Make Web Content Accessible Across All Devices

If you’ve visited hopkinsmedicine.org recently, chances are you did so with a mobile device.

Published in Insight - October 2014

Nearly 50 percent of visitors to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website are using tablets, smartphones or other devices.

Today there are thousands of different devices on the market in hundreds of different display sizes. In addition to phones and tablets, we see content delivered to watches, glasses and the dashboards of cars. Because content has to be created for these seemingly infinite venues and user experiences, Web professionals face a significant challenge in the years ahead.

Johns Hopkins’ Internet Strategy team is working to meet that challenge. In the last 18 months, the team transformed the most visited and strategically critical pages of hopkinsmedicine.org to render effectively across devices using an approach called responsive design.

In fact, if you’re reading this issue of Insight on a tablet or phone, you’ll see that it is dramatically different than the desktop or print version being read by some of your colleagues.

Responsive design enables pages and content to render effectively regardless of screen size. Image and font sizes are transformed for maximum legibility and readability. Columns are realigned or disappear completely. Navigation adopts its performance behaviors to match those of the operating system.

Responsive design requires constant, incremental creativity and innovation between designers, developers, writers and other key players as we restructure content to perform in the digital era.

Learn more about responsive design at left-nav.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/category/mobile.