Do you need to design a web site for ELLs?

Comments on "Guidelines for Designing a Good Web Site for ESL Students" by Charles Kelly www.aitech.ac.jp/~ckelly. Accessed 7/14/10



This article is written in a format, using every day language that makes all of the advice very clear. One does not need to be especially tech savvy to read and understand the content.

In the section called "Quick Overview" the author says, "Should I really worry about the minority who use less powerful computers, use older browsers and have slow Internet access?" The answer to the question in the article is "yes." I feel completely in accord with that, as I am one of those people. Some of our English language learners may also be in a similar position.


Dial up Internet, while an innovation some 15 to 20 years ago, now feels like taking a walk with a snail. I usually have a book to read beside my computer to pass the time, or like this morning, I put my oatmeal on the stove to cook, turned on the computer, got the programs started, and then returned to preparing breakfast. While I ate, documents, web pages, or e-mail messages loaded and I then returned to the computer screen without high blood pressure, due to the frustrations and impatience that I generally experience in the waiting. I wonder if there should be a movement to develop meditation procedures that last for as long as it takes for some web pages to download? Perhaps this is a niche and a new field in meditation arts.


One instruction in the article resonated with me from my general awareness of searching web sites. The author says, “Don’t waste your visitors’ time with a cover page that says, “Click here to enter.” I have always wondered about this as well. Why not send me, the visitor, directly to what you want me to see. On a dial-up system, loading each new page takes time. Why add more of that kind of waiting time to a task?

Personally I still like a hard copy, and so I appreciated the author’s advice to “Make your pages printable.”

I also liked the recommendation to let viewers know how to contact you and when the site last had attention. The author does include a note about spiders or spammers, suggesting that e-mail addresses, if they are listed, should be written with spaces between the letters or between words and the “at” sign.

To sum up, I will paraphrase the author’s main points regarding how to design good web sites for English language learners:

Make your site usable by everyone.
May your site as fast as possible.
Make your site easy to use.
Make your site useful.
Be professional.
Make your site friendly
Use the newest technology effectively.
Not everything you believe is true is true.
Be considerate of those with slower and older Internet connections.