Accessibility Adjustments Help

Toggle High Contrast

This button will darken the page's background color to black while making all text white. This high contrast will make it easier to read the website's content.

Toggle Page Zoom

This button will increase the size of all elements on the page.

Toggle Focus State

This button adds a visible focus state to all interactive elements when using the keyboard. This allows the user to know exactly where they are on a site while tabbing through with a keyboard. Note: this will only affect sites that do not currently have visible focus states.

Toggle Link Highlights

This button will add an outline to all links and buttons on a page that a user can interact with.

Accessibility Checker Help

Check Images

This triggers a check of all images on a page for either an 'alt', 'title', or an 'aria-label' attribute. Images that are purely decorative or do not include any information to convey to the user do not need alt text. In these cases, the alt attribute should still be present but should be left empty. Our checker will still flag empty alts as an error just in case.

Check Color Contrast

This triggers a check of all text to ensure that it's color has a high enough contrast against the color of the background it is on. In some cases our checker will flag contrast errors for text that is on top of an image or when either the text or the background element has a position of 'absolute'. In these cases it is up to the site administrator's discretion to determine if the text is legible.

Check Links & Buttons

This triggers a check of all the page's links and buttons. Links and buttons without text or an aria-label describing what the link or button accomplishes will fail. Without text (including hidden screen reader only text) or an aria-label, assistive technology will not be able to determine the purpose of the link/button.

Check For Duplicate IDs

This triggers a search for all IDs on a page. Duplicate IDs will be flagged as an error. Duplicate ID errors are known to cause problems for assistive technologies when they are trying to interact with content. SVGs tend to be a major source of this failure. It's beneficial to remove all IDs from SVGs before placing them on a page.

HABC

About the Housing Authority of Baltimore City

Baltimore Housing supports over 19,500 households in our city, providing support and funding to ensure that families have a safe place to live and that the city continues to have affordable housing, and vibrant spaces with strong community partnerships across all sectors.

Client:Housing Authority of Baltimore City
Service:Accessibility, Consulting & Reporting, Development, Digital Strategy, SEO, UX Research + Testing
Industry:Government
Visit:habc.org

The Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) shapes communities and supports our city in innumerable ways. Ignition72 was given the opportunity to play a part by redesigning and re-imagining how the HABC website would work, bridging the digital divide and keeping the community informed. We created an audience-specific site to satisfy the specific requirements and the overarching goals of this transformative entity.

Learning + Planning

At the time, the HABC website was confusing in how it spoke to multiple audiences including tenants, landlords, and over 600 employees. Embracing the goals, principles and research of the HABC team, Ignition72 devised a strategy to focus the site around customer service and communication with the community. The result is an easy to manage, clear, vibrant and positive web experience for all audiences.

01/01

Design + Development

Our design team worked to showcase HABC’s efforts, impact and initiative in fighting to improve the lives of Baltimore residents. New design elements were created to this end including new imagery, alert systems, as well as critical updates relating to COVID and other circumstances. Critical to this execution was being mindful of HABC’s branding goals and striking the appropriate tone to tell their story.

The development group worked alongside design to ensure proper integration of important user experience elements and required functionality. Focusing on customer service the site includes Google Translate capabilities, a responsive navigation and clear information architecture, while being mindful of accessibility needs. Using the Umbraco CMS we were able to keep the project in open source and DotNet, ensuring the internal resources are able to maintain and carry the site forward into the future.