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Web Authoring & Design

Ethics & Web Design

More on Ethics & Web Design

• Check out the Society for Technical Communication (STC) Ethical Principles.

• AIGA (The Professional Association of Design) has an ethics handbook for graphic artists and designers.

• Webprofessionals.org offers this Code of Ethics.

• The International Web Association (IWA) also maintains a Code of Ethics.

• robotregime.com features a useful conversation on ethics & web design.

• Read this helpful blog post about the importance of web design ethics.

• Yet another useful blog post on ethical issues in web design.

• The Web Accessibility Initiative has everything you need to know about making your website more accessible to disabled people and other socially disadvantaged groups.

• Two places to quickly find images with Creative Commons licenses are Flickr and Google Images.

Ethics Presentation

Every rhetorical endeavor must consider its ethical relationships, and web design is no different. The actions (or inactions) taken by web designers often have ethical implications.

Persuasion or Manipulation?

Misleading advertising and dishonest writing have been around long before the internet, but the publishing power and functionality of the web creates new opportunities for unethical actions. While text and images can be misleading, the web's funcitonality can provided an added means to exploit a user. When web design conceals its purpose in order to influence its audience, it can venture into unethical terrain. User interface (UI) or user experience (UX) design intentionally used in this way creates dark patterns.

darkpatterns.org lists common unethical design techniques:

• Bait and Switch. The oldest trick in the book? This occurs when a "user sets out to do one thing, but a different, undesirable thing happens instead" (darkpatterns.org).
• Disguised Ads. This is an advertisement that appears to be some other content so users are more likely to click them
• Friend Spam. Used by viruses and well-known companies alike, this is a technique that accesses users' social media accounts or contacts and proceeds to publish posts or emails or their behalf.
• Hidden Costs. "A user gets to the last step of the checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared, e.g. delivery charges, tax, etc" (darkpatterns.org).
• Road Block. When you want to complete a task but you are restricted by some other feature of the page, like an ad or a solicitation for personal info.

Play the video below from 10:04 or watch it on YouTube to view an example of how "dark pattern" design works.

Choices and Design

Web designers must create structure and architecture, but at what point does an architecture unethically restrict a user's needs? Websites must have some kind of architecture, but users should be able to move through them as freely as possible to achieve their objectives.

Copyrights and Hot Linking

Are you sure you can use that image? Using copyrighted content on your page is often easy and sometimes tempting. But using others' work without their permission is usually unethical (and against the law)! Check the copyright and licenses for the content you want to use, and use the excellent search tools at Flickr and Google Images to find images licensed for reuse.

What if you just show an to your users through a link (instead of saving the image to your server)? This practice, called hot linking is problematic because it uses the host site server's bandwith to populate YOUR website, and it can violate copyright laws if the image is not licensed for reuse. Provide your users a hyperlink to visit the image's full page instead of displaying it the out-of-context on your page.

Accessibility

Who do you include in your audience? Do you exclude anyone? There are ways to make your website more availble to people with disabilities and other underserved groups, such as older people, people with low literacy, people with low bandwith or older technology, or inexperienced users. The Web Accessibility Initiative offers guidelines and tools to help you make your website more accessible.

Some simple ways to improve accessibility:

• Alt Text for Images. Some visually disabled people use screen readers, and if you do not provide alt text for your images, the content will go unnoticed. Also, those with low bandwith/older technology may not be able to download your images.
• Keyboard Accessible. Some disabled people cannot use a mouse. A website that is keyboard accessible is also accessible by speech input, by mouse, and by other keyboard input-based assisitve technologies.
• Transcripts. If you have audio or video files available on your website, make transcripts available for the hearing impaired.

Intro to Web Authoring & Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Ben Causey

This page last updated on 3/23/2016