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Portfolio

MMU Student Services / Learning Support

Voluntary project and part-time employment in 2002.

[Note: These sites are no longer under my control.]

[MMU Student Services Website]

The story

[Screenshot of MMU Learning Support website]

The websites for the MMU Student Services and Learning Support Unit, which I was occasionally asked to update with new content and which urgently needed some accessibility, usability and information structure added to them.

This started out as an unpaid marathon coding weekend when I decided I couldn't bear the FONT tags in the code of the Learning Support Unit's webpages anymore. I quickly converted the site to XHTML, added a stylesheet for presentational markup, added accessibility using a number of techniques, improved the information architecture and added a breadcrumb trail for simple navigation.

All this was done keeping in mind the fact that non-professionals have to be able to update the site in the future when I was no longer available. I convinced the head of Student Services to let me do the same to the Student Services site (the parent site of the Learning Support Unit) and to train two staff members in the use of Dreamweaver, web editor software that does not require in-depth web design knowledge.

Design / structure

A simple design that is accessible in all browsers. Since this is a small site complex navigation was not required. A breadcrumb trails provides navigation and orientation.

The code

Standard-compliant XHTML and CSS. Uses numerous accessibility techniques and complies with the newly drafted guidelines of the recently established Web Development Team at the MMU.

[Note: These sites are no longer under my control.]

[MMU Student Services Website]