Equality and Human Rights Commission

Are you driving your business forward with the power of accessibility?

The digital world presents a number of obstacles to disabled people. Under the Equality Act 2010, organisations have a legal obligation to their customers, both internally and externally, to ensure that all their IT channels and applications are accessible to disabled people who may use a variety of access devices and equipment.

Making your website accessible to all

The Equality and Human Rights Commission, AbilityNet and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT have developed the only product of its kind in the UK - the Web Accessibility Essentials e-learning course. This 80 minute, cost effective, on-line course is designed to equip individuals and businesses interested in accessibility best practice with a fundamental understanding of digital inclusion.

Why?

Completing the Web Accessibility Essentials e-learning course will lead to a valuable certificate of achievement, enabling those who complete the course and complete a short test to share their skills amongst colleagues and other designers, developers and web site producers. Web Accessibility Essentials provides tools to help you test accessibility at all stages of web site development and provides recognised training standards for identifying usability problems and how to easily solve them.

An accessible website simply makes good business sense by:

• ensuring that all visitors enjoy a 35% quicker and easier user experience
• opening up new markets amongst UK’s 12 million disabled consumers with spending power exceeding £80 billion
• increasing on-line traffic and sales by 90% or more*
• securing legal compliance with confidence
• enhancing visibility – 50% improvement in SEO rankings may be achievable*
• decreasing maintenance costs – a saving of more than 40% in bandwidth costs and a reduction in on-line maintenance by 50% is not unusual*
• affecting the on-line choices of family and friends – positive disabled consumer experience affects those around them
• gaining vital competitive edge over your rivals’ sites – accessible sites are simply more intuitive for everyone
• improving your brand’s integrity and reputation
• future-proofing your web presence for mobile internet access.

*Source: Legal and General

Order now

Order the courseware by calling: 0330 123 9194 or email waesupport@hq.bcs.org.uk.

Find out more at: www.bcs.org/wae