Rowell Family Empowerment Website

A community that excludes even one member is no community at all. And our agency strives to make sure nobody is excluded, no matter how diverse their abilities. Adobe software has helped us in that mission by keeping our costs down and our visibility up.

Since redesigning our website with Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver we’ve noticed a surge in traffic that continues to grow. We credit that surge to Adobe software and the ability it gives our in-house designer to beautify our site, as well as add functionality. As an agency that works with families who have children with disabilities we need that extra web traffic to help us get the word out. We’ve been able to reach more families and we’ve been able to reach them over a further distance.

Adobe has allowed us to make our website attractive, scalable and fully accessible to those with disabilities. Each of those attributes are extremely important to us, especially in light of the population we serve. Photoshop was instrumental in adding that “Ahhhhhhhhh factor” which is so crucial in making the site look professional and credible. Using layers, masking, and the array of available filters we were able to incorporate pictures of actual children we serve. The photos on each masthead of our website, as well as the photo gallery, are of children we serve. There’s very little use of clipart or stock images on our site. Photoshop has been an excellent tool for image editing. And we believe that it’s important to show images of actual children we know rather than stock photography. It pulls at heart strings and adds a sense of personal service that lets families know we care, because we do.

Advertising our services on our website has also brought more families to our trainings. Reaching all the families in Northern California with our services remains a difficult proposition, but with Adobe software we are making huge strides. We are responsible for the upper third of the state; the more rural portion. But the Adobe software we purchased through TechSoup has made it a lot easier. We are now beginning to stretch our wings even further with the help of Adobe Premiere. Premiere allows us to capture, edit, and encode video which we will soon use to make “teasers” of many trainings like our Individual Education Program Preparation (IEP Prep) Training and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (I.D.E.A) Training. Those teasers will then be posted on YouTube and embedded on our website. Eventually, we envision having the ability to offer complete trainings in similar manner to families who live in more rural areas of Northern California and are unable to physically attend.

Thanks to Adobe and TechSoup more families know about us and how we can help them. And more people of the public have been touched with word of acceptance of those with disabilities. Everyone belongs and Adobe products have helped us relay that important message in a manner that has lasting impact. Adobe has made us into a community.