Intentional Omissions

Documentation for why we decided not to do something that is a familiar pattern from The Internet.

External link icon

It is common to see a little box-and-arrow glyph attached to links to warn visitors that they are going to leave the current site and go somewhere out of the control of the authors. We did this for a little while on Vets.gov but removed it when the site moved to the VA.gov domain. There were two reasons:

• We found that it wasn’t very meaningful to people using the site.
• It was not an accessible solution to the problem. Screen readers have no idea what to do with it.

Designing accessible links is best accomplished by writing clear copy that describes the expected outcome.

Right rail content

We tend to avoid multi-column layouts. Our usability testing has consistently found that right-rail content is basically invisible to our vistors. We have tried static and “sticky” approaches with consistently bad results. The exceptions to this are things like Find a VA facility where there the layout more clearly communicates “this is all one thing.”