Council’s new website tailor-made for residents
Published: 21 Aug 2020 9:27am
Council recently launched a new user-friendly, accessible website, giving the community an easier way to stay updated and communicate with Council.
The new site has a powerful search function and meets international accessibility standards, meaning more people in the community can access the information.
Digital Optimisation Officer Brad Ingram was part of a small team who spent months building the new website.
"Our previous website was based on Council’s organisation structure,” Mr Ingram said.
“It meant that if you weren’t familiar with the structure, you’d find it harder to locate the information you needed – for example, roads and waste were listed underneath engineering services.
“Instead of updating the old site, which would have retained those existing structural issues, we decided to start fresh with a new structure completely tailored to our residents and what they commonly search for.”
The new site also meets international accessibility requirements and user experience best practice, in line with Council’s commitment to promoting an inclusive and accessible city.
“It’s important our website is easy to use for all members of our community, including residents with vision and cognitive impairments,” Mr Ingram said.
“We’ve focused on a number of things, such as ensuring the contrast ratio of colours is great enough to make everything easy to read, to ensuring screen readers [a computer program reproducing written text as speech] are able to read the site easily.”
Council’s communications and information technology teams are planning a second stage of the website redevelopment, catering to residents individually.
“Our next challenge is to create a more accessible and user-friendly portal where residents can login and see everything related to them, such as their rates, bin services, any development applications they’ve submitted and so on,” Mr Ingram said.
“We’re continually improving the site, making it easier for residents to find what they need quickly. It’s a work in progress.”