Kent Association for the Blind is this year celebrating 90 years of helping the visually impaired and blind of Kent. The new website provides an essential information portal for all and puts rest to the myth that a highly accessible site can't look good.
Firstly we wanted to understand who use the website. Visually impaired and blind of course? Not really.
Surprisingly less than one third of visitors to the KAB website are visually impaired and these are returning visitors checking on the latest equipment releases and social groups. The majority of the website visitors are friends and relatives seeking out information on behalf of others.
Clearly, we had to think very carefully about the sort of information that these two different groups would find useful and present that information in a way that was methodical to navigate.
We designed a new website, powered by Joomla! the open source content management system. Keeping development maintenance costs low was important to us as we were keen the charity spends money on the people they serve.
As you can imagine, the website conforms to the highest practical accessibility standards and supports the use of screen readers which are often used by the blind and visually impaired.
The website was launched in June 2010...
