In 2022, Cantan Group was tasked with creating a new accessible WordPress website for the Halton Children’s Aid Society (Halton CAS).
During discovery, we uncovered the main goals for the website’s redesign, and the kind of user experience the team at Halton CAS were envisioning. We drilled down and determined that what they needed was a clean, easy to navigate website. It was important for users in distress to be able to easily access, and find the information they needed immediately.
The Halton CAS logo and brand colours were incorporated into the design of the website to create a cohesion between branding and web design. Design elements included clear, easy to read fonts, new custom-developed icons that matched the look of their current logo, and custom illustrated flourishes. A simplified navigation with robust search capabilities also provide for the simplicity and ease-of-access that Halton CAS wanted to achieve for their users.
We iterated across a number of proposed solutions for the top banner, to ensure it was clear enough for users to see immediately, and added a call button for easy access.
Since Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) were strong values that Halton CAS wanted to emphasize for their organization, we used illustrations that were originally commissioned for the office, as part of the provincial One Vision One Voice program to center these values and add visual interest to the design. These illustrations were featured on multiple pages across the site. The Diversity and Equity Committee was also consulted regarding the website on different design elements such as layout and icon design. Their suggestions and concerns were onboarded and incorporated into the design.
The site follows the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines to ensure web accessibility for users with disabilities.
The landing page text was set up to be easily updated so Halton CAS could draw attention to current events they wanted to promote and direct users to.
A full website migration plan was created to reorganize and migrate over ten years of data from the previous website. Redirect rules were diligently established to ensure that SEO page rank is maintained throughout, maintaining Halton CAS as an authoritative source of information.
Since Halton CAS serves clients who are from diverse backgrounds, the website provides for automated multi-lingual capabilities. Users can select from numerous languages, and have the website automatically translated via Google Translate.
We are so proud to have worked with the Halton Children’s Aid Society in redeveloping their website to better help children, youth and families thrive. Cantan Group was honored to work with the remarkable team at Halton CAS and look forward to assisting them where we can in their important mission.