National Federation of the Blind
Affiliate Website Development
About the National Federation of the Blind
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is the oldest and largest nationwide organization dedicated to blind Americans. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, NFB has 56 affiliates, chapters, divisions, and partner organizations across the U.S. Their mission is to provide, coordinate, and lobby for programs, resources, and services that defend the rights of blind Americans, support the community, and create a future of opportunity and accessibility.
Executive Summary
NFB engaged Pumex to develop a unified brand of websites for its 56 affiliate members across the United States. This allowed the NFB to standardize its brand, its collection of member data, and its management of affiliate web infrastructure.
One of our major accomplishments on this project was keeping a consistent UI/UX for our target audience that conformed to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) 2.1 Level AA standards and Section 508 compliance.
NFB needed major adjustments done to their 56 affiliate sites across the US including easier to read text, optimized content display, mobile friendly navigation, touch-friendly page elements, faster download speeds, and that the sites would meet all current accessibility standards. NFB also needed cross-browser testing to ensure that all affiliate website designs were optimized for the two latest versions of Edge, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. Pumex was tasked with deploying a robust production environment for the solution that could easily manage traffic and speed of access SLAs for all 56 sites.
Pumex implemented an Agile Development method and phased approach to elucidate, refine, and detail all the requirements to define the look and function of the new websites. The data collected during the requirements analysis phase was then used to inform the choices that were made while developing the graphical UI (User Interface) design of the website, functional recommendations, and other technology choices. Pumex architected an entire DevOps pipeline and Azure Cloud Architecture for the production environment. which is secure, universally available, and has DR built into the solution. The architected solution leverages key cloud infrastructure technologies to ensure scalability, performance, and consideration of long-term costs.
Immediate Results
Phase 1 delivered on time
on budget, and above quality expectations – Phase 1 consisted of Site Choice Templatization Design, Data Management, CRM Integration, Form Integration, and Deployment. Despite additional requirements regarding data portability, syncing processes, and automatic content pushes, Pumex completed a quality Phase 1 on schedule and within budget constraints.
No escaped defects during UAT
Especially concerning Accessibility, due to visually impaired users of the site, we achieved no escaped defects during UAT.
Phase 2 commenced ahead of schedule
We were able to begin Phase 2, migrating the existing affiliate websites to the new Drupal platform, ahead of schedule. With a 3-week sprint, Phase 2 is currently being delivered on time and within budget constraints.
Future Goals
Pumex continues to support the NFB with their affiliate website needs. This project is slated to continue through 2020 with the migration of the remaining sites to the new platform. Pumex expects to continue meeting all budget, quality, and timeline metrics to optimize the migration. Even with changing requirements, Pumex is up for the task of creating a universally accessible, user-friendly new platform, without sacrificing security.