Creating a More Accessible, Stable and Inclusive Website for Barretstown
Creating a More Accessible, Stable and Inclusive Website for Barretstown
The Challenge
Barretstown is a SeriousFun camp providing life-changing therapeutic programmes, free of charge, to children and families affected by serious illness.
Its website plays an essential role in connecting families with programmes, recruiting volunteers, generating donations and engaging with corporate partners. It therefore needed to be accessible, reliable and easy to use for everyone.
exSite joined the project midway through development, taking over from the previous agency. We inherited a partially completed website with significant accessibility issues, a complex plugin environment and a number of broken document links.
Our immediate priority was to stabilise the website, address the accessibility issues and ensure the site was ready for launch.
Our Approach
WCAG 2.1 AA Accessibility
Accessibility was a key priority from the outset. We carried out a comprehensive page-by-page accessibility audit using the WAVE accessibility evaluation tool, identifying issues including:
- Missing alternative text on images
- Empty and non-descriptive links
- Missing form labels
- Poor colour contrast
- Accessibility issues affecting screen-reader users
We systematically worked through the issues across the website, making the necessary changes and testing pages again following remediation.
Technical & Plugin Audit
We also carried out a detailed review of the website’s WordPress environment, assessing the existing plugins and removing those that were redundant, unused or causing technical issues.
This included resolving problems with a custom plugin that was affecting document URLs and causing instability within the WordPress dashboard.
We also restored and checked broken document links, creating a cleaner and more stable technical environment for the website.
The Result
The accessibility improvements delivered significant measurable results.
Following remediation, all pages tested achieved a WAVE AIM score of 10/10, or as close as practically achievable where PDF documents were involved.
Accessibility errors were reduced to zero, while colour contrast failures were eliminated across the pages tested.
For example:
Home Page
AIM Score: 4.6/10 → 10/10
Accessibility Errors: 6 → 0
Contrast Errors: 30 → 0
Residential Programmes
AIM Score: 4.0/10 → 9.8/10
Accessibility Errors: 14 → 0
Contrast Errors: 34 → 0
Donate Page
AIM Score: 5.2/10 → 10/10
Accessibility Errors: 6 → 0
Contrast Errors: 26 → 0
The result is a significantly more accessible, stable and maintainable website that better serves Barretstown’s diverse audience.
Following the project, exSite continues to provide ongoing website management and technical support for Barretstown.
Website: barretstown.org
Client: Barretstown
Sector: Non-profit / Children’s Charity
Services: Website Development, Accessibility Remediation, Technical Audit & Ongoing Website Management