Catriona Campbell, our CEO and an increasingly popular speaker,
has been busy presenting to packed audiences at The New Media Age
Show on both usability and accessibility. Those of you that attended
would have heard the interesting case studies and offerings that
usability and industry experts had to offer.
Catriona was thrown in at the deep end, discussing the importance
of usability to 'creatives.' Catriona stood out amongst the 'creative
teams' sighing and groaning at her insistence of designs, which
are usable. After explaining that a usable site does not necessarily
stunt all creativity the crowd began to relax. As Joe Noburn of
The Royal Bank of Scotland pointed out, designers should still:
'push the boundaries. You can still use rotating banners, Pop-Ups,
Pop-Unders' DHTML, and Flash but only if it has a purpose.' The boundaries between a usable site and an accessible site became
blurred, but Catriona hastened to add that a usable site might not
necessarily be accessible and vice versa.
Catriona also chaired a panel on which Donna Smilie (RNIB) Helen
Baker (MD, Lastminute.com) and Joe Norburn (Royal Bank of Scotland)
also participated in.
The panel highlighted the importance of accessibility and warned
that it was only a matter of time before a big case comes to the
UK courts similar to that of the Sydney Paralympics Website being
inaccessible to its' audience of disabled users . The organisers
of the Olympic Games are being sued somewhere in the region of six
million Australian dollars, and UK organisations could face a similar
punishment. It seems unbelievable that the web, although designed
by Tim Berners- Lee to be used by everyone, is still problematic
for 1 in 7 users who have some form of disability.
That translates to a potential spending power of £50 billion.
Considering that designing a sight with accessibility and usability
in mind has only a nominal cost and frequent testing is only a fraction
of the amount that a business can save it seems strange that businesses
do not offer an accessible and usable site to their customers.
Catriona acts as a representative professional for the field of
Usability on the E-Envoy's Government Framework Committee and is
setting down guidelines for government sites and also advises on
International Standards Committees in the field of Human Centred
Design. We are therefore well positioned to inform you of any new
developments in the accessibility world.
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