You may have noticed a new look for sdge.com. The site recently received an updated look and feel, as well as comprehensive "under-the-hood" re-programming to comply with international web best practices and standards for web accessibility.
These updates will facilitate use by individuals with disabilities, and also allow the proper rendering of our website on mobile devices.
Customer-Centered Design
Our site has been redesigned for simplicity and ease of use, placing the customer at the center of the design process. Web customer research, best practices and benchmarking data, as well as web traffic reports, were analyzed to determine which features, information and services were of highest relevance to our customers.
Customers can find what they are looking for and accomplish tasks, such as paying their bills and applying for rebates, quickly and efficiently.
Web Accessible Design
Making our utility web site accessible means our customers with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive disabilities can better understand, navigate, and interact with our site.
Different disabilities require different adaptations in web design and programming. Most of these adaptations benefit all customers because accessibility and good web site design are complimentary.
Ongoing Process
This is just the beginning. Improving our web sites’ usability is an ongoing and evolutionary process. Our company is committed to continually incorporating future refinements to the look and feel for both the general and My Account web sites.
Because website accessibility and best practices are an ever changing field of technology, we are committed to upgrading the website as new changes and standards become the general "best practice" web industry rules.
Examples of Web Accessible Best Practices
On a page like this one, a screen reader will notice an early link – "skip to content." This link provides a quick way to jump past some of the preliminary navigation and links that a sighted visitor can visually scan, but which can slow down a visitor using assistive technologies like a screen reader.
Screen readers often have difficulty navigating pages due to lack of headers to denote various sections of the content. To alleviate this issue, our website utilizes the industry standard Header tags.
Rather than use a simple BOLD for designating section headings, we use the H2, H3 and H4 designations. This allows assistive devices to skip entire blocks of content in a quick and efficient manner.
The adjustment of font size can be a challenge for many visitors. SDG&E's website allows the visitor to adjust font size through their browser.
We also present all information in a textual format, so that all navigation elements throughout the website can be increased in size (for easy visualization), and displayed according to the users preference. All major Internet browsers allow the user to adjust the font size.
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