According to the UN, there are 5 billion cellphones in use worldwide today. "Web access through laptops and smart mobile devices will probably surpass web access from desktop computers within the next five years," the agency reports.

According to WEBAim.com, approximately 20% of the US population has some kind of disability. Not all of these people have disabilities that make it difficult for them to access the internet, but it is still a significant portion of the population. Businesses would be unwise to purposely exclude 20, 10, or even 5 percent of their potential customers from their Web sites. For schools, universities, and government entities it would not only be unwise, but in many cases, it would also break the law, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

No organization wants to limit its audience because an individual is unable to access its information through a mobile smart phone, 508-compliant screen reader, or other assistive technologies.

Your Web information must be available for universal access. Otherwise you are losing customers, members and business.

Welcome to Progressive Enhancement Web Design

Let's use this page as an example. Read these instructions first, then try it out.

1) Scroll down to the very bottom of this page.

2) See the link that says View low-bandwidth version?

3) Click the View low-bandwidth version link

4) You should see a very plain black and white "basic" version of this page content. This is what will show on smartphones that don't have very sophisticated browsers built in.

5) Click the View high-bandwidth version link to come back to this "fancy" style version of the content.

6) Test it on your smartphone.
Type in this page URL: http://marygillen.com/web_dev.cfm

7) Depending on your smartphone, it may show as basic or as fancy.

The point is you have just experienced what we call "progressive enhancement" Web design.

Progressive enhancement is an approach to web design that builds documents for the least capable devices first, then moves on to enhance those documents with separate logic for presentation, in ways that do not place an undue burden on the simpler devices but which allow a richer experience for those users with modern graphical browser software.

The beauty: it uses one markup document and a variety of different stylesheets to provide a progressive, gradually-enhanced experience across a wide variety of browsers and devices. And through the capabilities of modern JavaScript libraries, the "device-appropriate content" is automatically served to the assistive technology device or smartphone or modern browser.

If your Web site was built a while ago, it may not be accessible to folks with disabilities, or be delivering your content effectively over today's smartphones.

Mary Gillen provides progressive enhancement Web design and development services that can help you upgrade your existing Web site so it is accessible to all on the Web.

View the video on progressive enhancement Web development.

Contact Mary today to discuss your Progressive Enhancement Web development needs.