Building a Critical Web Design Toolkit
From Claire Cahoon October 21st, 2022
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From Claire Cahoon October 21st, 2022
How do issues like sustainability, accessibility, the global digital divide, and social justice come to play in choices about web development tools? The Critical Web Design Toolkit is a resource for developing static websites around minimal computing practices and helping students and researchers consider these issues. In this presentation, the project team will demonstrate our site template and talk about the process of building it.
While static site web development offers benefits in environmental sustainability, low-bandwidth access, and accessibility for users with disabilities, there are skill barriers compared to using than popular database-driven content management systems like WordPress, Omeka, and Scalar. Our team aimed to address the 'whys' and 'hows' of static site development, to make it easier for Bryn Mawr community members to create static digital projects, and to empower those who are new to web publishing to explore static technologies.
The Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows spent 10 weeks learning about web development, digital scholarship and the social and political impact of internet technologies. They designed our template to be a simple, accessible, user-oriented, and compelling, and built skills in html, css, jekyll, and liquid in order to realize that vision. They created robust documentation and learning resources that invite users to explore ideas of critical web design and learn how to publish resources with ethics and social justice in mind. Finally, they tested out our template and documentation with users in the community, and used their feedback to improve our project.
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