Hassell Inclusion is a new inclusion and accessibility consultancy founded and directed by internationally renowned accessibility expert Professor Jonathan Hassell. Hassell Inclusion provides: strategic thought-leadership in inclusion and accessibility; training and consultancy to embed inclusion in organisations’ business-as-usual; leadership to set national and international inclusion standards; facilitation of innovation in inclusion.
To mark the first Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), here’s a blog on how to write effective accessibility statements based on the guidance in BS 8878. Find out who the audience for statements are, the main reasons most accessibility statements don’t work, and tips for how to get it right…
There is a strong link between inclusion, user-focus and the delivery of effective websites. Industry feedback suggests BS 8878 is enabling large and small businesses to produce effective websites, rather than just accessible ones. Based on this, Hassell Inclusion and Coolfields Consulting have created Website in 1 Day – a bold new option for helping small businesses create their own effective websites in record time…
Why is embedding web accessibility into your organisation’s culture and processes so important? And what do organisations who have done this using BS 8878 say are the benefits? In this presentation Jonathan Hassell, the Standard’s lead-author, answers these questions and poses one of his own: should BS 8878 become an International Standard, and if so, how?
Want to know what BS 8878 is quickly? Here’s a video summary of BS 8878′s production process in 88 seconds, to give organisations a quick taste…
At CSUN 2012 this week, I’ll be presenting case studies of organisations which are implementing BS 8878 – the British web accessibility standard which gives organisations a framework to embed accessibility and inclusive design strategically into their business-as-usual processes. The Standard is already helping organisations across the UK embed accessibility within their culture. And calls have been made for it to become an International Standard. So, can a Standard from Britain really be key part of the solution to greater accessibility worldwide?
On Saturday a Californian court refused to dismiss a suit by deaf Californians against CNN for its refusal to add closed captioning to news video clips on its website. In this blog, Jonathan Hassell, who managed the introduction of captions to BBC iPlayer, looks at what news sites would need to do to introduce captions, identifies the key issues affecting users and broadcasters’ costs and USPs, and suggests a way for both sides of the suit to win…
RNIB have just brought legal action against BMI-baby for its slowness to improve the accessibility of its website. In this article, Jonathan Hassell gives his views on whether a new ‘naming and shaming’ culture is emerging, what’s likely to happen next in the RNIB-BMI-baby case, what BMI-baby should do right now, and how fixing website accessibility without having a longer-term strategy may store up problems for the future…
Part Two of my popular accessibility myths blog clears out more false assumptions for the start of 2012.
Being demolished this time: Accessibility and inclusive design are anti-creative; Accessibility and inclusive design help everyone; Disabled people use assistive technologies; Accessibility’s just about blind people – now for platforms; Text is more accessible than other media; The most important accessibility requirement for images is alt-text; The most important people in accessibility are developers; It doesn’t matter if your mobile site/app isn’t accessible, just as long as the desktop version is; Websites have to be accessible from the start; and BS8878 is just for huge companies…
It’s the time of year when web accessibility advocates tend to produce accessibility myths blogs. As nothing stays still on the web, and many of these blogs are rather old, it’s important that our understanding of accessibility myths moves on to.
So, here’s Part One of some accessibility myths I’d like to expose to clear out the cobwebs before 2012. My aim is to challenge some of the accepted assumptions many accessibility advocates hold which I believe are really not serving us, or the disabled and elderly people we are trying to help, well at all.
Being demolished this time: What disabled and elderly people need is accessibility; What website creators need is WCAG 2.0; The best business case for accessibility is the Law; Accessibility is cheap… no, it’s expensive… no, it’s cheap…; We won’t get enough Return on Investment; and If you build it (to be accessible) then they’ll come…
To really know if a website is accessible you need to user-test it with its disabled and elderly audiences. That’s one of the key recommendations of British Standard BS8878 which aims to increase understanding of the importance of accessibility and best practice ways of how to ensure it across digital web production for an audience of non-technical website and app creators. To really know if BS8878 is being effective in communicating those messages you need to user-test it with website creators and others in the web production community. So, to mark BS8878’s one year anniversary, its lead-author, Jonathan Hassell of Hassell Inclusion, has done just that, as well as asking major voices from the UK accessibility scene to give their thoughts. And the results are in…