Websites

Visibility

Visit their website www.visibility.org.uk

Brief

Visibility wanted their site to reflect the high levels of accessibility for visually impaired users afforded by their printed materials.

The focus of the site was to be information about Visibility and its activities.

Tasks and outcomes

The nature of the organisation means that the site has a large number of visually impaired users, so the site has to be compatible with a variety of browsing devices including screen readers and magnifier software.

One of the main problems that users of magnifier software face is orienting themselves within the content of a page. The visual design of the site uses a combination of clearly defined regions of content and white space to reduce this confusion. A high-contrast colour scheme also aids reading.

Users are also able to freely resize the text. Unlike most other sites where the layout breaks or columns of text become narrower, when the text size is increased the layout expands to compensate. This ensures that the lines of text stay more or less the same length.

The site is built using WAI/W3C guidelines to a high level of accessibility and was thoroughly tested by visually impaired users.