A few weeks ago the fabulous Charlotte Cooper brought to our attention how completely bad-ass the Welsh Women's Aid's website is. It may look like your typical organization/government website, but it's far from that.
So what makes the Welsh Women's Aid's site so different?
Three little buttons in the top right hand corner that say "Disguise This Site", "Change Site" and "View This Site Safely".
When you hit the Disguise This Site button, the web page your on goes from looking like this:
To this:
This way, if an abused woman is looking for help, she can use safely view this webpage so that if her abuser or even nosey coworkers take a peek at her monitor, it looks like she's just checking up on her daily gossip.
The Change Site button swiftly redirects you to the BBC News homepage for the same reasons described above, and so that it appears as though you're just checking the weather and the news - nothing more.
If you click on the Use This Site Safely button, you're taken immediately to a page that gives loads of increidbly useful information about how to cover your tracks online if you have an abusive partner that likes to check up on what you do online.
The Welsh Women's Aid give information on how to clear your cache, cookies and browser history in every internet browser, including Opera, as well as how to delete your search items that have been entered into toolbars - Google, AOL, Yahoo! or otherwise.
They also give helpful and potentially life saving advice as they explain how to print out emails, retrieve both sent and received emails between you and your harasser, or how to delete emails completely.
It's rare that I've seen such useful information communicated so thoroughly and completely, especially on a website for women. While the information given may not help women "cover their tracks" 100%, they've made getting help for abused women online much, much easier, and safer.
Well done Welsh Women's Aid!