Accessibility · 2025
Emergent Literacy
Redesigned Emergent Literacy's website in an 8-week long accessibility-focused hackathon. Achieved 10/10 AIM scores across almost every page.
Emergent Literacy design experiment
By the numbers
Jump in
Observation
AIR clients need more than WCAG compliance, cognitive accessibility matters too. Our team was paired with Emergent Literacy, a nonprofit with an existing website.
Gather Background Info
User Research
We met with the founder to understand what the site needed to do: expand functionality, sharpen identity online, and serve parents, K-12 teachers, and donors.
Website Goals
- Help users understand Emergent Literacy as an organization.
- Surface resources so users can engage with resources provided.
- Create more actionable opportunities for users to interact with the nonprofit.
Create a Hypothesis
If Emergent Literacy's website presents a cohesive visual identity, highlights its core resources, and provides client testimonials, then the organization will establish greater legitimacy and clarity, leading to increased user confidence and engagement.
Test Hypothesis
Navigation Design
The home page uses page previews for navigation, plus testimonials to show impact and encourage outreach.
Information Architecture
Discoverability was key, by connecting clients to Emergent Literacy's resources. The stakeholder wanted PDF toolkits converted to HTML, but an eight-week timeline made a full translation impossible without sacrificing everything else.
Instead of deferring, we asked what they actually needed: a way to surface engaging content that drives action. The "Booklist" curated the best resources; remaining PDFs organized by grade on a dedicated "Toolkits" page.
Style Sheet
Colors came from the existing logo: dark navy (#001B26) and "Emergreen" (#1C863C). Green for actionable elements and H1 highlights, navy for authority.
Libre Baskerville for display type (classic print in literature), DM Sans for body (school-setting lettering). A pairing that feels fresh yet familiar to the nonprofit's vision.
Final Experiment
Before and after comparison of the Emergent Literacy home page accessibility scores.
AIM score 6.6 on home page
Select the image to view full size
Analyze Results
Client Feedback
We presented the staged site to the client: a fully accessible build meeting WCAG AAA standards, with elevated visual design.
Changes Made
- Keeping green as actionable elements only (links, buttons)
- Nested the Booklist page into the Toolkits page for improved information flow
- Further polished information structure and visual elements
Considerations and Conclusions
KPIs and Future Features
- Engagement Quality: Toolkits/Booklist traffic, scroll depth, bounce rates.
- User Trust and Conversion: Form submissions, email volume, donations, social engagement.
Conclusion
The most important decision in this project was knowing what to prioritize. Fully translating the toolkit PDFs into HTML was an ambitious goal, and one that couldn't be done well within an eight-week timeline without compromising the rest of the site. Good design doesn't just execute requests; it finds the solution behind them.
Reframing the Request: The Booklist emerged from asking what outcome the stakeholder actually needed when full PDF-to-HTML conversion wasn't feasible.
Documentation as Design: Designing across five timezones required building handoff systems, not just schedules. Clear documentation and explicit decision logs became as important as the design work itself.
Constraints as Clarity: A compressed timeline with competing obligations forced genuine prioritization. Not everything could be built, so everything had to be justified.