Exponetic

Open Up Toolkit, for Mental Health Media

Mental Health Media is an anti-discrimination charity who produce tools and resources to help local community groups around the country to fight media discrimination of mental health issues.

The success of the site is based on the ability for visitors to add information about their own experiences to a central database

The Open Up Toolkit is a project being run by the charity Mental Health Media to help groups and individuals to combat mental health discrimination. The web site produced for the initiative provides a searchable database of resources as well as general news and information about anti-discrimination campaigns.

The success of the site is based on the ability for visitors to add information about their own experiences to a central database. To facilitate this Exponetic has developed a content management system with user permissions that only allow site administrators to approve content to go live onto the web.

The toolkit has a searchable document and resource repository which will allow visitors to find information through a custom built search system.

Content authors at Mental Health Media are responsible for tagging each content item with a number of keywords relating to geographical coverage, subject and type of resource. Each content item can be tagged with multiple keywords and appear in multiple categories. The site also contains community based elements such as a discussion forum and a facility for site visitors to submit their own stories through the site.

Given the target audience who may be from almost any age range and level of computer literacy may be accessing the site on any number of a range of browsers either on private computers or in public buildings; accessibility is a key requirement of the site. This has informed the information architecture, front-end design and coding of the site.

Phase II of the Open Up Toolkit is currently being discussed and has already gained over £750,000 in support from sponsors.