Reading Tourism
Final Design
Alternative Design (not used)
In 2007 Oxford Inspire developed a new website for Reading Tourism. One of the design requirements from Reading Borough Council was that the site would share the navigation style and layout to that of their main council website, whilst having its own identity and a colour scheme which would reflect the Reading Tourism branding.
Other requirements were that the design would fill the entire browser width and include the accessibility features that the main Reading Borough Council website has - such as the ability to switch to a text only version or switch between different colour schemes, easy printing of the site, and utilisation of access keys.
The front page has a "portal" type functionality, with a main feature, rss feeds, the latest weather, news, and quick access to the main searchable databases. Reading Borough Council have previously purchased a Content Management System which they wanted to be utilised, and as such, the site has been fully integrated into that system. All content is changeable, including colour schemes, images and the searchable areas.
The site provides four main searches on the front page, which enable visitors to find tourist/business related information. The areas are:
- An accommodation search, with the ability to search by area, type and by the facilities provided (such as disabled access or parking).
- An attractions search to locate great days out, and things to do. Again you can search by area, or type of attraction and the available facilities.
- A restaurant search, with food type, area and facilities/
- and a venue finder, where businesses can find suitable venues. Information provided includes the various roofs, person capacity, and facilities provided.
The venue searching capabilities were previously provided by another Reading Borough Council site, and part of the job was to combine it with the new site.
The site was built to xhtml strict standards, and the layout is a pure css based layout. One of the advantages with the css layout is that the visual ordering of page elements does not have to necessarily reflect the ordering in the xhtml. This allows us to order content with the most important items first making the browsing experience easier for visitors using a speech browser, or someone viewing the site on a pda with images switched off.
