BSI Experiences Accessibility In Action - 01/06/07
The British Standards Institute (BSI) said they have been “enlightened” by their recent visit to the Shaw Trust pan-disability testing suite in South Wales.
BSI are the latest corporate organisation to make the trip to Wales to spend time with the accessibility specialists and disabled web users as part of the Shaw Trust's open door policy. Everyone who commissions a Shaw Trust Web Accreditation; the UK's fastest growing web accessibility testing service, is invited to see their own work being tested live while sitting with a team of people with a wide range of disabilities.
“To say the experience was enlightening would be a massive understatement,” said Steve Corney, Group Web Manager of BSI. “We can begin to move forward in terms of making BSI's websites more accessible.”
Senior members of the BSI Group have already had accessibility awareness training in the past year. While this training serves as an excellent first step they told us that no amount of training comes close to this experience.
“We knew that the best way to teach people about web accessibility wasn't to tell them, it was to show them. We've had an open door policy since the beginning,” said Gavin Evans of the Shaw Trust.
The Shaw Trust Web Accreditation was launched in 2004. The service, which was co-designed and co-developed by CDSM and the Shaw Trust, has experienced enormous growth, due to the unique mix of skills shared by both organisations.“The service is unique. No other organisation we know of will, as part of the normal process, invite you to sit with the entire testing team including senior auditors and discuss a live audit with you as part of the normal process.” said Grant Broome, CDSM's Web Accessibility Manager and co-founder of the service.
“If it helps to make a positive change to the way people build websites then it's worth it,” added Mark Matthews, a blind computer user and one of the testing team at the Shaw Trust.
The staff at BSI said would like to thank all the members of the testing team for their “time, patience and expertise.”
The service complies with the recommendations set out in BSI's “PAS78: a guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites”Find out more about Shaw Trust Web Accreditation or contact Grant Broome at grant.broome@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
Halton CLCs Latest to Join Pedagogue Community - 25/05/07
CDSM is delighted to welcome the Grange and Saints Peter and Paul City Learning Centres (CLCs) to the Pedagogue Community.
Halton CLCs see Pedagogue as an ideal tool to build rich interactive content that their students can benefit from.
Pedagogue Community itself is a grass roots movement of teachers coordinated by CLCs and LEAs to produce quality, accessible, standards conformant learning content. The content will meet the needs and requirements of the national curriculum.
Currently the Pedagogue Community includes 12 CLCs and LEAs (Local Education Authorities).
“I always had in my head a target of 20 [CLC Pedagogue Community members] by the start of the new year, but I thought that was a bit ambitious,” said Kevin Palmer, Director of Salford CLCs and one of the founders of Pedagogue Community. “It seems that it is not!”
The fast growth in the community is quickly giving critical mass to the Pedagogue Community concept. CDSM anticipates that the community will make a real impact in eLearning in 2007. The easy availability of high quality curriculum content produced by teachers for teachers is a fundamental shift in how eLearning resources are created and distributed in the United Kingdom.
Find out more about Pedagogue or contact Dan Sivak at dan.sivak@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
Mid & North Wales Local Authorities join the People and Places Community - 21/03/07
Powys and Denbighshire Local Authorities have joined Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire in providing their citizens with learning disabilities access to People and Places, the secure and accessible online community application from CDSM.
Wales' People and Places is going from strength to strength. It was launched in 2006 and is attracting attention from Local Authorities all over Wales. It is also beginning to make in-roads in England.
Dan Sivak, Managing Director at CDSM said, “Its great news that we now have authorities across Wales joining the People and Places community. It is important that the service has value for all service providers and users across Wales and that no regional features has being overlooked. It is accurate to now describe the People and Places community as active and that it is a strong example of Wales' Local Authorities' commitment in marrying innovative, web-technology applications and professional best practice. This will add great value to service providers and service users alike”.
Rick Wilson, CEO of Community Lives Consortium in Swansea, was equally delighted, stating, “We are expecting the number of Local Authorities joining the scheme to grow quite rapidly this year. Powys and Denbighshire joining us is means we are now well on course for 12 Welsh Local Authorities by the end of 2007.”
Find out more about People and Places or contact Debbie Marshall at debbie.marshall@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
Pedagogue Launched Today Across Manchester and Salford Local Authorities - 21/03/07
Pedagogue is CDSM's new collaborative eLearning content development tool. It was launched today in 6 City Learning Centres across Manchester and Salford Local Authorities.
Pedagogue's Product Manager, Cathy Sivak, said at the launch, “we are very proud of this product. It offers sophisticated yet easy to use content development capability to teachers and trainers alike.
“We trialled Pedagogue in beta phase and our partners and customers have expressed how happy they are with it by ordering the service immediately. We are now busy implementing Pedagogue services across organisations in several UK regions.”
“We're really proud of Pedagogue... it's fab!,” she said.
Organisations such as Middlesex University and North Tyneside CLCs have also joined “The Pedagogue Community” and will soon be launching their own customised versions of Pedagogue.
