unbearable lightness of Wired.” But that’s art.

For those like Mr. Web Diva who don’t program, and say, “Huh? What are you talking about?” … this has to do with how one arranges one’s source code – the characters and computer files that drive not just web pages, but computer programs. Some programmers arrange things like if/then statements in tidy rows and columns with consistent indentations. Those are girl (or meterosexual) coders. Other slam code out at a furious pace, unfazed by how it appears. Those aren’t.

One added and not-so-minor point: a user can’t usually see this code (even with a browser’s “View Source” command, although it comes close). That’s because the source code gets compiled in the case of programming and dynamically rendered in the case of scripted web pages.

And what, you say, does this have to do with excellent church websites? Well, aside from the obvious making of a happy webmaster, I like to think a clean source goes hand-in-hand with standards-compliant valid code and accessibility. The latter is especially important for great congregational websites. Churches and church websites aren’t there just for the young with perfect vision and health. They are there for the broken, be it broken in spirit or broken of body.

Of course, it’s possible to have valid code that’s messy and renders a completely inaccessible site, etc., etc., but still…. For those of us who aspire to the highest quality code, tidiness makes life so much easier. Now I’m proud to know I’m a girl coder. And for those who are of a similar persuasion, here are a few great resources.

Girl Code Tools

• PHP Code Beautifier
• HTML TIDY
• W3C Markup Validation Service
• W3C CSS Validation Service
• TAW. Web Accessibility Test

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I found out at the eleventh hour (thanks to The Web Standards Project) that today, May 1, is Blogging Against Disablism Day. Normally I make an effort not to rush my posts, since I’m prone to typos, but not today. This matters too much. I care deeply about accessibility, and here’s why.

My father was born in 1920. When he was only two, he contracted polio. In my earliest memories, he had a slight limp, but as he aged, first he needed one walking stick, then two, then a wheelchair, until at last he was bed-ridden. He had post-polio, and got steadily worse.

Picture FDR. Not only did my father worship FDR, he even looked a bit like him — expect he had a kinder face. And like FDR, he did his damnedest to pretend that there was nothing different about him. When I opened doors for him, we’d both act as if I weren’t. The whole family would engage in intense conversation when Daddy was getting up from the dinner table – a mask to cover his struggles. When he fell, he would get up with head high, and carry on as if nothing had happened.

Meanwhile, in his-world-ignoring-polio, Daddy lived his dream and blazed a trail. His passion was higher education for the under-served, which in time meant African-Americans. He taught at Fisk University for many years, and also served as Fisk’s representative to both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. He retired late in life from the Atlanta University Center, where he continued the same work.

As he aged and society changed, he started to talk more about the polio. I think what made the biggest difference was the Polio Survivors Association. Towards the end of his life, he even took me to a few of their conferences. I was flabbergasted to meet hundreds of people who acted like him. Most were driven, literate and articulate – and they played the same I-don’t-really-have-a-disability game. Their heroic stoicism was the stuff legends are made of.

A few years later, in 1999, Daddy died — you guessed it — of polio. His poor body just wore out. He battled this disease for 77 years, one of its longest survivors. But that’s not really the point.

What I most wanted to tell you is that he absolutely adored technology. (My geek-streak comes from him.) He found incredible freedom from his handicap in the simplest of technologies. I remember him explaining to me around 1984, in loving detail, what a spreadsheet was and how it worked. When I finally met Lotus 1-2-3, I already knew all about it. And how he adored the Web. If he’d lived a few more years, he’d have written an earthshaking blog.

In the final years of his life, he lost most of his control over his hands and arms. He had a hard time with the keyboard and mouse, but he persisted, never complaining. As I design websites, I think of him. I’m not a big fan of complicated flyout menus. Guess why. I make fonts large. Guess why. When accessibility experts like Accessites.org say something needs to be done, I pay close attention.

One last secret about my father — his name was Webster, but everyone called him Web. So here’s to disabled people, accessible sites, and most of all, here’s to the Webs.

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