Resources from the Dot All 2022 talk: Accessibility takeaways from the W3C website redesign
A list of resources mentioned in Marie's talk at the Dot All 2022 conference.
About W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the international standards organisation, founded by web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. W3C develops standards and guidelines to help everyone build a web based on the principles of accessibility, internationalisation, privacy and security.
In March 2020, following a global public tender, Studio 24 was appointed to redesign the website for W3C.
Read our case study or visit the Working in the Open website to find out more about the project.
I appreciate the expertise of the agency and their willingness to find creative solutions. I love the way Studio 24 work, their professionalism, dedication, expertise. I feel we have the best partners for our project.
A comforting and continual sense of trust and respect quickly emerged from the solid and perfectly professional foundations upon which our collaboration was being built. Simon leads a very thorough, friendly and dedicated team and I would highly recommend working with him and his team.
What did we learn from the W3C project?
Working with W3C has been an amazing experience for the Studio 24 team. We have written about things we have learned both as individuals and as an agency. Highlight posts include:
- Choosing a front end framework – our discussion with W3C on what CSS framework / approach to take
- A series of posts on the CMS section process:
- Building the main navigation – how we iterated the navigation design for accessibility and usability
- The W3C Design System is live
You can read more about the project and our work on our blog.
Accessible front-end development
As a result of this project, we developed our own open source accessible front-end starter kit called Amplify.
Amplify has been accessibility tested, including with people with disabilities, as part of the W3C redesign project.
I firmly believe that developers have a responsibility to write code that doesn’t exclude people based on their abilities or the technology they use. As an accessibility advocate, it was a huge personal honour to be able to work on the W3C project.
Studio 24 team
In the 20-year history of Studio 24, it feels as if we’ve been leading up to a project like this. Our company mission to bring together human-centered design and open source technology is ideally fitted to a client such as W3C.
Owners and creators of products have to take responsibility to ensure audiences aren’t marginalised or ignored. There should be no second class experience.
Project recognition
As a team we are proud to have been recognised in the 2023 Gaady Awards. The Gaadys celebrate outstanding digital products that support the GAAD (Global Accessibility Awareness Day) Foundation’s mission to disrupt the culture of technology and digital product development to include accessibility as a core requirement.
The W3C website is a valuable resource for web developers and designers, and the new redesign makes it even more accessible to everyone. Studio 24’s work on this project is a shining example of how accessibility can be achieved without sacrificing design or usability.
To keep up to date with future W3C work follow us on Twitter, follow us on Linked In, or sign up to the Studio 24 newsletter.
