Customer case: Accessible webpage with audio descriptions of art works
Customer
SztukaOpisana.pl
Project
Website with audiodescriptions of the greatest Polish and foreign works of art.
Date
December 2022
Team
Dawid Górny, Kacper Mikocki, Tomasz Bonior, Dariusz Drezno
Customer feedback:
“Together we created a project that we hope will be talked about a lot.
Our cooperation was excellent, and Accens' creativity and knowledge of the profession are commendable.
Our meetings were always interesting and contributed a lot to the project. We look forward to the future and hope for further cooperation.“
Challenge
We liked the idea of creating a modern site that allows blind people to get acquainted with the most outstanding works of art from the very beginning. A fully accessible, attractive and efficient solution was to be a new quality on the market.
We started with a "blank sheet of paper," together with the project sponsor defining basic functions, creating prototypes and testing the user experience. The first stage of the project was to end with a minimum viable product version of the website - MVP.
Solution
We started the work with a series of workshops (remote and onsite) in order to understand the customer's vision well and to match the scope of the first version with time and budget constraints. Based on this, we were able to propose the most suitable architecture and jointly define the basic functionalities.
We assumed that the site would be hosted on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The role of the content management system (CMS) is performed by the free Strapi (open source software), and the backend is based on Google App Engine and Cloud SQL. As a result, the solution is fully scalable and will not encounter performance problems when made available outside of Poland. The site is also prepared to support different language versions. When the decision is made to include e.g. English, it is enough to provide translated content and enable it with a single switch.
Since day one of the project, subsequent versions and prototypes have of course gone through accessibility tests with the end user. This makes sure that the use of the system by visually impaired people (for whom it was created, after all), is pleasant and intuitive.
The website sztukaopisana.pl, in the first version made available to the world, contains dozens of audio descriptions of the most famous paintings. They are available free of charge to everyone, after registration and logging in. Work on the expansion of the site continues, further audio descriptions of works of art are already in preparation.
Results
A clear, accessible, fast and responsive website has been created.
Users praise its ease of use and support for screen readers.
The site is ready to scale and add more language versions.
Together with the owners, we are working on the development of the site and adding more functionalities.
We invite you to familiarize yourself with the offer of sztukaopisana.pl!
It is worth to spend a few moments with art and listen to the sound of the most beautiful paintings.
Tomasz Bonior
CTO and co-founder at Accens
Expert in software testing automation, specialist in creating accessible software. Co-founder of KraQA, creator of Test Automation School, trainer and lecturer. Programme board member and speaker at many IT conferences.
Your website can be accessible as well
Creating an accessible website from scratch can often be cheaper than testing an existing solution and fixing all defects.