But what if your site’s visitors are split into groups with distinct and very different needs and different intellectual abilities? How does a single website serve both people with a learning disability, and health and social care professionals? Let’s see how the Mencap website – a design I particularly admire – successfully tackles this.

Using video

Mencap’s home page engages the eye with a huge image of one of their clients and a quote from him. At this stage you’ll still see the rest of the home page and all the menus. Click the photo and you get a smoothly animated transition to a video of Ronnie talking about how he’s in charge of his own budget. This is a case of choosing the right medium for the right audience: video and audio allow Mencap to provide information without using a lot of text. Video is also used to tell stories and share clients’ own point of view throughout the website, including the sections for professionals and families: that strikes me as a good idea because it helps to reinforce the person-centred approach of the organisation.

Presenting information for people with a learning disability

Now notice the four large links and click the one that says My Life. Easily understood words that link to a landing page that’s obviously still on the same website, with the Mencap logo, but which has none of the usual navigation menus. In this section – obviously aimed at clients rather than professionals – we find limited text, just a few large links (including one back to the home page) and great use of video and audio. Notice how the Mencap logo’s colour has been used to indicate which page you are currently on. Minimalistic web design is used because it meets the users’ needs, not just because it looks good.

A more complex page layout for professionals

Now, back on the home page, click the big link that says Professionals and you get a very different experience. In this section you get all the navigation menus, plenty of text, more complicated sentences and jargon appropriate to the professionals using the website.

Resources

If you’re planning or designing a website for learning disabilities, what should you be reading? Start with some detailed advice from the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities (make sure you click the More Information link).

Then take a peek at Antonia Hyde’s slideshow about Rich media and web apps for people with learning disabilities.

Web Accessibility Pack for Voluntary and Community Organisations (booklet & CD)

Download the Web Accessibility Guide (PDF 1.7 MB)

This booklet from the ICT Hub is a practical introduction to web accessibility and tell you how to make your website accessible at little or no cost.  It explains what web accessibility is, the benefits and what the law says, as well as giving guidance for web managers, commissioners, designers and developers.

How to Use New Media Guide and New Media Case Studies

Download a copy of How to Use New Media (PDF 944 KB)
Download a copy of New Media Case Studies (PDF 701 KB)

The Media Trust published two booklets highlighting how VCOs can make the most of new media technology and giving practical examples of 10 organisations that have done it. I wrote several of the case studies.

LASA Computanews

Download and subscribe to the latest Computanews (PDF)

Lasa’s magazine Computanews provides straightforward, clear information on the use of IT for staff in small to medium-sized voluntary organisations. They often cover web-related topics. Also check out the very useful Knowledgebase, a collection of articles on all aspects — inluding online — of charities’ ICT.

Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders

Purchase Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission

With contributions from the top experts in the nonprofit tech field, this book provides nonprofit decision makers with information to make smart, strategic decisions about technology. This book hones in on how to manage technology in an organization and offers practical advice on critical subject matter unfamiliar or mysterious to many in nonprofits.

Website Owners Manual

Download a Free Chapter and find out more about the Manual

Just because you’re responsible for your organisation’s web presence doesn’t mean you know how to build a website. The Website Owner’s Manual is for IT managers and project leaders who need to put a website in place and keep it running with a minimum of trouble. It’s not actually on sale yet but based on the free chapter, the Website Owners Manual is shaping up to be the one book I’d recommend to a nonprofit organisation with a website to manage.

Future Focus 3: How will we use new technologies in five years’ time?

Download Future Focus 3 (PDF, 2.4mb)
This guide from the NCVO explores how developments such as the Internet, mobile telephony and digital television are changing the way individuals and organisations behave, from how we communicate, to making choices, to where we work. It explores the effects these changes might have on your organisation and suggests ways you can use this information to help make strategic choices and plan ahead for an even more successful future.

Website articles

Tips for designing (or redesigning a nonprofit website (TechSoup, June 2009)

To make managing your website easier, consider using an online project management tool like Basecamp. What can it do?

Share documents with colleagues and your web designer

Basecamp has a Files section where you can upload all the documents relevant to your website.  These might include:

• Draft and final project briefs;
• Invitations to tender;
• Quotes from web designers;
• Contracts;
• Draft images of the visual design;
• JPEGS and GIFS: your logo, photos, backgrounds etc;
• The text content for various pages on the site.

What if you have a lot of documents? Won’t that get confusing? Not really, because you can create your own categories (content, images, invoices etc) and choose to see only relevant files.

Leave  comments and give opinions

You could upload your new logo design and send your colleages a message to ask them to look at it and leave their comments.

Make To-Do lists

These I use a lot, sometimes hundreds of items for a single project. Again, they can be categorised, and ticked off one by one as they are completed. You can associate your to-do lists with milestones which you set to help you keep the work on track and on time. You can make to-do lists for yourself or allocate work to someone else.

