North Hastings Public Library is a vibrant and integral component of the fabric of the community, offering a wide variety of materials, programs, and services.

The Project

We launched a new website for the North Hastings Library to meet a unique set of goals:

• Website developed in collaboration with library staff
• Friendly and intuitive design that can accommodate a large and diverse amount of information
• Hosting, Maintenance and Training
• Fully compliant with the WCAG 2.0 Level AA accessibility requirements
• Complete content management system (CMS) that would enable the posting of news, events & resource materials
• With our Facebook plugin we tailor-made the library’s feeds to display whatever types of content they preferred. We integrated the library’s Facebook photos, videos, events and more into their website to completely match the look and feel of the site.

The Vision

A vision defines your library website’s goals. It also guides and inspires decisions about your library website.

• Keep the statement to one to two sentences.
• Align it with the library’s and institution’s mission statements.

Keep Navigation Simple: Too many navigation options may prevent your users from accessing what they need.

• Display five to six main navigation items at the most. Do not overwhelm your users
• Top-level navigation should represent high-level categories of your content
• Common top navigation items include:  Services, Research, About Us, Help, My Account

Empower Users. Make the Library Website Accessible: Inaccessible websites are barriers to all users. Students with disabilities are faced with frustration and helplessness.

• HTML Page Titles must be descriptive (i.e., Your Institution Library: Browse Journals).
• Link text must indicate intent or content.
• Images must have alt-text or off-screen text.
• Audio/Video content must include captioning or transcripts.
• Website must be navigable by keyboard only.
• If you display a carousel, do not set it to auto-play. Offer an option to stop.
• Validate that your website is usable for folks who are colorblind. Recommended Tool: Colour Contrast Analyser