Gifted and Talented Students

Gifted and Talented Students - homepage

Website: tki.org.nz (site has since been redesigned) - view screenshots

Size: 220 pages

Government status: Government Ministry

My professional status: contractor at CWA New Media

Website client: Ministry of Education

Dates: September and November 2004

Categories: Website designer, Front-end developer, Govt web standards tester, Content-loader, CSS-based layout, e-govt/WCAG compliance, eZ Publish, Government websites, Medium sites

Brief: to create a new design for an updated Key Collection site as part of CWA's Te Kete Ipurangi portal website. The site assisted schools in developing their programmes for gifted and talented students. The collection included the online edition of the Ministry of Education handbook Gifted and talented students: Meeting their needs in New Zealand schools, and related online reading material.

This site was housed within the main TKI template. As such it was subject to the same rules for templating as the rest of TKI, which was written in XHTML/XML and used CSS-only formatting.

My responsibilities included:

  • Design of the website using the Ministry of Education's Gifted and talented students: Meeting their needs in New Zealand schools handbook as an initial inspiration
  • Ensuring that my design was possible within CWA's strict XHTML/XML template for TKI, and ensuring that the site would be fully accessible and easily navigable
  • Ensuring that my design was achievable using a CSS-only layout, as tables were no longer used by CWA in order to format or position the elements of a web page
  • Designing a clear and effective sidebar navigation system to include four levels of navigation, plus a fifth level within the content area if required
  • Some development work (XHTML, CSS) as part of the CWA team.

The existing Key Collection needed updating and an online version of the Ministry of Education's handbook was added to the site. The original navigation system was no longer effective, and had to be redesigned, as did the site architecture. I enjoyed this project - it was the first large TKI sub-site I designed. The development of the site included migration of existing content into the new design, plus the addition of over 100 pages which constituted the online version of the handbook.