SaaS success story
Teatr Śląski
A stunning, newest trends-compliant theater website adjusted to users with various disabilities. Nominated for 2021 Mobile Trends Awards, in Mobile Website / RWD – Culture & Education category.
About project
Making the website disabled-friendly and design-pampered has been a demanding yet fulfilling task. Tested by real people, it met all the expectations, being a truly beautiful and functional piece of online art.
The website was implemented in the WordPress technology, so that the theater’s employees were able to edit and develop its content with ease. It included a store functionality, news section, performances, repertoire, employee base, and more.
We also took care of the integration with a system supporting the theater in terms of ticket booking – it is live and works two-ways, facilitating the process of sales.
Timeline
580 working hours from the project’s launch till its final release
Development phase
April 2021 – July 2021
Content works & WCAG 2.1 audits
August 2021 – November 2021
Deployment
December 2021
Project’s highlights
We took 100% responsibility for the website’s CMS – providing it with the most convenient solutions.
Working with a non-technical client, we gained their thorough trust and were able to implement every valid improvement with no hesitation. The website could be operated by several people at once, being alive and responsive to each change.
Business needs and goals
An outdated and not easily editable website didn’t correspond with the theater’s original, artistic character.
It required general modernization, content refreshment, but also interlocking the design created according to current trends with the restrictive requirements of WCAG 2.1. (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) – mandatory guidelines for public units regarding the accessibility of Internet content for people with visual, hearing or movement disabilities.
WCAG 2.1
Demanding WCAG 2.1 requirements included: a possibility to adjust contrast, grey scale, font size, underlined links, cursor enlargement, option to turn off the animations, convenient keyboard navigation, the presence of a reading ruler, and – most importantly – correct adjustment of the HTML semantics to enable efficient use of the content with page readers.
It required general modernization, content refreshment, but also interlocking the design created according to current trends with the restrictive requirements of WCAG 2.1. (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) – mandatory guidelines for public units regarding the accessibility of Internet content for people with visual, hearing or movement disabilities.
Development
Challenges and solutions
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01.
Front-end consistency
1 to 1 consistency with the project as well as multiple tests on the QA side to make everything perfect and impeccable.
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02.
Migration
Migrating the news from the previous page, involving the entire archive of entries from several years back and uploading them to the new version of the website.
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03.
WCAG 2.1
A proprietary custom-made WCAG control panel – intuitive and user friendly. The development process was aligned with the HTML semantics requirements.
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04.
API integration
Expanded solutions for data synchronization between the theater’s website and the external ticketing system.
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05.
Content builder
A live editor for easy and efficient content management and an extensive modules library prepared to be re-used for subsequent pages and to scale the site’s content size.
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06.
Ongoing support
We supported the client throughout the whole process of implementation and organized several trainings to present the changes and explain how to edit and develop the site.
Outcome
The website has come a long way since an outdated CMS with performance difficulties, technical limitations, and inability to present the theater’s key content.
Now, the Teatr Śląski’s online showcase is based on a modernized WordPress-based solution, assuring a convenient future development, scalability, and content expansion. It consists of a large number of modules and subpages, each with a unique view, being easy to navigate and pleasant to look at.
Meeting all of the WCAG requirements, the website’s maximally friendly for people with different kinds of disabilities – they have an unspoiled access to all available information. At the same time, we managed to maintain its highly up-to-date and appealing design.
