Web site usability presentation

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RNIB Campaign for Good Web Design Julie
Howell Digital Policy Development
Manager julie.howell_at_rnib.org.uk www.rnib.org.uk/
webaccesscentre
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(No Transcript)
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1995 Disability Discrimination Act and the web a
brief history

• October 1999 DDA Section 21 came into effect
• February 2002 DDA Code of Practice (revised)
• July 2003 RNIB issued county court proceedings
• April 2004 Disability Rights Commission Formal
  Investigation into Web Accessibility report
• April 2006 PAS 78 Guide to Good Practice in
  Commissioning Accessible Websites

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Publicly Available Specification 78 Guide to
Good Practice in Commissioning Accessible Websites

• Its a guide to good practice for anyone
  responsible for commissioning a website
• It was commissioned by the Disability Rights
  Commission (www.drc-gb.org)
• It was published by the British Standards
  Institution (BSI)
• It was written by a panel of eight industry
  experts Abilitynet, BBC, Cabinet
• Office, IBM, RNIB, Tesco, Uni College London,
  Usability Professionals Asso,
• Its a specification (not a Standard), a should
  not a must
• It suggests a process that may be implemented to
  maximise site usability (and customer reach)
• In the absence of county court case law its best
  UK guide to meeting your legal duty to disabled
  customers online

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Who is PAS 78 for?

• Website commissioners
• Website owners
• Businesses that have websites, particularly
  public-facing sites or employee-facing sites
• New Media agencies, web developers etc. should
  familiarise themselves with PAS 78 as its likely
  to pop up in design contracts
• Everyone involved in website production at any
  level will find PAS 78 interesting, however the
  primary audience is public-facing businesses,
  especially those who know the law requires them
  to make their sites accessible to disabled people
  but are unsure how to go about it

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How was PAS 78 produced?

• DRC commissioned BSI to produce PAS 78
• BSI commissioned RNIB (Julie Howell) to be the
  Technical Author of PAS 78 (to research and write
  the first draft)
• PAS 78 Steering Group
• Abilitynet, BBC, Cabinet Office, DRC, IBM, RNIB,
  UCL, Tesco.com, UPA ( WAI, Adobe (Macromedia),
  Mencap)
• PAS 78 Review Panel
• 120 organisations/individuals
• 188 pages of comments
• Entire process 16 months
• PAS 78 will be reviewed in March 2008, at which
  point it could, in theory, be developed further
  and become a full British Standard

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What are the main principles of PAS 78?

• Conform to existing web standards
• WAI WCAG, ATAG, UAAG (www.w3.org/wai)
• Software developer guidelines for Flash, PDF,
  etc.
• Additional accessibility provisions are optional
• Develop an accessibility policy and publish an
  accessibility statement
• User test early and frequently, involve disabled
  people
• Thats pretty much it

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How to get a copy of PAS 78

• Order PAS 78 from BSI www.bsi-global.com/pas78
• Price 30 VAT
• Formats Print, PDF, braille, audio, DAISY,
  easy-to-read, Welsh

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Case study Legal General

• Setting up an accessible life insurance
  website saw Legal Generals sales and online
  traffic figures surge and also made savings in
  maintenance costs. They assembled a team to
  decide what they wanted the site to do and how it
  might achieved. They also brought in key
  stakeholders and disabled people to advise on the
  best possible approaches.
• Legal General say the site has
• almost doubled the number of visitors seeking
  quotes and buying insurance packages online
• cut maintenance costs by 66
• Provided 100 return on investment in less than
  12 months
• increased search engine traffic
• decreased content management workload and loading
  time
• improved the sites Google ranking
• improved browser compatibility for more than
  13,000 visitors per month without a single
  complaint. They say theyre now working to expand
  their other websites to implement their new
  accessibility standards.

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(No Transcript)
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RNIB Campaign for Good Web Design Julie
Howell Digital Policy Development
Manager julie.howell_at_rnib.org.uk www.rnib.org.uk/
webaccesscentre