GLZ Recklinghausen

Concept and integration of a content management system

The development of a new homepage for the centre of hearing impaired people in Recklinghausen (Gehörlosenzentrum Recklinghausen) was the focus of a project within the event „practical software development”. Up to that point, the centre for hearing impaired people used to have a static HTML homepage that was supervised and built by the administrator. The purpose of this homepage was the providing of information for the members of the clubs who live in the centre.

The goal of the project was to design a content management system that would allow the creation and management of contents for other members as well. The creation of the content management system was based on Typo3.

The need of the club was to extend the target group of their homepage by providing an appropriated homepage for hearing impaired and blind people as well as for people with Usher's syndrome.

Homepage requirements

There were different requirements for the fulfilment of the club member’s goals for their homepage. On the one hand, there were new needs to satisfy, on the other hand, it was necessary to integrate existing elements of the homepage. The following description is devoted to these requirements:

Accessibility

Many users of the homepage are blind or suffer from the Usher's syndrome. People with Usher's syndrome are hearing impaired when they are born and once they get older they lose their sight by stages. Therefore, it was necessary to offer a homepage design for visual impaired people that is easy to scale and accessible for line readers like speech output devices or braille displays. There also had to be an easy navigation for the output media. 

Design

The new homepage was supposed to have an attractive design, but it was also relevant to remain a green and yellow coloured layout like the colours of the club. The club members also required to be able to offer different views for an appropriated usage for all of their target groups and for the support of the accessibility.  

Structure and menu

There was a need for a new structure of their homepage. This structure was supposed to have a transparent segmentation of the different clubs and sub items. Moreover, the club members asked for a transparent menu for the navigation through the different websites of their homepage. It was also important to implement a path for the information of the user about the category of the attended website.

For all the users who had already gotten used to the old structure it was relevant to find a solution that did not require much of rethinking. 

Administration

For the assistance of the administrator, the new system had to allow the access for other members to create contents of the homepage. 

Range of functions

Page Counter

The club members meant to keep the present page counter for their homepage.

Download area

It was required to be able to offer a website that provides PDF files and other downloadable files.

Photo gallery

The club members wanted to present a photo gallery on their homepage. They used to obtain the service of „pixum.de“ to demonstrate pictures on their homepage. Within the described project, it was required to replace the service of „pixum.de“ by their own storage and illustration possibilities.

News and dates

The club members preferred to have a simple solution for the announcement of news and dates. News are supposed to be attributed to each club as well as to be accessible at a central location.

Video

Especially for hearing impaired people there should be a possibility to upload and play videos with sign language next to the text that needs to be translated. For that purpose, it was necessary to document the conversion and the integration of the videos on the website. It was also required to include a player that had a high availability and great acceptance.

Guest book

The club members also wanted to involve a guest book on their homepage as they did before. Instead of using an extern service for the illustration of the guestbook, they required to have their own storage and illustration possibilities for their guest book. 

Team:
Michael Beul, Jörg Miller (supervision)
Claudia Huch, Sebastian Puzik, Philipp Schmidt (implementation)