Designing for Autism: the CHP website
- 132% year-on-year growth in online course purchases after the eLearning launch
The Curly Hair Project is a social enterprise supporting people on the Autistic spectrum and their families, offering resources including animated films, articles, books, online courses and webinars. We’ve worked with Alis from The Curly Hair Project since 2017, bringing her growing library of resources into one accessible space her members can rely on.
- Partnership running since 2017, starting as a hosting customer
- Award-winning resource centre, endorsed by Professor Tony Attwood and featured on BBC Radio 4, BBC News, The Independent and HuffPost
- Website designed around Autism-friendly principles: sensory considerations, clear communication and consistent layout
- Brought webinars, an online store, animated films and eLearning together into one platform
- Online course purchases grew 132% year on year after the eLearning launch
The challenge
Before working with us, CHP operated as a subscriber blog, with Alis’s growing catalogue of books, in-person workshops and resources scattered across separate tools. Events were hosted in a small Eventbrite widget, books were sold via Amazon rather than on-site, and there was no way to bring everything into a single accessible home. As the CHP’s audience and offering grew, the existing website couldn’t keep up, and with a user base that includes people on the Autistic spectrum, the design itself needed real care and thought, not just more features bolted on.
What we did
- Migrated CHP's existing blog archive to a fresh WordPress installation
- Designed the site around Autism-friendly principles: sensory considerations, clear communication and consistent layout
- Built a dedicated events section with filtering by type, region and date
- Brought book, poster, music and merchandise sales in-house using WooCommerce
- Built an animated films section with subscriber access controls and preview trailers
- Built an eLearning section, with automatic login generation on course purchase
- Gave every course its own landing page with a description of modules and requirements
The result
We migrated CHP’s full blog archive to a fresh WordPress install and built a platform that brings webinars, an online store, animated films and eLearning together in one place. Events can now be filtered by type, region and date. Books, posters, music, and merchandise are sold directly through WooCommerce rather than sending customers to Amazon. Subscribers get access to award-winning animated films with proper access controls, and when the pandemic moved CHP’s professional training online, we built an eLearning section that automatically issues learners a login upon purchase. Every part of the site was designed with sensory differences, clear communication and consistent layout in mind, so it works for the audience it’s actually built for.
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