Delta Center for Independent Living – Website Design & Development

Delta Center for Independent Living (DCIL), a non-profit organization serving individuals with disabilities, was looking for a site with a great degree of functionality. One of DCIL's requirements included having its new site pass several accessibility validation tests in an effort to make it as user-friendly as possible to the greatest number of people, especially considering the special needs community that it serves. Towards this end, I conducted research on how to make a website accessible, and set out on designing and building out Captiva Marketing's first strictly standards compliant site.

The structure of the site was created entirely with CSS, including "spiderable" drop-down menus which display as bulleted lists when styles are not applied. Alternate style sheets are built in with simple "text-increase" and "decrease" links on every page, allowing users with vision impairments to customize their viewing experience. An anchor link that allows users to skip reading navigation elements and jump directly to content on the page was included. Though remarkably simple in technical implementation, this feature is almost indispensable for those who use a screen-reader to browse the Internet, freeing them from the redundancy of hearing link menu options read aloud before they arrive at the "meat" of the page.

Pages were run through several online accessibility validators throughout development to ensure that the site met DCIL's expectations. In addition, the site was tested for cross-browser compatibility (IE, Netscape, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox) for consistency in both look and functionality.

Color scheme and look of the site were designed to lend a positive and approachable feel. Working from DCIL's existing logo design, I arrived at a page layout that carried its purple-blue color throughout, and echoed its triangle shape in the headerbar's incline – a playful and also somewhat iconic element recalling the slope of a wheelchair ramp, and more subtly, a forward ascent toward the future.