Accessiblity & Design Philosophy

A header image with a open laptop in frame with a pen in the forefront as it appears a woman is working on typing near it. There is also a white coffee mug to the left of the frame.

Primary Audience

This project is geared towards two different audiences, which turned out to be a little more difficult to design for. The primary audience I expected to visit my page would be those in low-income communities who have poor education and potentially health complications. For these individuals I wanted to provide a simplified, but yet informative, place where they could find resources regarding food insecurity easily without any confusion. One way I implemented this was through plain language. Horton and Quesenbery define plain language as “understandable and written for the audience” (2013, p. 45). I used plain language in almost every one of my pages by making sure to have headings and subheadings that clearly state what it is they are going to read about. This helped me organize my content in a hierarchical manner which in turn makes it easier for this audience to understand. Additionally, Horton and Quesenbery mention that color should not display meaning. (2013) Had I relied on the color solely to express my points, the audience here would risk losing vital information or connections to the points made in the posts.

Secondary Audience

The secondary audience I expected for my website were people looking for information on ways to lessen food insecurity within their communities. This may be people within the government, or maybe just another Joe in the community looking to do better for everyone’s well being. Either way, my website needed to work well for them too. One way I was able to make it easier for them was to break up the different sections in each of the separate pages on the site. Horton and Quesenbery mention that “a large, undifferentiated block of text is like a wall of words–univiting, difficult to read and understand, and potentially a barrier” (2013, p. 114) By breaking up my different points into logical sections makes it far more inviting and easier to scan, which would be important for this audience considering that people in the government may not have all the time in the world to read through the entirety of the page.