Considered Content: a Design System for Equity, Accessibility, and Sustainability

Abstract

The University of Minnesota Libraries developed and applied a principles-based design system to their Health Sciences Library website. With the design system at its center, the revised site was able to achieve accessible, ethical, inclusive, sustainable, responsible, and universal design. The final site was built with elegantly accessible semantic HTML-focused code on Drupal 8 with highly curated and considered content, meeting and exceeding WCAG 2.1 AA guidance and addressing cognitive and learning considerations through the use of plain language, templated pages for consistent page-level organization, and no hidden content. As a result, the site better supports all users regardless of their abilities, attention level, mental status, reading level, and reliability of their internet connection, all of which are especially critical now as an elevated number of people experience crises, anxieties, and depression.