The presentations are scheduled for Monday afternoon. You must be present for all the presentations. Each should last about 20 minutes. There will be time afterwards for your clients to ask questions.
A question came up in class today about the audience. Most of the clients will not know much about Web pages, although one of them is bringing his Web guy. They will be able to understand many of the accessibility and usability issues that you describe. For example, they will understand the notion of color contrast. They can understand that images need alternate text, but they won't know what alternate text is. So explain it. You might have changed the pages to use a linked style sheet instead of an embedded style sheet, so explain why that is desirable. In some ways, you are explaining to your clients some of the things you learned about this semester. You should still address some key technical issues. For example, if tables are used for layout on the site, explain why that is undesirable and then explain how you used CSS to replace the table. I used Word to come up with a diagram in about 5 minutes for the layout design being used by teal.
It is likely the case that you couldn't get everything to work just the way you wanted by Monday. In that case, explain what you wanted to do and what you tried that didn't work. Of course, put this in your 'report' on your group's site.
I asked you this morning to include in your presentation
- Some positive comments about the site before you start talking about the problems you found.
- Some comments about how well a visitor to the site can find the information that he might be looking for—for example, a phone number, an address, the purpose of the organization, or the services it provides.
- Some comments about how well a visitor can track his location within the site. Is there a heading or some other indication, such as a special indication on the navigation menu, as to where the current page is located in the site?
One thing I didn't mention, but that I hope goes unsaid, is that all the group members should take part in the presentation. Only one person at a time should be standing. (There are chairs to sit in along the wall near the instructor's desk.)
It is okay to link to external sites from your group pages, such as to the client's site, W3C pages about accessibility, Nielsen's pages about usability, Bobby, color evaluators, and other Web-based tools that you used. However, all of the files for your own pages and the mirror should be within your group folder and all links to them should be relative.
Please be prompt on Monday. The client scheduled for the 2:00 presentation is on a tight schedule, so we need to start on time.
