Accessible template development

In the past ilikecake have subcontracted for the development of templates as either a silent partner or as an accessibility agency to give added credentials to an organisation's proposal.

If you know about accessibility then you know that pretty much any design can be made accessible with either no or relatively few changes once basic design concepts have been taken into account.

Ilikecake go beyond this. We can make websites which work across browser, platform and resolution. Multi column layout is no problem, as are curved boxes.

Finally we all know the key to good design is layout. Ilikecake have gained years of experience in creating templates with the associated style sheets which look great in all browsers.

For those just starting out on accessibility there are lots of little things you have to take into account when making an accessible site. The basis of all accessibility legalisation is that if you have information, product or a service is should be equally accessible to all. Now if you use image buttons for links with in your site, how does the software a blind person uses know that that image is a link to the home page, a green square or the Mona Lisa? It doesn’t. We take care of this problem.

Tables should only be used for the displaying of data e.g. pricing details. On AA or AAA website tables are not used for the layout of the site.

These are just some examples. There are hundreds of little things which we do automatically to ensure your template is accessible. All you have to do is provide us with the design.

Once you send us the high resolution layered files which have been agreed upon with your clients we can generally have 1 to 3 templates with their associated style sheets made within 5 working days and sent back to you. However if you want to guarantee the delivery of your templates within this time frame, involve ilikecake from early on, show us the designs so we can spot problems early, and so that we can schedule in the developments.

Ilikecake have set prices for the development of templates which can be seen on our pricing page a typical development with two templates and two stylesheets to AA accessibility is shown below for you.

Ilikecake guarantee the accessibility of all of our work and should subsequently there be a problem found with the templates we will fix them free of charge.

Terms and Conditions Apply.

All of the templates produced by ilikecake go through rigorous testing to make sure that they are not only compliant with W3C guidelines to the specified level in the contract but also to make sure that they work in as many browsers and platforms as possible. We check the browsers listed below as standard.

• Internet Explorer 6 for Windows
• Internet Explorer 7 for Windows
• Firefox 1.5 for Windows
• Firefox 2.0 for Windows
• Netscape 8.1 for Windows
• Opera 9.01 for Windows
• Lynx 2.8.5 for Windows
• Firefox 2 for Mac
• Safari 2 for Mac

Ilikecake do not rely on emulators to test any of the above but rather machines with the actual browsers installed. We also use a range of monitors with different resolutions for our testing.

Ilikecake not only use automatic testing solutions such as Bobby Watchfire which give an indication of a site's accessibility. We complete full manual testing of the pages against the WCAG guidelines which cannot be checked automatically.

It’s that quality of the template you put into a CMS which decides the quality of the pages you get out. Where a CMS will be producing hundreds and even thousands of pages, you want to make sure that the templates put into the system is perfect and free from any accessibility problems.

Ilikecake have experience of developing templates which are used in some of the larger public service websites in the country.