Website Redesign for The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts
About The Project
The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts in Edmonton is a lively community of over 200 artists with developmental disabilities. Since its founding in 2003, The Nina has grown from a single member to a renowned art centre with exhibitions spanning local, national, and international stages.
Given The Nina’s mission of supporting artists with developmental disabilities, the organization’s commitment to inclusivity made it important to ensure their digital presence was as welcoming and accessible as possible.
So the main focus of redesigning their website was to meet W3C accessibility standards while staying as close to the original style as possible. Additionally, the goal was to boost general awareness, make donations easier, promote events, highlight artist profiles, and support their artist shop.
In this case, the client preferred to stick with their existing tools—WordPress with Divi and WooCommerce which gave me an opportunity to dive into a new templating tool.
Approach
I started with a detailed audit of the User Experience (UX), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Google Analytics to spot navigation problems, blockers, and SEO opportunities.
For the Accessibility Audit, I teamed up with the amazing Diane Boytrang, an accessibility expert, who provided invaluable insights from her detailed audit of the existing site.
The results of this audit were the base of the new implementation of the site.
I do love the bold colors of the site which made for a fun experience to design the new style following the accessibility results. As a bonus, I added a dark mode option which serves as high contrast version of the site, adding another layer of accessible options.
During implementation, we focused on making content and design changes that would enhance usability, SEO, and site speed. Even though I usually prefer using Elementor, I respected the client’s preference for WordPress with Divi. We allowed for up to two revisions for any changes needed during this phase. Once everything was set, I provided the client with a comprehensive guide on how to maintain and customize their new website.
Results
We launched the redesigned website right on schedule, by mid to late November. The new site was a big improvement in terms of accessibility, making it much easier for all users to navigate. Enhanced user experience and navigation led to higher engagement, and the optimized SEO helped boost the site’s visibility and reach. The updated site also made it simpler to make donations and promote events, directly supporting The Nina’s mission.
Conclusion
Redesigning The Nina’s website was a rewarding project that tackled important accessibility issues and greatly improved the overall user experience. This project underscores the importance of accessible web design and showcases the benefits of collaborating with experts to create inclusive digital solutions, something that is usually merely an afterthought but so important to create an inclusive environment!
A word on Accessibility
You may think that making a website accessible could also be done with an accessibility plugin, but unfortunately, these types of overlay plugin introduce more trouble than benefits.
Not only that, you can also land in legal trouble for failing accessibility standards.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution for making a site accessible and it’s not something that is usually explicitly taken into consideration when I’m asked for a website creation or redesign.
There are a few things that can help make the web more accessible and I try to incorporate them into all of my projects to the best of my abilities.
First and foremost, the style guide needs to have sufficient contrast between all colors which can easily be checked with online tools like this one.
Forms can also be a lot more accessible by following a set of simple guidelines.
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