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Irish Guide Dogs new website is launched
As long-term digital partners of Irish Guide Dogs, we knew their new website had to do more than look good. It had to work brilliantly for the people who rely on it most.
Accessibility was a defining principle of the project from the very beginning. The site was designed and built around the needs of Ireland’s blind and vision impaired community, with every journey considered through the lens of clarity, usability and inclusion.
From a development perspective, that meant careful attention to the fundamentals, including:
Semantic HTML to create a clear structure for screen readers
Logical heading hierarchies across key pages and content types
Meaningful landmarks to help users understand and navigate each page
Accessible navigation patterns designed for clarity and consistency
Keyboard-friendly interactive elements
Visible focus states so users can clearly see where they are on the page
Clear button labels and appropriate ARIA labels where extra context was needed
Colour contrast, spacing, typography and content hierarchy were reviewed throughout the design and build process to support readability. Images, icons and interface elements were also handled with care, using descriptive alternative text where needed and avoiding unnecessary noise for assistive technologies.
A major focus was forms and donation workflows. These journeys are critical to the organisation, so we worked to make them clear, secure and accessible from start to finish. This included:
Properly labelled form fields
Helpful validation
Clear error messaging
Logical tab order
Accessible donation steps
Clear signposting throughout the supporter journey
Together, these details help supporters complete donations with confidence, whatever technology they use.
Performance was treated with the same level of care. Built using a modern headless architecture and Next.js, the new site is fast, scalable and easier to manage. Our development team optimised the site against Google’s Core Web Vitals, focusing on fast page loads, stable layouts, responsive interactions, efficient image handling and lean front-end code.
At time of testing, the website achieved:
100% accessibility
98% performance
100% best practices
92% SEO in Google PageSpeed Insights.
You can see the full report here.
Just as importantly, feedback from the guidedogs.ie community testers using assistive technology has been excellent.
None of this would have been possible without the Irish Guide Dogs team and their specialist testers. Their real user feedback helped us understand what worked, what needed refinement and where we could make the experience better.
As Irish Guide Dogs celebrates its 50th anniversary, the new website gives the organisation a best-in-class digital platform to support its community, grow its impact and continue changing lives across Ireland.