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Portfolio

DEMOS Project

Part-time employment 2000 - 2003.

[DEMOS Website]

A case study is available at the UKOLN (UK Office for Library Networking) website: Standards and Accessibility Compliance for the DEMOS Project Web Site.

[Screenshot of DEMOS website]

The story

A Higher Education project based at the Manchester Metropolitan University to develop material for staff disability awareness.

A site that took a long time to know where it was going.

Design / structure

The design and the information architecture of this site seem to be in a neverending state of change. A good example for what must be a nightmare of every information architect, to start without a clear idea of the purpose and therefore structure of a website.

The project's aim is to deliver an online course to academic staff to inform them about difficulties faced by students with disabilities. Exploring methods of delivering this course was part of the project's objectives. In the early stage of the project Virtual Learning Environments were tested, but deemed unsuitable due to accessibility problems.

The priorities of the site moved from delivering information about the progress of the project to carrying the course modules. At times main sections had to be renamed and content restructured. This site has been a lesson in how to build expandability into early versions of website architecture.

The code

This site uses the latest standards, XHTML and CSS, according to W3C recommendations. The layout is now tableless (with the exception of the header) and uses CSS to position content on the page.

The site also passes all 3 levels of the Bobby accessibility test and is therefore AAA compliant.

A detailed description of the accessibility features used is available - together with an Accessibility Guide for Web Designer - on the DEMOS site.

Reputation

The DEMOS site has build up a reputation and is now often cited as a showcase for accessibility among project websites.

Both the general site and the Accessibility guide are being linked to from many academic resource lists.

[DEMOS Website]