JODI MATTES WEB ACCESSIBILITY AWARD 2005
The Pewsey Heritage Centre website as designed and developed by Gopher Systems, and funded by the "Window on Wiltshire" Libraries & Heritage branch at Wiltshire County Council has been awarded the 2005 Jodi Mattes Web Accessibility Award for best W3C accessibility compliant low budget website that falls under the umbrella of Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
The Award
The Jodi Mattes Web Accessibility Award was established in 2003, European Year of Disabled People, to celebrate the most accessible museum, gallery and heritage website.
The Award is for a museum, gallery, library, archive or heritage website which demonstrates active commitment to meeting web accessibility standards, involves users and develops practical and imaginative ways of making cultural and learning resources accessible to disabled people. The Awards are for websites developed in England.
Jodi Mattes
The Awards are offered in memory of Jodi Mattes, who worked at the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the British Museum.
Amongst many other things, Jodi worked to ensure that the British Museum's COMPASS website was accessible to all. She developed a text-only version of COMPASS, organised testing of the system by blind and partially sighted users, worked with the system developers on changes informed by the testing process and specified visitor desks accessible to wheelchair users. She also worked on accessible text descriptions, which has fed into the development of content on children's COMPASS. Jodi's work has inspired other museums and galleries to develop accessible websites.
The 2005 Awards
In 2005, two Awards were handed out - one for the low budget website which best demonstrates what can be achieved through commitment by smaller organisations, and one Award for excellence open to all organisations. Pewsey Heritage Centre was awarded the Award for best low budget website.
"This award is particularly important for Gopher Systems, as is clearly shows our clients that you do not have to have a massive budget to achieve a good-looking, really useable, W3C Accessibility Complaint website.
Building a Compliant website is time consuming and requires a lot of attention to detail - and it is the extra development time/cost that prevents most companies & organisations from agreeing to go ahead with a Compliant build.
We have achieved an award-winning Compliant website for Pewsey Heritage Centre on the tiniest of budgets. I hope this will encourage other companies and organisations to examine the issue of Accessibility Compliance and to understand that a little bit of money can go a long way towards making your website accessible for all people. It is an added bonus that by following the strict technical guidelines given by the W3C, we can present your company's website to a much larger customer base (NOT just those with disabilities) as by default the site ends up being more cross-browser/cross-platform compatible."
Kelly Hearne
Account/Project Manager, Gopher Systems
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) co-ordinated the Award, in association with the Museums Computer Group and Leicester University Museum Studies Department. The ceremony took place on 12 April 2005 at the Cass Business School at City University in London.
City University's Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design was commissioned to undertake user testing of nominations.
What is it all about?
Many disabled people face substantial access barriers to websites. The Awards aim to raise awareness of the need for inclusive web design, E-government 2005 policies - which require that public sector websites meet world web accessibility standards (Level AA); and the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) - which requires that reasonable adjustments are made to provide equal access to websites for disabled people.
Links
Pewsey Heritage Centre
"Window on Wiltshire", Wiltshire County Council
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA)
Cass Business School
City University London
Leicester University Department of Museum Studies
W3C Web Content Accessiblity Guidelines