A little about the VVS portfolio theme I created for my new website
The evolution of this site's home page, December '16 to March '17
I’ve named the theme I designed for my site VVS, or “Very Very Slight”. It’s a simple theme meant for portfolio sites. What sets it apart from most portfolio themes is that it’s designed to be accessible for disabled users. I paid special attention to W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines while developing the theme, and while I haven’t yet had the chance to test it with disabled users, the theme does meet every Level A standard and many level AA standards.
The WCAG informed my design decisions on every level. For example, most sites I’ve designed up to this point likely had many visual contrast errors which made navigation difficult for visually-impaired visitors. I created VVS to be high-contrast to meet the contrast ratio 4.5:1 specified in the WCAG.
While designing with the WCAG guidlines I learned that some common accessible design features are not actually useful for disabled users. Near the beginning of the theme’s design I included a button to resize the font to be more readable.
But, despite being relatively common on many websites, this feature is found nowhere WCAG guidelines. I learned from Rian Rietveld that most users who experience low vision use text-enlarging tools already included in most web browsers, and so a text-enlarging button is not necessary.
Eventually, I would like to make my site Level AA accessible. However, much of my work is time-based visual media, which means that technically my content does not even meet all Level A standards and so my site is not actually accessible. And until I can make the time to add captions and transcripts for my videos, it won’t be.
Soon the VVS theme will be available for download. I am a little hesitant to release the code in its current state. I did a lot of testing, but not quite enough to be satisfied that it appears correctly for most users in most contexts. I also would like to get the theme professionally evaluated for accessibility. I did my best to ensure it meets the standards, but without feedback from disabled users it’s difficult for me to know whether my implementations of the standards are useful.
Meanwhile, you can grab the theme from this site’s Github repo.