SIS: design-led, but with accessibility in mind
We're
just putting the finishing touches to the site design and build for
Rochdale-based SIS (Slingco Inspection Services).
The site needed to follow the strong visual identity we'd established for their printed material, which didn't make it the most obvious candidate for writing the best of accessible code.
As so often happens with these things, the solution was actually very simple, and the site 'degrades gracefully' - as the jargon goes - so it works perfectly well even in a text-only browser like Lynx, or with screen reader software.
Just a few of the things we've been up to recently...
2006 - site after site after site...
Our web-related business went from strength to strength throughout 2006, with design, re-design and launch of websites for clients old and new.
The year began and ended with major eRecruitment sites. In April we launched the RCN Bulletin jobs sites featured in our 'Work' section, then in December a revamped Informatiq Consulting IT recruitment site.
In the interim we re-designed and re-launched Rugs 'n' runners - where users can design and buy bespoke rugs online; Avalanche Awareness - a small sales site for Matt Chilton's (Ski Sunday / Eurosport) avalanche safety DVD; a cheap-n-cheerful carpet tiles site; plus we also re-vamped innovative children's play and music providers Gymboree UK.
We're currently hard at work on another eRecruitment site, plus we expect to complete long-standing client Slingco's corporate site in early February.
And once we get a minute, we might even add some pics of this little lot to this site.
SWOC XML: the dullest job ever - complete!
Client
RCN Publishing decided to make their entire clinical archive available
via international publisher SWETS' SwetsWise Online Content (SWOC) system.
The archive - dating back to 1996 - was previously accessible via their own websites only, stored in PDF format for easy download and printing.
In order to be added to the SWOC system, it was necessary for every PDF to have an accompanying file created containing its summary information so that it could be properly and automatically catalogued and thus become searchable.
"Our problem was," said Kevin Green of Virtual, "that there was no way of automating the process of creating the summary XML files, so the only way forward was to open every single article and manually create them from scratch - pretty much the biggest cut'n'paste job you could ever hope not to tackle!"
We recently completed this remarkably dull project - with countless man hours expended across five people - with over 4,200 files created.
"The good thing now," continues Kevin, "is that all new PDFs have their summary information generated at the same time, so continuing the process is entirely straightforward. It also means of course that it's now easy for the client to involve themselves with any similar systems in future with machine-readable data available 'off-the-shelf'."