Allotment Regeneration Initiative gets a W3C accessibility revamp

Launched in Jan 2007, the Allotment Regeneration Initiative supports the continued development of allotments in the UK. The original site was setup in Mambo CMS and had been neglected in its original structure and design. The brief was to bring the site up to WCAG 1.0 priority 2 guidelines.

This actually meant a complete restructure of the content into a more sustainable architecture to allow continued growth and easier editing for the site authors. The decision was made to migrate from Mambo CMS to the latest Joomla CMS. Making the site accessible was quite a challenge since Joomla CMS version 1.x still has some way to go in meeting accessibility requirements.

Not one to shrink form a challenge, I took this on with a 6 day turn around which over ran due to the site not being hosted on my server and its subsequent configuration issues. The site inevitably got a makeover in template design too since this was a major obstacle in getting the sites priority 2 level compliance. So with a fresher tighter look, a better front end navigation and a significant restructure of content in the administrators area, the site was sent for an audit to an external accessibility developer.

On most counts WCAG priority 2 has been achieved although this is always a debatable issue due to recommendations not being law. The site is cleaner and the clients are happy. No better way to start the New Year!

If you want to get your green fingers out visit here: www.farmgarden.org.uk/ari