Is your company intranet and software compliant?
Equality Act
At our 3rd annual ErgonoMix event on September 12th, we welcomed technology access specialist: Andrea
Kennedy; director of Destek ATS Ltd who discussed the Equality Act (2010) to ensure you are all up to date.
Andrea provides good quality accessibility services in the UK, Europe, Turkey and EMEA and advises on all aspects of accessibility. This includes physical building accessibility, web & software accessible development and auditing, assistive technology training & assessments and a supported employment service. Andrea is highly experienced in developing technological services for Not-for-Profit organisations and Charities both within the UK and in Poland.
“The Web is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. It is essential that all environments be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. In particular, accessible Web can also help people with disabilities more actively participate in society. This workshop will demonstrate how people with disabilities interact with the web and how an inaccessible site can have a substantial impact on their daily life and also impact on the economy”.
Some of the main points Andrea covered on the day were:
• The types of access and why they are required, including how to ensure your environment, buildings and technologies will allow disabled access.
• The law, with some examples of accessibility court cases in the UK and their outcome.
• Compelling business case arguments for enviromental access.
• An interactive workshop covering how people with disabilities use the web. Experience voice activation software for people with mobility impairments, screen reading technologies for people with visual impairments and switch access technologies for those that have severely impaired motor abilities.
If you would like more information on Andrea Kennedy’s accessible technology support, please us our quick contact form.
One thought on “Is your company intranet and software compliant?”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Reblogged this on Jody-Marie Davies and commented:
Having taken on a new marketing project with Healthy Workstations Ltd based in Neath, I attended their annual ‘ErgonoMix’ event last month, which they hosted on the outskirts of Cardiff. Besides product demonstrations, a number of guest speakers carried out presentations based on their area of expertise including Technology Access Specialist: Andrea Kennedy. Although her presentation on accessible technology was primarily promoted to consider users with disabilities both within out outside of the organisation, there’s a real marketing spin on what she does with her business: Desktek.
Andrea mentioned that there are around 10 million disabled people who spend around 80 billion every year in the UK, so if you’re not utilising you business website, how much revenue are you missing out on? Quite a lot I image, as she claimed a mere 44% of organisations have accessible websites; so this is seriously something you should be looking into. Get yourself a competitive advantage!
Not all images download for a number of reasons… slow connection or unless you’re on their ‘safe sender’ list, what about emails? – they don’t always display. Does you include alternative references to images on your website and e-shots? You should. From a marketing perspective not only is this important for search engine optimization but also for the purposes of conversion.
Its not all about alternative references to images and captions for video’s however. We have an aging population; if your text is too small or uses a text style that isn’t very clear to read… how user-friendly is your site? But its not just the ageing population; we have an outstanding amount of people who don’t have perfect eyesight.
Its suggested that about 3/4 of internets surfers now view websites and emails on their smartphone or tablet too; so its not just the people without perfect eyesight you might be excluding but mobile users too. If you don’t have a mobile site, then it can look tiny on an iphone!
Did you know that men are more likely to be colour blind than women? Think about the colours you use; coloured text on coloured backgrounds – what is easier on the eye (there’s a little science to this)?
Think about your target audience – I doubt many of you can exclude this emerging list of people from being targeted customers.