The High Court is the highest court in the Australian judicial system. It was established in 1901 by Section 71 of the Constitution. The functions of the High Court are to interpret and apply the law of Australia; to decide cases of special federal significance including challenges to the constitutional validity of laws and to hear appeals, by special leave, from Federal, State and Territory courts.

The new High Court website acts as a central point of information relating to cases and the High Court. The High Court engaged our Sydney web design studio for its web design and Joomla development skills. PB Web Development crafted a creative interface that not only was visually appealing but is also built to meet web accessibility standards.

Client: High Court of Australia
URL: http://www.hcourt.gov.au
Development Time: 11 months
Category: Federal Government

Client Bio

The High Court of Australia is the highest level of the Australian court system and the final stage for appeals in the legal system. Situated in the nation's capital city, Canberra, the High Court of Australia has seen many high profile cases pass through its doors. The original website was created in the early 2000s.

Developer: PB Web Development (PBWEBDEV)
URL: PBWebDev.com.au

About Us

Located in both Adelaide and Sydney, Australia, PB Web Development is a small boutique web agency that builds Joomla websites for small business, non profit organisations and government clients around the Australia.

Development Team

Martina Kocian, the creative director, designed a user interface for the High Court of Australia while Peter Bui, lead developer, constructed the information structure of the new website and the semantic layout of the template. Content migration was a joint process between all members of PB Web Development and staff at the High Court of Australia. Dedicated server installation, setup and security was done by Peter Bui. Training and documentation was done by Peter Bui and Martina Kocian.

The Challenge

The new design of the site went through several revisions to get the best new look for the High Court of Australia. The original design was done back in early 2000s and was well due for a redesign. Development of the website had to provide ample flexibility in structure which is why K2 was used in the development of the website.

The Australian Government also has requirements for all Federal Government websites to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards by the end of 2014 and all new websites should meet at meet WCAG 2.0 on completion. This mean that the new website had to at least meet WCAG 2.0 Level A on its release. The website was build with the WCAG 2.0 success criteria all in mind. Once it was complete, tests were done to make sure all the success criteria that we had to meet were all ticked off. Other accessibility issues that we're met will be tackled in early 2011.

The Extensions

The design and build of the website was completely custom using the T3 Framework from JoomlArt. The framework was customised somewhat to suit the clients needs. Other components that were required for the build include K2 and JCalPro.

List of Extensions Used:

The Results

The final resulting website allowed the High Court to easily publish and manage their information on a daily basis. The combination of Joomla and K2 was the best platform for the High Court with ease of use and management. The server provided tot he High Court allowed for large amounts of traffic and optimised well for fast content delivery.

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