UK businesses are losing out on huge sums of money – potentially totalling billions of pounds – by failing to make their websites accessible to users with access needs, new research claims.
Published by disability consultancy Freeney Williams, the Click-Away Pound (CAP) Survey assessed the “online shopping experience of customers with disabilities, and the costs to business of ignoring them.”
A series of five new audio-based video games for blind and visually impaired users are being designed, after a crowdfunding campaign to support the project achieved over 150% of its target funding.
The games, including versions of classic arcade title ‘Frogger’ and a cricket game, will be available on mobile devices, tablet computers and desktop computers, through the iOS and Andriod operating systems, as well as Windows PC.
Google Maps app now tells users whether some locations are wheelchair-accessible, thanks to the efforts of a Google employee in his spare time.
Rio Akasaka, a product manager for cloud storage service Google Drive, undertook the project using his ‘20% time’ – a well-known Google employee policy that allows staff to spend 20 per cent of their time working on projects unrelated to their role at the company.
At the end of July, the National Health Service (NHS) Accessible Information Standard was implemented throughout England. This means that any organisation providing NHS care or adult social care is now legally obliged to provide information in accessible formats, so that people with a disability or impairment (those who may not be able to access or read text and information in the traditional form) have the same access to health information as any other NHS user.
This includes an obligation for organisations to provide alternative information formats to meet individuals’ requirements, including Braille, electronic and audio formats.
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