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Limitations of Web Design

There are many limitations to web design and reasons why it is not possible to simply convert and existing company brochure to electronic form. Many people fail to realize that unlike a brochure, a website is not a physical, unchangable entity but the way a website displays on a person's computer will depend on many factors; type of computer, type of browser and the individual settings chosen by the user. If you chose a font that is not supported by browser, your website could end up rendering in a string of zeros and ones instead of words. When developing a website, many people will only consider how a website looks on their own personal computer but a website developer that understands the limitations of web design will help their client understand those limitations, so that the choices made are an effective compromise between website design limitations and organisational goals.

Standards in Web Design

In order to make the internet accessible to all people, standards in programming were introduced. W3C is an organisation that promotes accessibility in web design by publishing specifications and guidelines and providing tools and software. Visit www.w3c.org for more information.  Many web designers do not follow these standards because it requires more technical skill and because it is more time consuming.

Many of the popular tools used to design and update websites fail to comply with these standards.

Choosing a font - an example of limitations in web design

Choices of font are limited because it is necessary to choose web safe font. A list of websafe fonts can be found at  http://www.uvsc.edu/marketing/wrs/resources/web_safe_fonts.html or below

Web-safe Fonts

Below is a list of Web-safe fonts as specified by World Wide Web consortium

The following fonts are not deemed Web-Safe, but are common on specific platforms:

Common Macintosh Fonts:

• Chicago
• Courier
• Helvetica

Common UNIX Fonts:

• Helvetica
• Times

Information taken from

• http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/fonts.html
• http://www.i4image.com/resources_wsfont.shtml
• http://www.microsoft.com/typography/web/fonts/fonts02.htm

As you can see the choice of fonts is limited. The reason why it is important to choose a web safe font, is because unless the reader of your website has the font installed on their computer, the browser they are using will attempt to choose an alternative font that most likely look vastly different to the font that you chose.

Therefore care must be taken, when designing or updating a website that the font chosen will render properly on all computers.

The accessibility of your website to visually impaired and to people who cannot use a mouse to navigate webpages is also determined by choices made by a website developer and many websites fail to be accessible to people with disabilities.  

Comply to standards or risk being sued

In Australia and the U.S. the accessibility of the internet is a requirement of the law. Building a website that is not accessible is a breach of the Disability Discrimination Act and in the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, a blind man successfully sued the Sydney Olympics Organizing Committee because he could not buy tickets to the Games online. See http://www.contenu.nu/socog.html for more details.

Other references include  http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/1.2 (Australia) and http://www.section508.gov/  (United States)

Europe is also working on a similar standard, see http://europa.eu.int/information_society/policy/accessibility/index_en.htm

See The Importance of XHTML compliance to web design