Close your eyes

A nice lady from RNIB came to our office to talk about the websites we manage and how we can better structure our sites to aid navigation by the blind and partially sighted. It's something I'd looked into before and I've already taken some steps to make our sites more accessible, but it was good to have finally have someone in front of me who could codify exactly what needs to be done. The event yielded two surprises. Firstly that she rated our sites as well above average - pleasingly enough, and forgive me if I seem to toot my own horn a little here, what she thought was good was the direct result of my handiwork, and what was bad was either related to areas outside of my control (though not for long), or else was a due to the interference of the marketing department (I told them, dammit!). We're not perfect by a long shot, but we're a lot closer than I'd thought we'd be. Secondly she was surprised that I was so responsive to her suggestions. I spent pretty much the whole session taking notes and agreeing that most of her recommendations were jolly good ideas and that I'd be only to happy to implement them. Apparently that's not the usual state of affairs and I really don't understand why that should be so.

I have a bad tendency to be somewhat dismissive of the work that my company does, being as it's largely sport related and thus something I find crushingly dull. But I do take my work seriously, and I do care about the end results (and I can be quite passionate about them too, as our marketing department have discovered to their cost). Ensuring the sites are as accessible as possible should be the least that we can do. That other people should think differently is something I can't begin to fathom.

The day ended with a fascinating demonstration of screen reader software that I found particularly eye opening (pardon the phrase). For the first time I began to understand just how liberating technology is, and just how usable computers (even Windows based systems) can be for the blind. It's certainly something I intend to bear in mind in my future endeavours. I wish the lady from the RNIB the very best and hope that she is able to persuade others in future likewise.