Hasnat Abdullah

Hasnat Abdullah was a coordinator of the Students Against Discrimination movement at the University of Dhaka and one of the most visible faces of the July Uprising. His audience spans citizens, students, journalists, researchers, and international visitors.

The brief was a Bangla-first, documentary-toned site that treats a national moment with editorial restraint. Closer to a premium digital magazine than a campaign brochure. Bangla is the default language and the primary typography, down to the numerals. English is the alternate.

A tiny inline script reads the saved preference and stamps the language on the document before first paint, so a returning English reader never sees a flicker of Bangla. Two utility classes let one block compose differently per language: in the hero, the active language is the headline while the other becomes a subtitle beneath it.

Hidden spans use display none, so screen readers only ever hear the active language, and each span carries the correct lang attribute for pronunciation. Even the stat counters localise their digits.

Every photograph is converted to WebP before shipping and rendered through next/image. The stat counter is a hand-rolled requestAnimationFrame ease-out with reduced-motion users getting the final value instantly. Video feeds are plain JSON with thumbnails drawn from a URL pattern that always exists.

SEO covers both languages on one URL: a build-time Open Graph image, structured data carrying the Bangla name as an alternate, and a sitemap that weights the memorial page highest.