Welcome to Copper Creative, standards compliant Web Design Preston, Website design Lancashire
Who cares about Standards Compliant Websites?
Well, we do actually!
Copper Creative is a web design and development company based at Preston in the Northwest of the UK that has been developing accesssible, standards compliant websites for clients for as long as standards compliance has been viable with an almost evangelical zeal. Coming from both a design and a technical background and bringing together a wide range of disciplines xhtml, css, php, asp, mysql, seo, etc to provide the most elegant solution for their customers.
What are 'Web Standards'
Back in 1998 the world wide web consortuim (W3C) laid down a set of rules as to how web sites should be coded and how web browsers should display those sites. Copper Creative design web sites that are not only visually attractive, but sites that load quickly and are accessible to everyone connected to the internet, no matter what sort of browser they use.
I am also a proud member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS), and if you follow the link you can read all about what we stand for, which is "Promoting a vision of the future that assumes accessible web design to be, relevant, obtainable, and not at odds with successful business practice or good visual and usable design."
Why should I have an accessible site?
Since 1st October 1999 under section III of the Disability Discrimination Act, service providers have had to make “reasonable adjustments” for disabled people, such as providing extra help or making changes to the way they provide their services. In 2002, the Code of Practice for part III of the Act was published and specifically mentions that web accessibility is now a legal requirement.
Besides the legal requirements for you to make your website accessible, an accessible website can also help you make and save money through:
(i) Compatibility with new browsing technology – with an increased use of PDAs and mobile phones to surf the web, making your site accessible to these technologies is opening your company up to potential new clients.
(ii) Appearing higher in search engine rankings - Search engines cannot usually understand non-text content, such as images, audio and video. By providing alternative content to each of these forms of content, search engines will have a better understanding of the purpose of the website and potentially move your site up the rankings.
(iii) Increased reach of your site – an inaccessible site would not be able to cater for a large percentage of web users:
- There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK , totaling 14% of the population
- One in 12 men, and one in 200 women, has some form of colour blindness, totaling 9% of the UK.
- Two million UK residents have a sight problem - that's 4% of the population.
- There are 12 million people aged 60 or over - approximately 21% of the UK population, and rising.
Web standards make good financial sense
Add to that sites that are easily updated, can be completely redesigned by altering one file and are future proof (remember, all future browsers have to comform to the same rules your site was written to) and you start to get the idea that standards compliance is important to everyone.
...and where's all the rest of the site??
OK, I know there isn't a lot here (well one page actually :-) but I'm waaay too busy doing cutting edge, CSS driven websites for other people and not able to do anything on this site.
I guess it's like a hairdresser having a bad hairdo...
some of the sites I'm working on are:
www.inspiredimagesltd.com - this site posed some interesting challenges, how to produce a feature rich, accessible site to showcase great photography. The site uses standards compliant and accessible javascript to achieve the stunning effects for the gallery. The site is also able to be easily updated with new images, it's simply a matter of dropping them into a folder via ftp...
www.swinefluprotect.me - this is an ecommerce site for Sorsky Ltd, aimed at a very nich market. It features a few SEO friendly info pages and a shopping cart system
www.bartongrangehotel.co.uk - recoded from a tables based design to a fully accessible CSS and CMS system this prestigious 4 star hotel has seen double the amount of enquiries since the recode.
www.reember.com - a one pager promoting Re-cycled timber briquettes from Graham Ball Joiners Ltd, they're eco-friendly and efficient with a long burning, high heat output for use with open fires stoves, ovens, wood burners or BBQs.... see I even know the sales patter :-) another one pager I've just done is www.prestontyrespecialists.co.uk and a link here will help rankings...
www.purplesecret.co.uk - is a site explaining the benefits of proto-col a range of health and well being products
www.focus-training.net and www.cloughbottom.co.uk are examples of sites that I've completely recoded and turned in content managed sites for the clients, AA accessibility and the ability to alter whatever they please.
www.handleybrown.com - A solicitors specialising in a crowded market needs an edge, this site is AAA rated for accessibility
www.clickforkitchens.com - it's always great to use technology to make things better, click4kitchens does just that, by eliminating the overheads of expensive showrooms, they can save £1000's off the price of a high quality kitchen. The sites not bad either :-)
www.lalc.org - the Lancashire Association of Local Councils, this is an informative site to help educate and train Town & Parish Councillors.
www.bretherton.org.uk - A site for Bretherton Parish Council, accessible and helping bring together the community in this lovely village
www.allcare-uk.com - A northwest training and nursing agency with a huge portfolio of training courses for all industries .
www.becoolbaby.co.uk - A fantastic company providing UV protective baby's clothing and accessories
www.cfultd.com - A company selling refurbished PC's online, they have a full ecommerce store
www.bnipreston.co.uk - a group of local businesspeople that I work closely with, if you would like more business why not get in touch to see if we can help you:
www.advancingqualitynw.nhs.uk - An NHS site to promote a new initiative for raising the quailtiy of care within the NHS
www.writeanglepr.co.uk - A funky PR site...
www.wagontrails.co.uk - A site promoting overland african safaris.. did you know you could go on a 45 week safari?
www.farington.lancsngfl.ac.uk - A local school site
www.steveallenphotography.com - this is a site for award winning, Steve Allen, fully content managed with over 7000 images
www.bnionline.co.uk - this is the regional BNI site for Lancashire and South Pennines, I was involved with coding this site to AA rating accessibility and all the backend database coding, this new look for BNI has been rolled out to the regions of Manchester, Liverpool, Tyneside, London, Birmingham and even the national site for Brasil (www.bnibrasil.com)