Have a project in mind? Get in touch.
Let's talk about your projectMaking a parks and recreation website work better—inside and out
Summary
Grapevine Parks & Recreation’s website serves as a central resource connecting residents and visitors with recreation programs, facilities, events, and community experiences. The Texas park district initially partnered with Pixo to evaluate and improve its website’s accessibility. What began as a focused audit evolved into a broader collaboration encompassing content strategy, user experience (UX) consulting, WordPress development, and content management improvements—all aimed at helping Grapevine better serve its community and the staff who maintain its website.
The challenge: Keeping a complex, evolving website accessible and easy to manage
Parks and recreation websites have a lot of ground to cover. From finding activities and registering for programs to exploring facilities and accessing community resources, visitors arrive with different needs and expectations. Meanwhile, department staff must keep a wide variety of information accurate, timely, and accessible.
Grapevine Parks & Recreation recognized opportunities to improve its existing website without undertaking a complete redesign. Accessibility was the initial priority, but the engagement also revealed opportunities to make content easier to manage and help visitors find what they need.
The challenge wasn’t simply fixing individual issues. It was establishing a more sustainable approach to maintaining and improving the website over time.
The solution: Targeted improvements guided by research and practical priorities
Rather than starting from scratch, Pixo worked within Grapevine’s existing WordPress website to identify opportunities, prioritize improvements, and strengthen the site’s underlying content and authoring experience.
Identifying and addressing accessibility barriers
Pixo began with a comprehensive accessibility audit, combining automated testing with manual evaluation against WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards.
The review uncovered barriers affecting how visitors navigate and interact with the site, including links that couldn’t be accessed using a keyboard, insufficient color contrast, inconsistent heading structures, and navigation elements that were difficult for keyboard users to operate.
Rather than simply providing a list of violations, Pixo developed an actionable remediation plan. The report documented recommended solutions, identified responsibilities across developers, content authors, and third-party providers, and provided effort estimates to support prioritization.
Pixo subsequently partnered with Grapevine on remediation work and provided content author guidance to help staff maintain accessibility as the website continues to evolve.
Simplifying WordPress content management
Pixo worked with Grapevine to streamline its WordPress page templates, consolidating overlapping fields and components into reusable content structures. The result is a more intuitive authoring experience that reduces unnecessary complexity while preserving the flexibility needed for different types of pages.
We also organized page content into predictable sections and defined where specialized modules—such as maps, FAQs, related events, and accessibility information—could be used. This approach helps ensure that information is presented consistently to website visitors while supporting long-term content governance.
Pixo additionally reviewed staff-facing documentation and recommended improvements to help content authors navigate the updated templates and maintain the website over time.
Identifying opportunities for a more user-centered experience
Pixo also identified opportunities to make the website easier to navigate and more closely aligned with visitors’ goals.
Recommendations included simplifying the main navigation around common user tasks, making better use of homepage features to highlight timely and popular offerings, and creating more prominent pathways to Grapevine’s recreation magazine. Together, these suggestions provide a starting point for future improvements to the user experience.
Bringing visibility to website content and governance
With many staff members contributing content over time, Grapevine needed a clearer picture of what was published on its website, who had created or last updated it, and when.
Pixo combined a comprehensive inventory of publicly accessible content with information extracted directly from the WordPress database, bringing together content, authorship, and update history in a single resource. By cross-referencing the website’s navigation and XML sitemaps, we also identified discrepancies in content discoverability.
The resulting inventory gave Grapevine a more holistic view of its website content, including opportunities to improve search visibility, address outdated or difficult-to-find pages, and make more informed decisions about ongoing content governance.
The result: A stronger foundation for continuous improvement
What began as an accessibility project has grown into an ongoing partnership focused on making Grapevine’s existing website work harder for its community.
Through accessibility remediation, WordPress improvements, content analysis, and UX guidance, Pixo has helped Grapevine address immediate needs while building a foundation for future improvements. The department has more consistent content structures, better visibility into its website’s content, and practical recommendations to guide its next steps.
The engagement demonstrates that meaningful website improvements don’t always require a complete redesign. By addressing accessibility, usability, and content management together, Pixo is helping Grapevine Parks & Rec build a website that works better for the people who use it—and the people who maintain it.