Creating an accessible website for a sight loss charity
"We want to be exemplary in the sight loss space"
When we first met the team at MySight York, a charity that helps people with sight loss to live independent, connected and fulfilling lives, we were excited by the scale of their ambition.
Known for delivering an excellent service in their community since 1979, the organisation wanted to step up its digital offering to ensure they were leading the way in accessibility, ease of use and information quality. “We want to be exemplary”, they told us, which is a sentiment we have proudly carried throughout this entire project.
Read on to learn how we scoped, built, tested and launched a new website for MySight York.
Starting with strategy
Before starting the project, MySight York had secured funding to develop a digital knowledge hub helping blind and partially-sighted people with technology. But they weren’t sure whether to integrate this into the current website, or to take a deeper look and build something new.
They chose to start afresh, which led to a strategic process involving a core-team workshop and the production of a 30 page scoping document.
This strategic approach ensured that all requirements were captured, and all voices were heard, but more importantly, it brought the whole delivery team together on a shared mission: to build an exemplary website for an exemplary organisation.
Partnering with a visually-impaired copywriter
As two sighted individuals, we felt it was important for this project to be infused with lived experience, and so we partnered with a copywriter living with sight loss.
Allana Grant from Passion4Social stepped in to help. We provided a top-level structure for the main navigation and each page, and Allana steered us not only on content production, but also feeding back on our decisions to help improve the overall user experience.
This support led to a better, more trustworthy website that connects with visitors on a human level.
Where our instincts failed
For every website we build, we strive to meet WCAG 2.2 AA compliance. But compliance alone does not mean that every experience is going to be completely accessible to every user.
That is why we ran an in-person testing workshop with real users.
Four generous participants from MySight York’s community agreed to take part in a 3 hour user testing session. The results were extremely insightful for us, leading to significant reworks of several sections of the website prior to launch. You can read all about our findings here.
We would highly recommend All Things Equal - Nick and Matt took time to get to know our organisation and what we wanted to achieve. They helped us keep everything on track and were very supportive. The whole team and the Board of Trustees are so pleased with the result.
Launching an exemplary sight loss website
The whole team worked closely over a period of 6 months to deliver a wonderful, comprehensive website. Through careful project management, accessibility considerations and technical know-how, we have developed a website that:
Gives people living with sight loss, and their loved ones, fast access to information, services and means of engagement
Meets WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility - with input from actual service users
Helps MySight York promote their services, events, activities and newsletters
Is simple and easy to update for the team at MySight York
An accessible website
Helping your charity lead the way