URL of website: https://www.bostonglobe.com/

Name of website: The Boston Globe

Target audience: Boston residents aged 18 and older

Screenshot of the home page

Types of navigation evident: search, menu bar, drop down menu, site map

Design principles of contrast, repetition alignment and proximity:
Use of black and white color contrasting on the page provides for easy reading. Graphics highlight stories in news articles, and search feature allows for ease of lookup of news articles in the archive.

Check sheet:

• ☐ Consistent site header logo
• ☑ Consistent navigation area
• ☑ Informative page title that includes the company/organization/site name
• ☑ Page footer area—copyright, last update, contact e-mail address
• ☑ Good use of basic design principles: repetition, contrast, proximity, and alignment
• ☑ Balance of text/graphics/white space on page
• ☑ Home page downloads within 10 seconds on a mobile device
• ☑ Viewport meta tag is used to enhance display on smartphone
• ☑ Responsive page layout is configured for smartphone and tablet display

Navigation criteria

• ☑ Main navigation links are clearly and consistently labeled
• ☑ Navigation is structured within an unordered list
• ☑ When the main navigation consists of images and/or multimedia, the page footer area contains plain text hyperlinks (accessibility)
• ☑ Navigational aids, such as site map, skip to content link, or breadcrumbs, are used

Color and graphics criteria

• ☑ Use of different colors is limited to a maximum of three or four plus neutrals
• ☑ Color is used consistently
• ☑ Background and text colors have good contrast
• ☑ Color is not used alone to convey meaning (accessibility)
• ☑ Use of color and graphics enhances rather than distracts from the site
• ☐ Graphics are optimized and do not slow download significantly
• ☑ Each graphic used serves a clear purpose
• ☐ Image elements use the alt attribute to configure alternate text (accessibility)
• ☑ Animated images do not distract from the site and do not loop endlessly

Multimedia criteria

• ☑ Each audio or video file used serves a clear purpose
• ☑ The audio or video files used enhance rather than distract from the site
• ☑ Captions or transcripts are provided for each audio or video file used (accessibility)
• ☐ The file size is indicated for audio and video downloads

Content presentation criteria

• ☑ Common fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman are used
• ☑ Techniques of writing for the Web are applied: headings, subheadings, bulleted lists, short sentences in brief paragraphs, use of empty space
• ☑ Fonts, font sizes, and font colors are consistently used
• ☑ Content provides meaningful, useful information
• ☑ Content is organized in a consistent manner
• ☑ Information is easy to find (minimal clicks)
• ☑ Timeliness: The date of the last revision and/or copyright date is accurate
• ☑ Content is free of typographical and grammatical errors
• ☑ Avoids the use of “Click here” when writing text for hyperlinks
• ☐ Hyperlinks use a consistent set of colors to indicate visited/nonvisited status
• ☐ Alternate text equivalent of content is provided for graphics and media (accessibility)

Functionality criteria

• ☑ All internal hyperlinks work
• ☑ All external hyperlinks work
• ☑ All forms function as expected
• ☑ No error messages are generated by the pages

Additional accessibility criteria

• ☐ Use attributes designed to improve accessibility such as alt and title where appropriate
• ☐ The html element’s lang attribute indicates the spoken language of the page

Browser compatibility criteria

• ☑ Displays on current versions of Edge, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera
• ☑ Displays on popular mobile devices (including tablets and smartphones)

Recommendations:
The page needs more accessibility features added. In its current state, it may not be perfectly suitable for anyone, as the features they need would be missing.
My advice: add alt text and captions to any images that are on the site. I saw no sign of text captioning the images.
Overall the page gets an 82% (B-). Not bad.