Designing a new website for the Blind and Visually Impaired Association of Schleswig-Holstein meant one thing: the people best placed to judge whether it works never see the screen. That is exactly what made this one of the most instructive projects I have ever been part of.
Where things stood
The association's old site had aged, in looks as much as under the hood. It needed a fresh start, one that not only felt more current but was genuinely usable for the very people it is meant for. And those people set the highest bar you can possibly set for accessibility: people who are blind or have low vision and experience their website every day through a screen reader and keyboard.
It's not only about tech and design
The really exciting part of this project wasn't in the code at all, it was in the working together. How do you show a design to someone who can't see it? How do you run a video meeting where one side only hears the layout and the other sees it? How do you describe design in words that genuinely hold up? We found our own ways through all of it, with a lot of patience, clear descriptions and the willingness to say honestly what works and what doesn't (yet).
The real job
Under the surface there was real detail work. I reworked the navigation and search so that screen readers read them out reliably and move through them in a sensible order. An Apple update that caused trouble along the way, we caught and dealt with. And behind the scenes there are small but effective helpers at work, like the option to duplicate page templates without dragging the entire navigation along every time, plus a menu you can always reach. On the coding side, Anne K. Frey was right there alongside me.
The takeaway
What came out of it is a website that shuts no one out, and one that was tested by exactly the people best placed to do it. Accessibility here wasn't a box to tick at the end, it was the whole point. It's live: