Understanding the problem
Suzanne and Michael met in November 1993, and share a common passion for travel and adventure. In December 2017 Suzanne was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND/ALS). Like many people faced with the fatal diagnosis, Suzanne created her bucket list which featured predominantly family travel, and adventures she still wanted to enjoy. Whilst travelling around the world it became obvious that there are many variations on the term 'accessible' and 'wheelchair friendly.' In addition to that, there was no easy way to search for only accessible accomodation.
Ideation & research
The scope began with an overarching vision enable the disabled to holiday away from home. This vision was fed into everything the team designed and subsequently built. The paramount focus was to allow everyone to holiday away from home without the stress of wondering whether equipment will be delivered or something is truly accessible.
The design needed to be focused around humans. We wanted people to be excited about holidaying. As a result, we created a 'build a holiday' wizard for people that know they want to go on holiday but haven't decided where to go or what to do. The other key consideration when designing SuzanneStays was acknowledging that we need a highly accessible website. Semantic HTML was a priority along with a top menu bar that allows users to increase or decrease the text size and switch into high contrast mode.