The Orange Project
Details
Award: Interactive Design
Judge: Rob Ford
Website URL: http://www.orange-project.com/
Judges Comments
"The number of submissions for the interactive design award was well over one hundred sites but those actually complying with the criteria and required accessibility standards were actually very few.
This is a reflection, still, on the difficulties Flash designers and developers are facing in producing accessible multimedia websites. The technology and possibilities are there now but only a few individuals and agencies are exploring them in detail.
Luckily, with the winner in this category, Orange Project, we can see that fully Flashed sites can be usable in many of the ways people are used to browsing, with back/forward buttons working, deep linking and also the use of the right click mouse button. This site also boasts keyboard support, either by using the arrow keys or by using letters to access photographs by their first letter. We can also see that the user’s mouse wheel is supported and that the image size is scaleable depending on the user’s screen resolution.
Overall, Orange Project is quite a rare accessible Flash website but one that is also a beacon for what can be achieved. Also, let’s not forget that the design of the site itself is first class as well as pixel perfect and the content of the site, being the photography portfolio of fashion photographer Sandra Weimar, is noteworthy in its own right.
It was great to be able to judge this year’s interactive design award for Accessibility in Focus and I hope the project will go from strength to strength into the future and help to encourage more designers and developers to give accessibility more thought when creating projects for their clients."