Driving change for Scope, Virgin Media and a very significant cause

The need for accessible web design is an increasing requirement for businesses. Creode were appointed to design and develop a website to support the Work With Me campaign. The campaign is being run in partnership with Scope and Virgin Media and works as a call to action for businesses to come together to create a more inclusive workspace for disabled people.

We designed the website to explain the issue, point the way to further information and ultimately drive conversions for downloads and pledge form sign ups.

As part of the process, we mapped out the key user journeys and conversion points, to ensure the site both guided as well as persuade. Creatively, we explored multiple directions to best communicate the tone of the campaign and to balance the two brands of Scope and Virgin Media.

The four main guiding principles of accessibility in WCAG 2.0 are:

• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust

Of course whilst on the subject of accessible web design, another hugely important factor was adherence to the highest WCAG 2.0 standards, to make the site accessible to users with a wide range of disabilities. There are a number of areas to consider when making a website accessible but the main challenges are around visual impairments, keyboard only users and screen readers. This included low vision, blindness, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these.

Making the complex, easy

The key was to allow navigation of the site using tab, shift + tab, spacebar and enter. To stop the focus shifting to an unexpected area the surrounding CSS needed to be configured to support the current on-screen focal point.

We made sure that all parts of the website could be navigated successfully and were highlighted in the most logical order. We employed a javascript solution to ensure that the focal point travelled to its next location in real time.

To find out more about how your business can be involved and take the pledge please follow this link to the Work With Me website.