CPSCI 105-01: Making the Web Speak

Final Project

due: May 10, 2007 at 5:00 p.m.

Overview

For your final project in this class, you'll write a reflective essay about your experiences in the course. You'll post your essay on your personal webspace on warp. Part of your grade will be based on content, and part will be based on the design of your essay page, as well as the final design of your personal website.

The Essay

Details

On the syllabus, I mentioned the following course goals:

1. To turn you into competent designers and implementers of websites by approaching web design from the standpoint of visually impaired computer users;
2. To try to get a sense of what it's like to interact with the world from the standpoint of a blind person;
3. To learn more about web design from working with production-quality websites while conducting an accessiblity and general usability audit and redesigning webpages to make them accessible and enhance their usability.

In a 1000-1200 word essay, assess your personal progress toward these goals by reflecting upon your service-learning experience in this course.

Project Requirements

In grading the content of your essay, I am primarily interested in reading a cogent, well-thought-out essay. Since you are reflecting on your personal experience, I am not in a position to question your conclusions. I am, however, in a position to assess the quality of your essay as an essay (i.e., Is it well-structured? Are conclusions supported and explained, not simply stated? Is good use made of headings and subheadings? Has it been proofread for spelling and grammar? Is it clear that you've paid attention to the readings about writing for the web?).

In grading the web design of your essay, I'll be looking for valid XHTML written to maximize accessibility, and good use of style sheets to enhance accessibility. You should style your essay so that it's easy to read—good use of contrasting colors, and using a clear, readable font.

Your Personal Website

Organization

Your warp homepage should contain links only to your final essay page, your Michalko page, and your blog. Instead of containing links to quizzes, labs, and homework assignments, it should contain a link to an "exercises" page (which will contain a list of links to your quizzes, labs, etc.). Additionally, your warp homepage should also contain the usual links to your "About Me" page and to the XHTML and CSS validators.

All pages you post should be in AAA conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; as you check them over, you should un-comment the code at the bottom of each document declaring this to be the case. Thus, there should be three images displayed at the bottom of each of your pages. (See the bottom of this page for an example. You copied the third image to your img directory back in January, and the code to display it was included in a comment in your XHTML template file.)

Website Requirements

In grading the web design of the final version of your personal website on warp, I'll be looking for the same readability features specified for your final project page, plus: ease of navigation, accessibility, and interoperability.

ease of navigation

This does not mean that you must have a navigation bar, though you should feel free to implement one. All it means is that a user can easily find the various public documents on your website. As part of this, make sure that all your hyperlinks work.

accessibility

All your pages should be in AAA conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

interoperability

Your personal website should display equally well in IE and Firefox. Your valid XHTML and CSS will allow us to conclude that it will also work well in Opera, Netscape, and any other standards-compliant browser.

One last thing ...

There should be no audit documents available on your website. They should be available only through your audit group's website. You don't have to delete the documents—just remove links to them from your "Exercises" page and do a chmod o-r on the files themselves.

Grading

Your grade for the final project is based on 100 points, distributed as follows:

Due Date

Your final project should be posted and ready to be graded by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 10.

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