The workshops are being sponsored by the ‘Pan-Disability Partnership Cymru’, a group of voluntary organisations including RNID, RNIB, Scope, SCOVO and Shaw Trust. The broad aims of the partnership are to set the standard for inclusive good practice and to pilot new ways of supporting disabled people into education, employment or further education.

At present a large proportion of the disabled community is excluded from using the internet due to the barriers that are presented through poor web site design. Removing these barriers will give disabled people greater access to the web.

Problems many disabled people experience when using web sites include too many links and graphics, and small text that can sometimes be difficult to read. This means technology such as screen readers, meant to aid access to web sites for disabled users, simply will not work barring them from accessing the full potential of many web sites.

It is estimated that there are around 9 million registered disabled people in the UK with an annual spending power of £50 billion, so the enormous benefits of making web sites as accessible as possible, are clear.

Poorly designed web sites may immediately exclude a significant proportion of potential customers from a business making it so difficult they give up and go elsewhere. A web site that is well designed and is user friendly will encourage increased customer confidence in the company.

The workshops come after warnings from disability groups that many web sites could be in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). The DDA sets out the right of individuals not to encounter unjustifiable discrimination on account of a disability. The DDA states that disabled customers may be entitled to changes in the way goods and services are supplied, if their disability makes access to them ‘impossible or unreasonably difficult’. This extends to services provided by web sites.

The Making IT Accessible (MITA Cymru) workshops will give web designers help and advice on making web sites easier to use and more accessible to people with disabilities.

Dr. James Waddell, e-Commerce Innovation Centre at Cardiff University says: “If Wales wants to be a leader in net-economy, then Welsh businesses need to lead the way by making their web sites accessible for all.”

Liz Davies, PdP Cymru Co-ordinator, says: “This is an exciting and innovative project which the Pan-disability Partnership Cymru is proud to be a part of. There is a great need to change the culture and mindset surrounding the issues of making web sites accessible. We hope MITA Cymru will be successful in achieving this.”

Notes to editors

- The workshops are taking place in Cardiff on 3rd June and Llandudno on 4th June. It is also planned for further workshops to take place in autumn this year. For more information please email info@mitacymru.org.uk



- Case Studies
Antony is deaf and uses Typetalk, a specialist relay service for deaf and hard of hearing people. He says he cannot apply online for a bank account or book a holiday. He says textboxes are not large enough to put in the prefix number for Typetalk meaning he is barred from doing things like booking holidays through the internet.

Stuart is partially sighted and says when there are too many links on a page it can be confusing. Also many links often do not lead anywhere which is hugely frustrating.

- MITA Cymru is a creative action partnership, delivering the training. Their main aim is to promote the adoption of best practice web site design that enables accessibility for all. The partnership consists of DMAG (Digital Medial Access Group at Dundee University), eCIC (eCommerce Innovation Centre, at Cardiff University) and PdP Cymru (Pan-disability Partnership Cymru).

- RNID is the largest charity representing the 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK. As a membership charity, we aim to achieve a radically better quality of life for deaf and hard of hearing people. We do this in the following ways:
- Campaigning and lobbying to change laws and government policies.
- Challenging negative perceptions around deafness and hearing loss.
- Providing information and raising awareness of deafness, hearing loss and tinnitus.
- Training courses and consultancy on deafness and disability.
- Communication services including sign language interpreters.
- Training of interpreters, lipspeakers and speech-to-text operators.
- Seeking lasting change in education for deaf children and young people.
- Employment programmes to help deaf people into work.
- Care services for deaf and hard of hearing people with additional needs.
- Typetalk, the national telephone relay service for deaf and hard of hearing people.
- Equipment and products for deaf and hard of hearing people.