Accessibility Services
A significant proportion of your customers or users may have problems using your products or services through some sort of disability. These disabilities include dyslexia, visual impairments, deafness, physical handicaps and so on. For your customers or users, this can lead to lower productivity, and reduced job-satisfaction. Designing 'accessible' software, products and services makes business and ethical sense. We are one of Europe's leading research centres into disabilities and we are actively involved with the European Secretariat for the Design for All e-Accessibility Network.
Drawing on this expertise we can:
Advise you how to 'design for all' - how to set up a project to ensure that accessibility is a key goal from the beginning and an achievement at the end.
Gather information from disabled users to inform your designs and technical specifications.
Prototype user interface designs with accessibility as a key criterion and get early feedback from disabled users;
Deal with accessibility issues and queries from developers as they arise during development;
Evaluate your current systems against international standards and guidelines to determine how well your current systems comply.
Evaluate designs and systems with disabled users - using their assistive technologies - to expose accessibility problems and make concrete recommendations on how to overcome them.
Provide strategic and concrete recommendations to move you forward as effectively as possible;
Train your development staff to 'Design for all'.
Over the years our staff have worked in a range of sectors including finance, retail, telecommunications, government, and charities.
To discuss your needs please contact:Dr Panayiotis Zaphiris
Centre for HCI Design
School of Informatics
City University
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
Tel: +44 (0)20 7040 8168
Fax: +44 (0)20 7040 8859
Email: zaphiri@soi.city.ac.uk