Sunday, 31 August 2025

This website is shifting

This website is shifting

By: DUNZ

Disabled United (NZ): Sunday, 4:40 pm, 31 August 2025

This website is no longer being updated and has been replaced by a new one.

Because of the growing crisis affecting disabled people, designing and building a new website had to be fast, cheap, simple and able to be done by volunteers who also faced their own health and support issues.

The intention is that the new website will eventually become a world-class, highly respected website that we can all be very proud of.

Purpose

The website has been designed to resolutely advocate for the dignity and rights of all people with disabilities, their families, and support workers. It will defend the funding of our support organisations. It's also intended to reach out to the rest of the population and win them to our common cause.

The first website was born on March 18 2024, and was used to organise the fight against the cuts. The new website will expand its scope to encompass any injustice affecting and needs expressed by people with disabilities in NZ.

While all views and opinions are welcome, the editorial policy assumes we all have a great deal in common and will seek to unite people rather than divide them.

It will also cover the wonderful work being done by support organisations, as well as disabled sports and cultural events. No one will be excluded.

All content from the old website will be transferred over time.

Volunteer created

Volunteers with disabilities have built the new 1000-page website by hand, using standard layout templates and extensive search and replace functions. Currently, all web pages are manually laid out using an outdated but fast and straightforward method: hidden nested tables. This has enabled a great deal of rapid experimentation to determine what would work. Many of the pages are still experimental mockups, and we welcome feedback and suggestions.

During this period, the website was hidden from Google Search Results.

The website is now unhidden from Google Search.

Next, the website will be automatically created by Pipi 9 CMS Engine, a database-driven content management system capable of publishing large websites using templates (another website has 90,000 pages) in the coming months.

When that happens, all the experimental web pages will be replaced with real information.

Mobile

All of the HTML code in these templates will then be converted to use CSS style sheets, which will make the website mobile-friendly (it's not yet). This will also enable the website's appearance to be improved. A separate website for mobile, similar to what Wikipedia has done, may also be an option.

Screen Reader

A significant effort will then be made to ensure it works seamlessly with screen readers, braille machines, and meets the WAI-ARIA 1.2 and WCAG 2.2 standards for web accessibility.

One language per website

In a similar way to how Wikipedia is organised, the website is in only one language, English. Later, other versions of this website will be available in Māori and New Zealand Sign Language. Versions will also be made available for any other community upon request.

Having separate websites for each language simplifies the IT work required. This approach is widespread in Europe, which has 250 native languages, as well as many more languages spoken by migrants. There will be minimal use of JavaScript because all the pages are static. Most web pages will be approximately 1% the size of those on other websites with the same amount of words. These approaches are significantly more secure against hackers and crooks who prey on people with disabilities.

Adding information

Today, as a temporary measure, many pages include links to Google Forms, allowing users to add missing information.

Over time, the different language websites will grow into a free public resource.

Login

Later, passwords will be issued, allowing readers to create a profile, subscribe to their preferred news, and submit additional content.

Thank you

All this will take time and involve open discussion within our community, as well as extensive testing by individuals who wish to contribute.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed with encouragement, comments, data, phone calls, feature requests, meetings, testing, codebooks, and other forms of assistance.

Last Updated 31/08/2025

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