Karlovac School of Natural Sciences
Client: Karlovac School of Natural Sciences
Category: Public sector, Education
Technology: WordPress, PHP, HTML/CSS, JavaScript
About the client:
The Karlovac School of Natural Sciences is a secondary school that offers four-year and three-year education programs with an emphasis on natural sciences, agriculture, food technology and ecology. The school educates students in various majors — from chemical and environmental technicians, nutrition technicians and food technicians, to fruit growers, winemakers, gardeners, florists, agrotourism and veterinary technicians. In addition to a rich educational offer, the school has specialized facilities such as a hydroponic greenhouse, a soil laboratory and a sports hall, and actively participates in projects and scientific activities.
Project description:
School websites in the public education sector have an extremely complex information architecture — they must simultaneously serve students, parents, teachers, prospective enrollees, and public authorities. Each of these groups has completely different needs and reasons for visiting the site — from checking news and schedules, reviewing majors and admission requirements, to accessing financial reports, tenders, and documents that are legally required to be made public. In addition, as a public institution, the school is obligated to digital accessibility standards.
My role and process
I developed a complete presentation website in WordPress tailored to the specific needs of an educational institution and its multiple user groups.
Content architecture and navigation
One of the key challenges was to organize the extremely large amount of content in a clear and intuitive way. The site includes information about the school and staff, the school library with a catalog and reading list, news and a science corner, projects, a section for students with information about majors, enrollments, final projects, textbooks and scholarships, a section for parents, and an extensive section on access to information that includes public procurement, tenders, financial plans and reports, general acts, regulations, protocols and the school curriculum. All of this had to be organized into a navigation structure that was intuitive for all users — from first-graders to auditors looking for financial reports.
News and content system
A news system has been implemented that allows the teaching staff to regularly inform students, parents, and the public about school activities — from educational projects and field trips to competitions and school events. The school actively uses this system to publish a variety of content that reflects the richness of its activities.
Digital Accessibility (WCAG)
As a public educational institution, the Karlovac School of Natural Sciences is legally obliged to implement digital accessibility standards, as confirmed by the Digital Accessibility Statement published on the website. The implementation included semantically correct HTML throughout all page elements, appropriate color contrast according to the WCAG AA standard, full keyboard navigability, ARIA tags for interactive elements and navigation structures, and text alternatives for all visual content, including photos of directions and school activities. Given that the school's target audience is extremely heterogeneous — including minors, elderly parents, and people with disabilities — accessibility is a particularly important dimension of quality here.
CMS and content management
WordPress was set up so that school staff could independently publish news, update documents, and manage all content categories without technical support. Given that the school has an active online presence and regularly publishes new content, ease of management was one of the key requirements of the project.
Responsiveness
The site is fully responsive and adapted to all devices. Students and parents most often access the school website on mobile devices — checking news, looking for contacts or viewing information about majors — which made the mobile experience a particularly important dimension of the project.
Challenges
The main complexity of this project was the information architecture. Few types of websites have as many different categories of content intended for so many different user groups as a school website — and all of it must be organized into a coherent navigation structure that does not confuse anyone and allows everyone to quickly find what they are looking for. In addition, a significant portion of the content — financial reports, tenders, general acts, regulations — is subject to a legal obligation to be publicly available, which means it must be clearly structured, easy to find, and always up-to-date.
Result
A clear, functional and accessible website has been delivered to the Karlovac School of Natural Sciences, which serves as a central digital information hub for all stakeholders — students, parents, teachers and the public. The website meets the legal obligations of digital accessibility for the public sector, and school staff independently and regularly update the content and publish news.