news
Greater accessibility for Crisis
21st November 2005
Crisis, the homelessness charity, gets a website redesign for better consistency and accessibility
Crisis are the national charity that fights homelessness and empowers people to fulfill their potential and transform their lives. With Fat Beehive, Crisis have redeveloped their website to have better accessibility and to enable more staff to maintain the site.
Previously, the Crisis website has been maintained by a single person using the Dreamweaver software. The appointment of a new web manager was an opportunity for site redevelopment to include Fat Beehive's easy to learn, easy to use BeeKeeper Content Management System.
The content management system (CMS) has two main benefits for Crisis.
The first benefit is that the site layout is consistent throughout. With Dreamweaver (website building software) it is possible to make changes to the layout and structure of the page. By using a content management system, we divorce the content of the site (the words, the images) from the layout and technical structure.
When Crisis staff add new content in either new or existing pages, they are concerned with the copy and images they are adding and not with the design of the site. This method of controlling the site layout and design means it is easier to maintain the accessibility of the site. For example, admin users are prompted to include ALT image tags, and font details are handle by the CCS file and not within the HTML page. The CMS also guarantees consistency in the navigation, with the navigation being automatically maintained by the CMS. In contrast, a manually maintained navigation can become outdated and multiple links to content can confuse site visitors.
The second benefit is that many members of the Crisis staff can become involved in maintaining the site. Not only is the information more accurate as it comes directly from the various departments into the website, but the staff are far more aware of and involved in the site. And this means that site starts to represent the organisation more fully.
An approval system is built into the CMS, meaning that all content on the site is approved by the web manager before going live on the site.
The new design and layout of the Crisis website makes for easier, clearer and more informative reading.
www.crisis.org.uk
