Outright International

The Client

Outright International works with partners around the globe to strengthen the capacity of the LGBTIQ human rights movement, document and amplify human rights violations, and advocate for inclusion and equality.

The Situation

Outright International wanted to create an improved and user-friendly website that reflected its new brand style, was easier to manage, and allowed it to more efficiently share news, events, and legislative information with its audience. 

The Challenge

Outright International’s previous website was costly and tedious to manage. Something as simple as a site update could take weeks and require external help. Additionally, the company needed its new website to be live quickly to coincide with its larger branding launch. The primary objectives were:

• Empower independent content updates
• Reduce expenses associated with hiring external web design specialists
• Optimize the site’s internal searchability for easier user access
• Improve the web accessibility score from 70 to 99 out of a possible 100 points. 

The Solution

Outright International partnered with Whereoware, which kicked off the project by conducting extensive interviews with internal users and stakeholders to understand pain points, audience targeting issues, and user experience shortcomings. Working together, the teams migrated Outright International’s previous website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 and Acquia Site Studio. To meet the tight deadline, Whereoware adopted a “minimum viable product” (MVP) strategy, delivering essential features first to quickly validate with stakeholders and ensure success.

Then, Whereoware created a new design system and digital style guide that reflected style tiles and treatments across UI elements like heroes, calls to action, buttons, accordions, etc. The team also created dynamic layout templates for blogs, news releases, and minor releases to expedite content syndication.

The team enhanced the site's internal search functionality to improve website searchability by keywords, topics, regions, and other criteria (improving content discoverability and news updates). They also enhanced color contrasts and executed manual testing methods to ensure web accessibility via keyboard navigation and screen readers for users with visual impairments.

The Results

With the new platform, Outright International can now independently update new content within minutes (as opposed to weeks), reducing expenses associated with hiring external web design specialists. Additionally, the teams optimized the site’s internal searchability, making it easy for users to find important data and information.

Finally, Whereoware’s web accessibility efforts paid off — the changes boosted Outright’s web accessibility score from 70 to 99 out of 100 points.