Montano Designs | Specializing in Joomla Website Design | Located in Charlotte

Montano Designs really came through for me when I was desperate for a re-design of my website. My small business was really picking up and I was just about to do a big mailing when I realized my website needed immediate attention.....I found Montano Designs through another website I admired......my budget was small, but Cindy made it work and in less than 24 hours I had a new, beautiful website-I can't wait to show it off!
Robyn Ruehl-Lippert
Montano Designs has far exceeded our expectations. After telling Cindy our ideas, we received a custom design website that portrayed our product in the true professional manner it deserved. It looked unlike anything we had seen before. Thanks Montano Designs!
Michael McAllister
Fitness Together
Thank you so much! You are a hard worker and admire you for this. I Your work was GREAT and thank you for taking us on when I know you really did not have the time. You are certainly worth every penny. --Bryan Scott, Barn Light Electric
Montano Designs did a fantastic job with my website, at a great price and fast! She took the drab legal website I was using and gave it a far better look than any of the canned attempts that other big companies were trying to pawn off on me. Ms. Montano was also particularly helpful in helping with all ancillary computer issues that were involved. Great job, Montano!
Gregory P. DiLeo
Thanks so much for your help today! You REALLY saved me!
--Jennifer Spiegelhalter
Shop AdoraBELLA
I worked with Cindy on one of those "rush-jobs" with a site that needed to be done 'yesterday' before appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Luckily, Cindy were able to shift other projects to meet the deadline. Her expertise with Joomla was essential to the project. Cindy is also extraordinary in optimizing her sites for search engines, using SEO to attain natural top listings in Google.
Brian Shea
Seven Sages
Montano Designs provided our company with an outstanding web site design and hosting. We are extremely pleased with every aspect of the process; from initial design, to implementation, to the final product. I would strongly recommend Montano Designs for anyone looking to build a better web site. Montano Designs wonderful websites.
James McNulty
I have the great pleasure of having Cindy as a sister in law but the real benefit came when I found that she could help me with a project that had been on the back burner for me for some time. I needed a web site for my business. All can say is if she not only showed me how easy and user friendly it could be. Cindy has helped me grow my business in ways I never thought I could.
Jon Montano
Oh my Goodness! Oh my Goodness! Oh my Goodness! That's exactly what I wanted.
--Rebekah E.W. Hoskins, Intuitive Works
"Cindy Montano has a lot of experience in implementing quality websites with the Joomla! CMS. I have had the pleasure a few times to work with her on a few of her projects. If you need something done, you hire Cindy!"
-- Robin Muilwijk
RobINK
A thousand, million thank you’s for the website design! Also a good friend of mine asked me for a reference for a web designer for a colleague of hers, so of course I recommended you.
Laurel Dabria
Cindy,
YOU ARE KICKING ASS!!! The website looks awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much,
Rhonda Thomas
I want to thank you very much for your professional attitude and persistence in dealing with what must have been a very difficult job.

Philip Bryant
Balloon Federation of America
Wow you work fast. The website looks great.
Megan Ketzner
I really just wanted to take a minute to say "Thank You So Much" for my new website. Trust Cindy, Give her whatever info you have, get out of her way and let her go. This is the beautiful part of working with a professional. She is not only talented and patient, she has also become a trusted friend to me. Sometimes to appear Professional, we need to hire professionals. Cindy is my secret. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart and bank account.
Lisa Swan
Thanks again for all the hard work. I really love the site, it is beautiful. Now that it is running quickly, we are getting many compliments. THANK YOU!

Devon Diaz

Ease-e-Waste
Our most sincere thanks for making our website so beautiful. It is simply amazing how you make something so complicated so simple, I will refer to all in need of an amazing website.
Patrick E Martinez
P. Bridals
I very much like the look and feel of the new site!
Isabelle Fabian
Chief Executive Officer
Christian Bernard Jewelers
Thanks again for the patience, understanding and ongoing help. The new site will enable me to reach many more people who need help with their speech.
Judith L. Bergman
p.s. It's really very professinal and attractive.
I love my website that Montano designs did for me. It's fun, colorful and informative. In the first few weeks that my website was up I got a new annual customer for my magazines that more than paid for the website. I'm very happy with the excellent service that Montano Designs provides.
Peg Casey

Is Your Website Legal?

Written by Gary Moyle

So let's get straight to the point. Is your website legal? Well, in October 2004 we reached the deadline of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), 1995 in which the DDA ordered service providers to make "reasonable adjustments" to the physical features of their premises to ensure the services they provide are accessible to people with disabilities.

The 175 page code of practice for the DDA published in May 2002 specifically mentions websites. The relevant sections are included below.

* 2.13 - 2.17 (p11-13): "What services are affected by the Disability Discrimination Act? An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to the public on its website. This is a provision of a service and is subject to the act." * 5.23 (p71): "For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites." * 5.26 (p68): "For people with hearing disabilities, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites."

To elaborate on this some more.

"The duty not to refuse or deliberately not provide a service could apply in a case where a service provider has deliberately chosen not to integrate accessibility into his Web site. This might include where a Flash movie is used, but there is no option for a user with a screen reader to skip it.

. A service provider must not provide a lower standard of service to a disabled person, compared to that offered to an able-bodied person. Thus, where a retailer offers an e-commerce facility in addition to its high street shop, if the Web site is inaccessible then the disabled person will be unable to enjoy the convenience of home shopping and will thus be subject to a lower standard of service. "

Source: Martin Sloan (www.dmag.org.uk)

With the legal side of things out of the way there are a number of important benefits to building an accessible website. There are 8.6 million registered disabled people in the UK , totaling 14% of the population (Source: Disability Rights Commission). Two million people in the UK have sight problems and 9% have some form of colour blindness (Source: Institution of Electrical Engineers). There are also 12 million people aged 60 or over, some 21% of the UK population (Source: UK Government). This eventually means that 48% of the population of the UK, not to mention those of other countries could potentially face problems using a website that does not comply with accessibility guidelines.Therefore producing an accessible website could gain you important commercial benefits in the shape of many new customers.

Accessibility is closely linked to the other standards covered in this section, so much so that the W3C launched the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) in order to advise web agencies of strategies to achieve compliance.

The WAI offers three standardized levels of access, from the readily achieved (Priority 1), to one that requires slightly more work (Priority 2), to a master level (Priority 3). Creative Eye can achieve all of the above

"I own a B2B company and the DDA doesn't apply to me" I hear you say. Well there are some great reasons for designing with accessibility in mind. Accessibility and web standards are so closely linked that many of the benefits cross over. Some of the many benefits include

* Speed of development and updates * Future compatibility with new browsers, PDA's and mobile devices * Better Search Engine rankings

Read our article "The business benefits of designing with web standards" on www.webdesigngoldmine.com.

About the author: Gary is the founder of webdesigngoldmine.com and has been developing websites since 1999. Visit www.webdesigngoldmine.com for more articles, tutorials and free css templates.