A community college helping adults in Thurrock develop new skills

TACC (Thurrock Adult Community College) approached us needing a new accessible website to meet W3C and level AA accessibility guidelines; required by all government-funded websites.

Alongside the accessibility requirements, they wanted to improve both the design and importantly the navigation which had become complex over the years.

Inspecting the current website we identified many pages with small amounts of content. Highlighting this to the client we got them to do a review of the current page situation, which encouraged them to remove or combine unnecessary content. With the pages finalised we organised the site into a clear structure. This made finding course descriptions versus information-based content much easier. This continued onto the homepage by displaying the course categories as a key visual section on the page.

Making the website accessible to everyone

With accessibility being a key requirement for government-funded websites, we started by undertaking an audit of the previous website to identify the main issues, flagging areas where the existing branding would need to be changed, to meet the required legibility guidelines. We also implemented general legibility improvements and suggested more legible brand fonts for the website.

We set about taking the styling from their recently designed print material and converting it into an accessible-friendly design. Following the W3C guidelines we had to ensure minimum font sizes, spacing and line heights, as well as colour accessibility. This meant some of the brand colours had to be updated as they didn’t meet the required contrast level for users with colour blindness or sight impairments. Other considerations included clear text links, minimum button and icon sizes and clear alt text to provide image descriptions, for sight-restricted users who rely on screen readers.

Despite the restrictions, this has produced a site that balances form and function, becoming an accessible tool for users of all ages and backgrounds.