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How did the project start?
I met Rosalind through the creative writing MA at Northumbria University and when her first novel 'Everything You Ever Wanted' was published she decided she needed a website. This was to act as both a marketing tool as well as allowing her easier communication with her audience through blogging, publishing her writing, etc.
What options did you consider?
On a personal level I wanted to ensure that the audience for the website was as wide as possible and so wanted to achieve the highest possible accessibility rating I could achieve. This had to be balanced against the fact that the website needed to have a great design and would also need to be content managed.
Too often when programmers create accessible website they sacrifice the look and feel of the site for example ensuring that there is enough contrast between text and background, inclusion of image elements, etc. I wanted to create a website for Rosalind where visually and functionally she would not even realise these factors had been included.
When planning out the website after I had established Rosalind's needs for the site I then went away and investigated how best to structure and present the content to ensure the accessibility of every element was planned both in the user-facing side of the website as well as ensuring that all the tools were available through the content management system to keep these additions easy to manage on an onoing basis.
What help and expertise did you receive?
I designed and built the website in its entirety by myself. The help I received was really in terms of the accessibilty. Once completed the site was put through a rigorous regime of test for many different aspects of accessibility including:
- Testing the site on nearly 70 different browsers over PC, Mac, Linux and BSD operating systems to ensure maximum compatibility.
- Testing through automated online tools for accessibilty (and code compliance in XHTML and CSS) such as those available through W3C as well as manually checking the appropriate points within these checklists
- Checking the site with guidelines provided by a variety of organisations including RNIB and introducing features such as access keys to aid navigation
- Checking the site for speech and braille output on applications including JAWS, Lynx and ZoomText
Did you face and challenges or learn any lessons?
One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the site remains as accessible as when it was launched but I think I provided enough automatition in the system to ensure this can be achieved with little to no in-depth knowledge of the issues of accessibility. The website always had to remain Rosalind's website and never become a chore to update because of the accessibiility improvements.
In addition each time a new set of tests were performed, the site was then tweaked where necessary and then re-tested in all areas to ensure no compound problems. I learned an enormous amount about the challanges some users face in accessing content on the internet and it made me resolute to achieve the same high standards in all websites I build in the future.
What are the outcomes and how has it improved your business?
As I think most developers are aware, well structured acessibility friendly code can have a positive influence as far as search engine optimisaton is concerned and having seen the statistics for Rosalind's website would say that I hope I have gone some way to help bolster the most important part of the website - her writing!
Rosalind was delighted with the end result and has been using it regularly ever since to update her growing readership.
On a personal level I feel that I have achieved what I set out to do and opened it up to the widest possible audience.
What are your plans for the future?
Rosalind and I are currently in the process of reviewing how she uses the site currently with a view to tightening up the features she doesn't use often as well as introducing new features such as video clips of the plays she has had performed.
