The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) will be Canada's first federal museum devoted to human rights. Its mission is to enhance the public’s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection and dialogue. It is scheduled to open to the public in the spring of 2012 in Winnipeg.
RealDecoy was recommended to the CMHR by several heritage clients. After a successful proposal process, we met with the directors of the CMHR at the Canadian Museum Association in Toronto and began establishing our understanding of the CMHR and its unique requirements.
Canada’s newest museum, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), has launched a project for the development of a transition website which will provide a bridge from their very first virtual resource to their full blown virtual website. Real Decoy, the technical development lead for the project, has provided true professional guidance to the Museum. Real Decoy is a solution oriented company that addresses Museum requirements in a flexible and process-savvy manner. The company’s expertise in Universal Accessibility has been a real asset to the project. On top of providing the right technology and direction for the project, they also educated Museum staff on W3C accessibility standards. Working with Real Decoy is a very positive experience.
Louise Gratton
Senior Project Manager - Virtual Museum Transition Site Project
Canadian Museum of Human Rights
The CMHR needed to revamp its transitional website to offer more information about the museum and to provide information on public consultations.
THE CHALLENGE
Building a transitional site
The CMHR needed to expand its existing transitional site and use it to gather personal stories about human rights and engage users in public consultations. It wanted a site that would:
- Allow visitors to contribute stories and videos about their personal experiences pertaining to human rights.
- Inform the public about meetings and roundtables taking place across the country.
- Provide background information on the museum and progress on its construction.
- Link to a virtual exhibit on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its author, Canadian John Peters Humphrey.
The CMHR insisted that the site be accessible. Previous sites and exhibits had not met the accessibility requirements mandated by the Government of Canada.
OUR SOLUTION
Addressing CMHR’s needs
With only six weeks to create a live website, RealDecoy had to move quickly. We not only developed a site that allowed for future expansion but we also integrated a public engagement component to the site. This included an events calendar, sign-up forms and functionality that allowed people to contribute personal stories online. In addition, visitors are able to save and edit their online stories before submitting them.
We built the site using Drupal, an open-source Content Management System (CMS). Drupal meets or exceeds all accessibility requirements and allows the CMHR to easily manage its content.
The CMHR was impressed with the work we did on its transitional website and turned to RealDecoy for help enhancing the accessibility of its virtual exhibit on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and that declaration’s primary author, Canadian John Peters Humphrey.
THE CHALLENGE
Creating an engaging virtual exhibit
The original UDHR and John Peters Humphrey virtual exhibit was developed in Flash—with significant usability and accessibility issues. It needed to be re-architected and to be more accessible.
OUR SOLUTION
Built-in accessibility
It became apparent to RealDecoy that there were in fact two distinct virtual exhibits: one on the UDHR and a second on John Peters Humphrey. RealDecoy recommended clarifying the division between the two and creating explicitly separate online presentations. Each would be engaging and interactive without the use of Flash.
While it would be possible to meet accessibility requirements by simply building separate HTML versions of each virtual exhibit, we believed having a single, universally accessible version of each was preferable to such redundancy. We also followed a ‘Progressive Enhancement’ approach—a strategy for web design that emphasizes accessibility, semantic markup and external style sheet and scripting technologies—to ensure that each user would enjoy a seamless experience regardless of technology or disability limitations.
