The Digital Accessibility Office at UNC-Chapel Hill is celebrating its fifth anniversary with the launch of a new website and a refreshed visual identity. The new website and visual identity are part of the Digital Accessibility Office’s ongoing efforts to improve and expand its services and resources for the campus community.
Sherose Badruddin, a digital accessibility consultant in the Digital Accessibility Office (DAO), led the extensive project. When Badruddin joined the DAO in May 2023, a new website was a high priority for the team. As Badruddin dug into the work, the project aligned with a strategic shift for the DAO and a new WordPress theme. This combination enabled the DAO to seize the opportunity for a new brand alongside the new site.
Approachable and positive
The goal for the website, Badruddin said, was to create an “authoritative yet approachable feel” for anyone looking to learn about or deepen their knowledge of digital accessibility at UNC. “Feedback from the first few rounds of testing and evaluation indicates we’ve successfully accomplished this vision.”
When designing the website, Badruddin and the DAO aimed to enhance user autotomy and use positive language. The new website features a clean layout, intuitive navigation, informative subheadings, concise descriptions and well-organized content. The website connects users to the DAO’s training, consulting, testing and remediation services throughout their accessibility journey.
Over the next year, the DAO will provide additional useful resources on its website specific to ADA Title II, including compliance planning, as well as a plain language version of accessibility policies.
Looking to the future, the website has “space to grow.” Badruddin envisions the website as “a comprehensive tool for learning and remediation support, allowing users to find answers when and how they need them.”
New brand, new direction
The new visual identity that underpins the website is part of a larger change for the DAO. For many years, the DAO primarily reacted to remediate accessibility issues. “Now, DAO is operating as an active-to-proactive task force,” Badruddin said. “The rebrand was necessary to communicate this change.”
“A large part of DAO’s effectiveness is based on one-on-one service, so we wanted to make sure that our brand expressed the same friendliness and approachability we strive for in our interactions with clients,” Badruddin said. “Our task, of course, is to provide and support the maintenance of digital accessibility for over 50,000 campus members and adjacent stakeholders, so we also need to ensure the rebrand expressed our expertise, authority and flexibility.”
The new website is the first place most users will see the new brand, but Badruddin anticipates other ways to share the fresh look with campus.
New website is a model for accessible design
Additionally, Badruddin said the new website serves as a model for digitally accessible design, “demonstrating what can be achieved when web design follows accessibility principles and best practices.”
A common misconception is that aesthetics and accessibility don’t coexist. This redesign proves websites can be attractive and accessible.
Badruddin and DAO teammates worked with ITS graphic designer Kerry O’Sullivan to develop a beautiful brand that’s accessible by design. “Kerry’s expertise and commitment in integrating accessibility principles into design was pivotal,” Badruddin said.
O’Sullivan considered accessibility at every step of the design process, such as testing for contrast while selecting colors, including alternatives for high-contrast text and suggesting content layouts with clear hierarchy. Badruddin then adapted and implemented O’Sullivan’s brand and design elements on the website.
The partnership with O’Sullivan, Badruddin said, was “immensely helpful in successfully integrating our brand.” That integration helped the DAO “achieve our initial goal of supporting user autonomy by design and be a good role model website.”
The new DAO brand closely aligns with the UNC and ITS brand identities but adds an accessible sub-palette of accent colors. The brand colors and shapes support the themes of accessible technology, openness and positivity.
Learning experience with broad benefits
Beyond the fresh look and feel, the new DAO website is foundationally different than the old site. The new website uses a new WordPress theme that ITS Digital Services is developing for campus. The theme, Wilson, is built on WordPress Full Site Editing, an entirely different system than currently powers most campus websites.
Building the new DAO website in the Wilson theme is a crucial step in building the theme for wider campus use. The extensive testing and hands-on work by the DAO provided Digital Services with valuable end user feedback and ensures that the theme is accessible.
“Collaborating with ITS Digital Services, we were able to replicate design elements from Kerry’s designs and identify ways to enhance the Wilson theme,” Badruddin said.
Beyond the collaboration, understanding Wilson and Full Site Editing “enables DAO to assist clients in creating or remediating their websites to meet accessibility criteria,” Badruddin said.