I was just wondering what I was going to write about, when I came across Jason Fried’s post, in which he wrote about the latest craze sweeping across the web development, i.e. xHTML/CSS and a trend he has noticed. He had a very valid point to make and that is something I had put to the back of my mind: the human on the other side of the interface. If I am honest I am guilty! I too seem to have lost sight of the importance of the user experience in my ambitions to ditch tables for more semantically correct web pages.

The question remains: so even if the page renders better faster and reaches a broader audience, does this mean it’s more usable? Well of course the simple application of Standards does not translate into better usability and as such I think it is important that we not loose sight of this and perhaps we should constantly remind ourselves of this. After all there was a time in the late 90s to early 2000, where nearly everybody was evangelising about usability and Mr Nielsen really came to the for and of course was quoted over and over again. And then we somehow forgot about it again and in a very LOTR-esque way this skill, this mindset that shouldn’t have been forgotten was forgotten. So look up the folks at 37Signals, Boxes and Arrows and Adaptive Path (and of course let’s not forget about Mr Nielsen) and let’s not loose sight of our real goal, empowering our users and serving our audience.

One last thing I’d like to comment on, was a post by Jeffery Veen in his blog entry, which drives a point firmly home that I can only wholeheartedly agree with. Accessibility is not an add-on to your development and implementation process. If I may paraphrase his entry, if you practise your design/development as a craft, paying heed to standards and applying your knowledge and experience your sites will pretty much automatically be accessible.