Isle of Scilly council website

Louise Taylor

Research output: Non-textual formArtefact

Abstract

This work was commissioned by Tagish, an independent company specialising in the delivery of ICT solutions and consultancy for the public sector (research funding £23k). The main audiences were the Isles’ private and business residents and visitors, who require web standard and accessibility compliant design templates to work with their bespoke content management system. Taylor’s design of the site therefore had to consider the purpose and use of the web site by a large cross-section of users. Creating and refining the interface design, this resulted in the creation of CSS and HTML templates, which were then handed to the development team at Tagish for final implementation into their bespoke web back-end system. A number of features have been incorporated into the website by Taylor to ensure that it is an empathic human-centred software, following good-practice in terms of usability and accessibility for all potential users. Specifically, it has been refined to suit assistive technologies. As a UK government web site, it must be compliant with a number of guidelines, including W3C WAI Accessibility Standards, W3C HTML/XHTML standards and RNIB accessibility guidelines. An invisible link was included to allow users of screen readers to skip the navigation and go straight to the content of each page. The new site was launched on 1st September 2005 and one month later was commended by independent website analysts SiteMorse on a ‘massive’ leap of 373 places to 16th in the league table of best-performing Local Government websites. Taylor presented the work at one of a series of UK-based World Usability Day events which happened simultaneously around the globe on 3rd November 2005. World Usability Day is an initiative designed to ensure that ‘the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use’. http://www.worldusabilityday.org
Original languageEnglish
PublisherTagish
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2006

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