accessibility & usability - responsible production...
The Creative Partners combine accessibility considerations with usability to inform our process. We offer a compliant, considered and holistic approach to our clients. We believe that whilst visual design is an important consideration, it does not constitute 'website design' and does not work in isolation.
web accessibility standards
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the established standards body that has assembled the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. These guidelines provide guidance on accessibility of websites for people with disabilities.
It is a requirement under current legislation that we make clients aware of current legislation surrounding accessibility. Under the DDA proprietors of websites are required to make 'reasonable effort' to ensure that their website content is accessible to users with disabilities. Consideration must be made in order to make information as available as possible for assistive technologies such as screen readers, and add in functionality for users with limited mobility such as access keys and intra-page links.
W3C accessibility standards should be considered in order to improve accessibility levels of existing sites during a re-design. By implementing such features, search engine visibility is automatically improved.
For further information on accessibility, plese visit www.w3c.org.
usability best practice
We aim to produce user-centered design, and do this in accordance with ISO TR 18529 and ISO 13407 - Human-Centered Design Process, and Human-centered lifecycle process description.
Our design process means that we invest time into research and client consultation in order to achieve the best possible solution. We believe it to be fundamental to creating a considered and usable product.
We assess how a market is currently represented online and a website's potential audience, discover their requirements, to establish the tone of communication, visual and written/ aural, and consider the level of accessibility required. Through our communicative process with our clients, we establish any fundamental material such as business plans and market research, any current marketing activity, planned changes or future material. We analyse data and requirements to build a foundation for our design process.
We base our informed process on usability research, including academic studies such as eye tracking data and user focus group results, and Information Architecture studies to continually inform and update our knowledge base to ensure our clients get a professional and informed product.
On completion all of our products are thoroughly tested including testing, usability inspection, walkthroughs, and are completed for launch and validation, assessing style guides and any content management/ admin training.