Designing accessible digital experiences for Australia’s disability inclusion network

AusDN’s website serves a wide range of users, including members, employers, partners, people with disability, and those with lived experience. Many visit to find practical information, events or member resources, so the experience needs to be clear, flexible and accessible from the outset.

Key challenges included:

• Improving access to a growing library of resources without increasing cognitive load
• Replacing simple hyperlink-based resource pages with clearer browsing, filtering and metadata
• Supporting different resource formats, including PDFs, Word documents, videos, external links and embedded content
• Making member-exclusive content easier to identify and access
• Helping users quickly understand event format, availability and accessibility considerations
• Supporting major events and conferences with richer templates for agendas, speakers and sponsors
• Aligning new designs with AusDN’s existing brand and website look and feel
• Designing to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA, while going beyond a compliance-only approach

With disability inclusion at AusDN’s core, accessibility practices shaped the design and development throughout the project.

Accessibility-led UX and UI design

Digital Garden worked closely with AusDN to shape the Resources and Events templates around accessibility, usability and inclusive content presentation. This included engagement with AusDN stakeholders, including people with disability and lived experience, to ensure the designs reflected practical needs rather than compliance alone.

Both templates were designed to align with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, AusDN’s brand guidelines and the existing website look and feel.

A clearer resources experience

The Resources template replaces a basic list of hyperlinks with a structured, searchable and accessible library.

It introduces topic-based filtering, improved search and filter options, richer metadata, and clearer support for different content formats. Resources can now be offered in both PDF and accessible Word versions, allowing users to choose their preferred format.

Member-exclusive content is also more clearly identified through labelling, visual cues and a dedicated filter toggle, without relying on colour alone.

Enhanced inclusion on event templates

The Events templates provide a stronger way to promote events, conferences and major programs.

The listing page supports featured major events, clearer event cards and upfront metadata such as in-person, virtual, member-exclusive, access and inclusion tags. This helps users quickly understand the format and accessibility considerations of each event before opening the detail page.

Event detail pages now support key event information, registration links, access and inclusion details, speaker profiles, sponsors, agendas, related resources and related events in a clearer, more structured layout.

Ongoing improvements

This work forms part of an ongoing relationship with AusDN, with Digital Garden continuing to support refinements as the templates are used and improved on the live website.