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Introduction

Accessibility Update - 24/07/2007

The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is working to improve the accessibility of this website. Details about the improvement project will be published here, so please bookmark this page.

Nomensa, a specialist accessibility and usability agency (www.nomensa.com), has completed an accessibility audit of this website. A sample number of pages were audited against the globally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0).

The audit identified a number of problems with the accessibility of the website. A programme of accessibility improvements has now been developed to ensure the website complies with government guidelines.

The improvements will be developed as follows:

Step One. Make the necessary accessibility improvements to the core website. This will consist of both technical and content work streams. They will address the underlying design, code and content issues that have been identified as requiring attention to meet the appropriate standards.

Step Two. An improvement plan for the externally hosted publications website will be put in place to ensure this area of the BERR site meets all current government requirements. This work is dependent on the work carried out on the core site.

Step Three. New templates for the externally hosted website search facility will be integrated into the service.

To help ensure this three-step process meets government guidelines the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform will:

• Build high quality, accessible templates;
• Integrate the templates into the Content Management System;
• Provide training for all website content editors, to ensure accessibility targets are maintained going forward;
• Manage accessibility improvements into the future to include new and emerging accessibility features.

Progress

The improvement work has started:

• The technical work stream of Step One was completed in May 2007. The technical work stream delivered high quality, accessible templates integrated into the Content Management System (CMS) used by the Department.
• Training for all Departmental content editors was delivered in July 2007. This will ensure new content built in the CMS meets accessibility standards.
• Planning for the review and editing of existing web pages, to implement accessibility improvements, is currently taking place. It is anticipated that the review of legacy content will be completed by the end of 2007.