Accessibility Services for Multi-channel Business
Why Accessibility?
Accessibility is a hot topic for multi-channel organisations and particularly for the e-business professionals responsible for an organisation’s web presence. The need to make websites accessible was mandated by the Disability Discrimination Act of 1999, but beyond mere legal compliance and keeping your customers with disability happy there are many more commercial benefits that can accrue from a well-architected accessibility solution. These include:
- Improved usability encouraging more customers to visit more and buy more
- Enabling the business to reach out to a wider audience
- Readiness of content and structure for new multi-channel media such as 3G phones, mobile EpoS, kiosks and interactive TV
- Reduced bandwidth requirements, often resulting in significant cost savings
- Easier site maintenance
- Faster performance
- Resilience to technology developments
Achieving Accessibility Through Web Standards
Web Standards that guarantee accessibility and usability already exist. While these standards have been in place for several years, the vast majority of websites have been developed without employing the standards and as a result have poor accessibility and usability. The outcome is that many organisations now face a costly rework programme to make their web presence accessible.
IT departments have to squeeze out as much efficiency as possible. With a large web presence, the costs of hosting, developing and maintaining web sites can be considerable. Bringing data from back end systems to the presentation tier and showing it in a variety of formats can also be costly if not done efficiently.
Many approaches to improving accessibility look only at the interface. IVIS Group’s approach is different. We look at the cause of poor accessibility across the development process and across the entire solution architecture. This not only improves accessibility today but keeps the site accessible as new content, features or entirely new sites are developed.
Fortunately, Web Standards also allow content to be developed as optimally as possible, whilst retaining the content’s accessibility, flexibility and maintainability. However, even though accessibility is a legal requirement and many other benefits can accrue, few organisations have the knowledge to do this effectively without incurring large costs. This is where IVIS Group can help.
IVIS Group Accessibility Services
We recognise that each organisation has different levels of in-house skills able to address accessibility issues. To ensure we can offer a level of service to clients that matches their individual requirements we have developed a range of services that organisation can choose from to improve their accessibility.
These range from strategy consulting services evaluating and auditing live sites, design documents and plans to technical implementation services. All services can be biased towards hands-on assistance or a more advisory approach if the prime goal is to improve in-house capabilities.
Website Accessibility Audits
Is your existing website accessible? What can be done if it isn’t? If you are worried about your website (whether it is live or about to go live) and not sure whether it has been correctly built to be accessible, then we can guide you through the process of identifying and fixing any issues. Our site review services are the first step in this process – they will identify if there is a problem and how serious it is.
Consultants from our user interface team, who have amassed considerable expertise in accessibility and usability issues, conduct the reviews. We offer a range of review services to suit your circumstances – they can be tailored to match the complexity of your site and your stated vision and accessibility targets. All reviews place great importance on understanding your business vision in order to put our analysis in perspective.
Design Accessibility Audits
Have you planned for accessibility in your website designs? What can be done if you haven’t? There is no need to wait until you launch your website before examining it for accessibility issues. The IVIS Group approach is that prevention is better than cure.
IVIS Group analysts and architects have considerable experience of getting to grips with other people’s designs and architectures. Our Design Evaluation services are aimed at websites in development - we review your designs and plans for the website and discuss them with your system architects. And don’t worry if you haven’t documented many of your design decisions – in these situations we can learn much from workshops with your design team.
Accessibility Training and Mentoring
If you prefer to keep development in-house, then our training and mentoring programmes will bring your team rapidly up to speed on all the issues, the standards, processes and technology to adopt and how to execute them. Training and mentoring can be provided on site or in our training facility.
Development Services
We design and develop standards-based accessibility solutions that are fast-loading, style-sheet driven and user-friendly. Our developers can work for you as a stand-alone resource or can be embedded within your existing team for the duration of the project.
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