2.4MB → 180KB
PAGE WEIGHT 2.4 MB → 180 KB · LCP 6.8 s → 1.4 s (3G) · A11Y 100 · 21-DAY ENGAGEMENT
Muasi Telema is a women-led legal-aid organisation in Kinshasa and Bandundu, DRC. The women they serve reach the web on mid-range phones over 3G, often in Lingala rather than French, and need to ask for help confidentially. Over 21 days I rebuilt the site to a 3G performance budget, in both languages, with analytics that track nobody.
- Client
- Muasi Telema
- Vertical
- Nonprofit · Legal aid
- Year
- Q4 2024
- Role
- Lead
- Duration
- 21 days
- Status
- ● Live
- Verified
- Live site
Loom walkthrough
Screen plates · Gallery
Placeholders shown — production screenshots replace these on the live build. Arrow keys navigate; Esc closes.
Problem
Muasi Telema’s audience is Congolese women navigating marriage, custody, inheritance, and widows’-rights questions — frequently in Lingala, almost always on a phone, often over a 3G connection. The previous site was French-only, shipped 2.4 MB per page, loaded third-party trackers, and offered no private way to ask for mediation. For this audience, that combination is a barrier, not a website.
They needed plain-language rights guides in French and Lingala, pages light enough to open on a weak signal, analytics that protect rather than expose their users, and a confidential mediation-request path.
- ▲ LCP 6.8 s on 3G
- ▲ 2.4 MB median page weight
- ▲ French only
- ▲ Third-party trackers loaded
- ▲ No confidential contact path
Constraints
Decisions
A hard 3G performance budget.
Alternative considered: a conventional image-rich nonprofit theme. Rejected because: it would never open on the connections that matter. Tradeoff: fewer hero images and no web fonts on first paint — the page opens in seconds on 3G, which is the entire point.
Bilingual French + Lingala, plain language.
Alternative: French with machine translation. Rejected because: legal guidance must be exact and culturally legible. Tradeoff: the team maintains two sets of content — worth it for accuracy in the language people actually read.
Privacy-respecting analytics, nothing more.
Alternative: Google Analytics. Rejected because: exposing this audience’s browsing to a third party is unacceptable. Tradeoff: no off-the-shelf dashboards — just aggregate, cookieless counts the org can trust.
Build
Stack
- ▸ WordPress 6.6 + Gutenberg block API
- ▸ ACF Pro · block field definitions only
- ▸ Lightweight bilingual setup · FR + Lingala
- ▸ Privacy-respecting cookieless analytics
- ▸ Cloudflare · cache + image resize
- ▸ WCAG 2.2 AA tested via axe + NVDA + keyboard
Plugins · 19 → 6
- ✓ kept ACF Pro · cookieless analytics · Yoast SEO · Wordfence · WPForms (confidential) · Cloudflare
- × removed (13) Heavy nonprofit theme · slider plugins · Google Analytics + Tag Manager · social-embed plugins · 8 orphaned add-ons
Results · Measured
Every metric carries its tool, date, and connection profile. Page weight and 3G LCP measured on an emulated Moto G via WebPageTest.
Tradeoffs
I did not build a full case-management system for mediation intake — only a confidential request form that routes to the team’s secure inbox. A structured caseload tool was out of scope and out of budget for a pro-bono build. It is documented as a future phase should funding allow.
AI usage · This project
Claude scaffolded the bilingual content structure and the field groups. Every block was hand-edited. The performance budget, the privacy architecture, accessibility, and QA were entirely human. No legal content was AI-written — all guidance came from the organisation’s own jurists, in both languages.
Read the full AI policy ↗.
- Scaffold
- Claude · Cursor
- Refactor
- Human
- A11y
- Human · NVDA
- Copy
- Client + human
- Architecture
- Human
- QA
- Human
Testimony · Verified
"Our website now opens in seconds on the phones our women actually use, in Lingala as well as French, and it tracks no one. Asking for help is private. Pixy understood that for us, performance and privacy are not features — they are safety."
- Name
- Esther Mbuyi
- Role
- Founding Director
- Company
- Muasi Telema ASBL
- Project
- 2024 rebuild · pro bono
- Verified via
- muasitelema.org