Collaborate with your colleagues to write content

Basecamp offers whiteboards which you can use to collaboratively write a web page, a contract or a project brief. Create a new whiteboard for your home page and start typing in text; then send a message to your colleagues inviting them to make amendments. Every time someone makes changes to the whiteboard it’s saved as a new version: you can then compare the various versions until you’re happy with the result.

Use email or a project management tool, or both?

The email correspondence that takes place between various parties can build up fast and it becomes difficult to find the attachment you need! But I’ve found the solution is to almost completely stop using email and correspond by leaving messages in Basecamp instead.

When you upload a file or leave a message in Basecamp you can choose to send an email notification to as many other users as you want. Plus, you can subscribe by RSS feed to get notifications of new comments, files and messages as they happen.

Other project management tools

Microsoft Project is the best-know project management software and you might already have it on your computer. I don’t like it one bit, I find it confusing because there are too many features – it’s not simple enough for me or for my clients!

There’s an excellent article on the TechSoup website called Six Views of Project-Management Software.

Both websites look good, but the New Zealand team won the compo. Read more on the Full Code Press competition website. Looking at their website design for Rainbow Youth there’s only one aspect that I think spoils the look of the site and that iss the charity’s logo, but I don’t suppose there was much the team could do about that! Everything else – the menu, the background images, the social networking section – looks great.

Considering the deadline was so tight it’s impressive to note all the little details – love the rainbow favicon and the appealing donation button – are in place.

Recently I visited Grampians disAbility Advocacy Association and learnt about how the GDAA website was designed for them in last year’s competition.

• Technology as a tool to improve communication, increase productivity and retain staff;
• disaster response / management / relief;
• Financing your organisation and its programs in tight economic times;
• Engaging with communities online;
• Green ICT projects (from recycling computers to green design to green office to campaigning and more);
• Corporate social responsibility – building partnerships to support our communities;
• Strengthening marginalised communities and constituencies;
• Research supporting action;
• The rapidly changing interface of online communication;
• Community arts and media

Making Links is a peer-based conference. We invite you to present a paper on your learning and experiences with ICT, your projects, case studies or research, or lead a practical workshop that introduces useful tools and concepts.

The conference attracts delegates and presenters from many fields including health, environment, education, charities, business, government, philanthropy, human services and non-profits working with marginalised groups (e.g. e.g. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, culturally and linguistically diverse, youth at risk, unemployed, rural and remote, disability).

I know several organisations that have won a computer in previous years – and I helped a couple of them to make successful applications.

Mencap
They call themselves “the voice of learning disability” and their website makes good use of quotes, portraits and videos of their members. The language used on the website is deliberately kept simple and the navigation is minimal compared to many websites.

Action for Blind People
Proof that an accessible website can be visually interesting. Look at the way the page scrolls but the icons for changing the viewing preferences always remain visible. Good use of minimal colour as a navigational aid. Again, a very prominent donation button.

Shelter
The fifth most visited charity website of 2006 according to Hitwise. Hover over the items in the navigational menu and see how each one expands and contracts to display further links: that’s a great way to pack a lot of information into a small space. They’re very keen to sign you up for their newsletter, find out more about their work and to join them on social networking websites, and the language used on the home page is very much a call to action.

Red Nose Day
International development, domestic violence, poverty … and comedy. I can just image the meetings they had trying to get the tone of this website right. But it very successfully balances the serious with the funny in another website with a hand-drawn look to it. The colour scheme, a mix of reds, greys and black, is instantly recognisable.

Action for Children
Hand-drawn websites seem to be very in fashion lately and here’s another one. It’s perhaps an obvious choice for a children’s charity and it’s carried off here with some humour and playfulness. I particularly like the way their tagline is scrawled along the top and merges with the search form.

The Nominet Trust
Simple but effective. Cute and appropriate use of cartoonish icons and clever use of hover effects on the navigation menu to turn what could have been a dull website into an enjoyable experience. It helps that the content is short, to the point and well-written.

And the rest…

Which UK charity websites have I overlooked? Please leave a comment with your personal favourite.

There are now so many good, mature and reliable CMS available now that I would echo the advice by Laura Quinn that you should use the CMS that your trusted web developer knows. A great CMS in the hands of someone who doesn’t know it well enough won’t deliver the goods!

Their old website was just a single page with a few logos. They wanted something better, designed to match their colour scheme, with far more content. Importantly, they must be able to edit the content themselves and publish regular news items.

I designed the website using WordPress as the content management system (CMS). WordPress is an easy enough tool for the staff at Hounslow CVS to use to edit their website’s pages and posts.

The site was designed to make content easy to find: there’s a clear menu on the left which expands to show sub-sections; big can’t miss ‘em buttons at the top to direct visitors to the most-visited sections; and a search form immediately below the menu for those users who prefer searching to browsing.

The website is well-coded and its HTML validates 100%.  Care has been taken to ensure it’s accessible to disabled visitors, and important aspects such as font sizes and colour contrast have been considered.

I’m always interested in working with other CVS or similar nonprofit organisations – find out more about hiring me.