Media Defence
Making litigation training modules more accessible
Project overview
Media Defence’s core mission is to protect the rights of those who report on issues of public interest, by providing them with the legal support they need to protect them from the risks they take in trying to uphold freedom of expression.
Their work in protecting the legal rights of journalists and media workers has evolved over the years to reflect the changing times, and as well as their core resources for lawyers across the world, their training now also includes programmes on digital rights and online freedom of expression.
When they approached us, the pdf format of Media Defence’s advanced training manuals for their sub-Saharan Africa programme was not sustainable, nor was it easily accessible to those in the regions they were trying to reach. So, working together as part of their Digital Rights Advocates project, we helped them to create an online e-Reader, like the one we developed for Article 19 – another charity focused on freedom of expression.
This new way of presenting their training not only makes the resources more accessible to those doing the training but also more widely available to all, via the ability to search for and share them on social media.
Features
- Super light subsite (WordPress multisite)
- Highly accessible
- Multi-language functionality
0.10g
C02 per page view
100%
Lighthouse Accessibility score
0.6s
Homepage load time
Super light subsite
We created the eReader as a subsite to Media Defence’s existing WordPress multisite. We kept the design minimal and in line with their branding, to ensure this addition to the website would not add additional weight.
At just 0.10g C02 per page view, this subsite is super light, which also means it has a fast load time and is therefore accessible to audiences who may have limited data access and/or low internet speeds.
Highly accessible
In addition to being super fast and super light, the new format for accessing the training modules means that these resources are now fully searchable, shareable and downloadable, allowing people to quickly find what they need and access the information offline as required.
As many of those accessing the website would be doing so on mobile devices, we focused a lot of attention on how the site would look and feel on mobile, to ensure it would work for everyone. This focus on accessibility in design is a core part of all of our work.
Each of the publications has modules, chapters, chapter sections and chapter sub-sections that can be linked to for easy referencing and sharing these resources with others. This structure also appears in the dropdown contents menu, making it super easy to navigate through a publication.
The eReader was created with Gutenberg and ACF Pro to give it a powerful and easy to use editing experience for those adding and updating the training modules. A major feature of these modules is the footnotes, which can easily be updated with a simple code, which translates to an automatic numbering.
For the reader, the ability to link to a specific footnote and back to the content swiftly and easily – via an arrow next to the footnote – means that they do not need to navigate away from the text and lose their place in the chapter they’re reading.
Multi language functionality
To ensure that the eReader is accessible to a global audience, we made sure this new subsite is compatible with WordPress multi-language, so that it will be possible to translate the content as needed, within the WordPress CMS.
