Institutional Web Management Workshop 2012:
Embedding Innovation

Plenary Talk P5: Beyond WCAG: Experiences in Implementing BS 8878

Title:

Beyond WCAG: Experiences in Implementing BS 8878

Session Tag:

#P5

Time:

Tuesday 19^th June 2012 from 11:45-12:30

Speaker:

EA Draffan, University of Southampton.

Abstract:

The University of Southampton embarked on an ambitious plan to investigate the accessibility of not only their websites but also their in-house behind the scenes intranets and other web based products. The Web4All project aimed to encourage web site teams, developers, designers, content managers, academics and all those in communications, to work with available accessibility and usability standards and guidelines such as W3C WCAG 2.0 and BS 8878. However it was found that just attempting to follow checklists and procedures did not necessarily guarantee the main aim of making web products "accessible, consistent, efficient and enjoyable to use". Evaluations showed that recommendations contained 'within' the guidelines and standards had to be better understood with the provision of initial training, iterative web product testing, user participation and amendments to both content and templates provided for the web products.

This talk will discuss the progress of the Web4All project, issues that have arisen and some of the solutions developed over the past two years.

Publicity

This plenary talk was mentioned in a tweet posted on 27 April 2012:
Learn about going Beyond #WCAG and hear Experiences in Implementing #BS8878 at #IWMW12: http://bit.ly/ImRcir Important for UK Web managers