When we redesigned www.zendor.com website twelve months ago, I was extremely keen to see it practically achieve what we were preaching… that accessibility was the right thing to do and that good visual design need not compromised…
At that time (and twelve months is a long time in the internet) it seemed that the sites that were accessible looked like they had been designed by a five year old. (Actualty this insults five year olds … apologies…)
Also, the pressure from the conservative Zendor management meant that it was hard to get the extra budget. And we did need the extra budget to do this as neither myself or the other involved quite knew exactly what we were taking on to achieve AAA. I swung the argument, got the budget with help from marketing as we were to use the site as a marketing tool for the accessibility service. (And as it happens it has helped enormously).
So we made Zendor (pictured left) beautiful, thanks Simon Crosbie, in a normal iterative design process, then we made it work thanks to Steve Potts’s devastatingly Guru like knowledge about all this complex technical CSS style-stuff.
I learned a lot, Simon did and I think Steve may have picked up a wrinkle or too. Point being we did it, we did it right, and we made it beautiful and accessible too. And we now know it is the right thing to do in all cases.
There are a few out there now, of course, but we are still in the vanguard. Mark Wilson has a nice looking site representing Wilson-Fletcher, and Andy Clarke with his impressive Karova Shop. And yes, of course there is Stopdesign and all the AdaptivePath mafia.
Conclusion, it doesnt have to look like Bunnyfoot (pictured on the right) to be accessible, it can be beautiful and accessible like Zendor.
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