Accessites.org
ByUsers

The ByUsers site impressed upon us a few things as soon as we loaded the home page: simplicity and open design were two. The purpose of the site was made clear right away, so that was yet another thing we appreciated. We like that: being able to know what a site is about with a few seconds of perusal is a very positive thing. There were some things we didn’t know, of course, such as the tie-in to Virgin Media, but we’re realists and know we can’t get it all in the title and opening paragraph. We did assume that those for whom this site is applicable would know all they needed immediately.

Once we got past the home page and started our exploration, we quickly realized the site’s simplicity was mostly a visual thing as there is some depth and functionality to the site. Not a lot, but more than the layout simplicity suggests. This is a good thing, what with being able to package usefulness and complexity into a nice simple package. This was to the credit of the maker. And you should check out the various help pages… very impressive.

Not all was positive though. We felt the content management system (CMS) used — Drupal with punBB forum software (the latter was officially excluded from grading by us even though we did note that is was valid) — left something to be desired. First of all there seemed to be a pretty fair amount of superfluous, unused mark-up. This is to be expected to a degree, but it did indicate that the templates weren’t cleaned up or hand-tweaked enough (the site was built upon an existing template). Ordinarily we won’t accept sites that use someone else’s template, but according to the maker, extensive modifications were made, to include a radical layout change. More could have been done we suspect, but we let it in.

We also saw some other things that didn’t sit right with us. Some pages — in-site portal pages for lack of a better term — were confusing due to a lack of content until we noted the new sidebar links that lead into the section’s topics. The design was “nice” as two of us noted in our grading notes, but maybe a bit underdone. The site is still in progress as content is being taken from the old site (some of which is still accessible but excluded), so in a way we forgave the lack of polish. The aliased Virgin Media logo needs work, as an example of something needing polish. The navigation image embellishments were another point we noticed; quite simply they didn’t make sense until we figured them out. These are just a couple, there were other small matters, all working against the site in terms of securing high marks.

But it’s here, awarded, showcased. The primary reason is three-fold:

• First of all the accessibility of the site is excellent. Very impressive.
• The help-related pages also impressed us quite a bit. To see a site that takes that much interest in pro-actively anticipating the needs of its visitors is all good.
• The site is maintained by users (lending more meaning to the name). To see a group-managed site with no validation issues is another impressive attribute.

The ByUsers web site was crafted by Rich Pedley and following our review was deemed eligible for an Award Level of: “Notable Universal Design” Congratulations Rich!

Filed under The Showcase, Notable Awards —

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