Development Resource Centre
[December 2003] The Development Resource Centre (DRC) is a specialist information and education centre in Aotearoa New Zealand focused on overseas aid and development and global issues. The DRC’s vision statement is "Change for a just world" and its mission is to "inform and educate people to empower them to take action to create a just world".
Finding it
This website was a little hard to find. I roughly knew the name of the organisation so I tried typing it directly into the address bar. 'Dev-zone.org.nz' didn't work so I tried variations without the hyphen and with '.co.nz'. Finally I found it at 'dev-zone.org' (with no .nz). I could also find it by searching for 'dev zone' on Google. It would be user-friendly and inexpensive for the website owner to scoop up some of those variant domain names and direct them to the main site.
Design and accessibility
The site looks clean with its solid colours and white background, while the jaunty graphics on the front page add a cheerful lightness. Unfortunately some graphics are do not have their alt text, which reduces the accessibility of the site. Alt text replaces graphics for blind people, those surfing with devices which don't display graphics and for search engines.
It's also unfortunate that the headings aren't properly coded with heading tags, but simply as larger bold text. This also reduces accessibility.
Extensive resources
The site has extensive resources: a jobs database (185 vacancies at time of visit), an Issues section, an Action section alerting visitors to petitions, boycotts, campaigns and so on, Training and Information resource centres, the Pacific Development Directory and a library.
Annoying surprise
It was disconcerting to find that clicking on various links would open new browser windows on my screen. As an experienced web user that simply annoys me — I can choose to open a new window for a link if I want to, and I don't want it happening without my consent. New users tend to find new windows suddenly opening very confusing, and for blind users it can really disrupt things.
Good searching
Searches in the book catalogue and the Pacific Development Directory worked well for me and I was pleased to see that help is available if the visitor is confused. The Directory can be searched by email too, which is likely to be very important for people using slow or expensive Internet connections (such as those in the Pacific).
Added value
Various email newsletters are available advising of website updates. This is an excellent approach, particularly considering the clearly enormous scope of material available from the Dev-Zone. It would be very exciting to see Dev-Zone pick up on the increasingly popular use of RSS Feeds as well for this purpose.
Summary
This is an extensive site packed full of information and resources. It has a clean look and loads quickly and would be improved further by small changes to increase accessibility.
[www.dev-zone.org]