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AI-driven accessibility

Instruction Guide Search Index

Information Architecture · Automation · Accessible Front-End

A searchable index that lets staff find the right instruction guide across 1,500+ toolkit documents — answering the number-one piece of user feedback: they're impossible to find.

  • Automation
  • Search
  • Accessibility
The UF Instruction Guide Library tool — a Browse Topics menu and a keyword search bar under a UF header.Automation

The Problem

UFHR's toolkits hold more than 1,500 documents, and end users couldn't find the instruction guides they needed. A focus group named findability as their single biggest frustration.

A deep server folder tree where instruction guides were stored, with highlighted nested locations.
Where guides actually lived: deep, inconsistent server folders nobody could search.

Design Story

I helped run a focus group on improving our guides, heard “they're hard to find” loud and clear, and built an index to fix it.

Complexity

The guides live on a Z-drive and across many toolkit pages — not in one CMS. There was no database, and I didn't have server access to automate updates.

Start from the user's real problem — findability — and ship a working solution even within infrastructure limits, then partner with web and IT to harden and automate it.

The Designed Solution

I built a secure, launch-ready prototype: a Python crawler scans the Z-drive and toolkit pages and compiles a JSON index that a lightweight, accessible web app searches — with keyword search (an aria-live results region and a “/”-to-focus shortcut) and a browsable topic tree by toolkit. To make it an official, maintainable part of UF's sites, I then partnered with UFHR's IT developer to reimplement it as a WordPress plugin.

Design Decisions

  • Built a crawl-to-JSON pipeline so the index reflects the real, current document set.
  • Made the front-end keyboard- and screen-reader-friendly, and hardened it (input sanitization, XSS-safe) so it was secure and ready to launch.
  • Ran a structured focus-group test and folded in the feedback, then partnered with UFHR IT to rebuild the tool as an official WordPress plugin for UF sites.

The Result

A live “Instruction Guide Library” that takes users straight to the guide they need — and that helped the team reconcile old and new guides during the WCAG migration.

Impact

Turned a 1,500-document haystack into a single search box.

Outcome

Tested by a stakeholder focus group, approved, and — rebuilt as a WordPress plugin with UFHR IT — rolled out across the UFHR toolkits.

The Presentation

Project presentation · PowerPointOpen in OneDrive ↗