Andrew Evans, Specifications and Standards Consultant at CDSM, said, “The challenge for LEAs, CLCs and School Improvement Services is for staff to work together to provide content for all subject areas across the key stages. CDSM believe we can facilitate this with the Pedagogue Community, which is our innovative approach to this particular challenge. The Pedagogue Community is a ‘web 2.0’ approach to content development with individuals collaborating in creating curriculum content.”
The Low-down on Pedagogue:
Pedagogue is a modular, interoperable application that can plug and play with other learning platforms and environments. It produces conformant SCORM 2004 (1.3) Learning Objects and can deliver content across multiple platforms. These Learning Objects are engaging and accessible multimedia content. The application interface is highly accessible, enabling access to almost all IT users.
Find out more about Pedagogue or contact us at pedagogue@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
Carmarthenshire Local Authority joins the People and Places Community - 16/02/07
Carmarthenshire Local Authority has joined Swansea and Neath and Port Talbot in providing their citizens with learning disabilities access to People and Places, the secure and accessible online community application from CDSM.
People and Places is going from strength to strength. It was launched in 2006 and is attracting attention from Local Authorities all over Wales. It is also beginning to make in-roads in England.
Debbie Marshall, People and Places manager at CDSM said, “I am delighted that Carmarthenshire has decided to join us, as they are an active and innovative authority that will add great insight and value to this important service”.
Rick Wilson, CEO of Community Lives Consortium in Swansea, was equally delighted, stating, “We are expecting the number of Local Authorities joining the scheme to grow quite rapidly this year. Carmarthenshire joining us is a great boost and validation of our hard work”.
CDSM expects to have 12 Local Authorities in Wales participating in the People and Places community by the end of 2007. The more service users in the community, the more choice, opportunity and value they will have in terms of the service it provides.
Find out more about People and Places or contact Debbie Marshall at debbie.marshall@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM and Salford LEA are joined by Middlesex University in successful Business Development Partnership Proposal (BDP²) - 05/01/07
CDSM and Salford were joined by Middlesex University, London's largest university, as a business development partner in a role that is designed to represent the needs and aspirations of Higher Education and, specifically, work based learning of which Middlesex University is a recognised national centre of excellence.
In order for the partnership to be advocated by the University, CDSM won a commercial, competitive tendering and presentation process beating larger, traditional VLE providers.
The opportunity arose because a number of schools within the University were concerned about its current Virtual Learning Environment not being utilised by its 20,000 full and part time adult learners.
CDSM and Salford demonstrated its innovative personal learning environment proposition and via Salford's current implementation, they demonstrated the platform's ability to deliver to the potential volume of students that Middlesex University represents.
Salford LEA's representative Dr Kevin Palmer said, “After 2 years of development, testing and implementation our partnership is ready to demonstrate its difference and its significant ability to the UK learning community. We are actively putting together further parts to the partnership 'jigsaw puzzle'. We expect to be making regular release statements about similar partnership success over the coming months. The purpose of the Business Development Partnership Proposal - BDP² - is to access specialist representation from learning organisations and authorities to deal with a range of significant learning technology issues. These issues include interoperability, specifications and standards, multi-dimensional platforms, accessibility and usability, alternative run time environments deployments, Web 2.0 technologies and techniques and many other significant social, pedagogic and technological innovations that we are actively engaged in harnessing to create a truly transformational personalised learning platform technology. Our aim for Salford learners is to provide learning platform technology that is best in class for the next phases of BSF (Building Schools for the Future programme) and the 21st century.”
Find out more about CDSM's learning services or contact Mark Ronconi at mark.ronconi@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM and Salford CLCs Partnership Goes from Strength to Strength - 20/11/06
The CDSM and Salford CLCs (This link will open in a new browser window) partnership went from strength to strength recently as Dr Kevin Palmer, Director of Salford CLCs, presented to a large audience of teachers at the North West Education Technology Show at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton.
Kevin Palmer, Director of Salford CLCs, presents at the North West Education Technology Show (this is the caption for the image above).
His presentation explained Salford's Directorate of Children Services's experiences with learning technologies. It also included strategies for procurement of learning technologies for their “Building Schools for the Future phase 3“ programme.
Dr Palmer's presentation was typically provocative and insightful. Judging by the reaction of the audience at the event, it engaged and excited those present. Discussions about how and why learning platforms could and should work for a school and learning authority went on long into the evening of the 15th.
At our joint stand, CDSM and Salford CLCs met with a number of people from a variety of organisations who expressed a desire to join projects and communities where technology and learning could transform their provision and engage with their young people.
Find out more about CDSM's learning services or contact Mark Ronconi at mark.ronconi@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
Legal & General are Committed to Providing Access to their Disabled Customers - 20/11/06
In March 2006, the FTSE 100 company Legal & General, successfully released what is probably the most accessible financial services website in the world.
CDSM tested the company's original insurance applications for their accessibility and usability. The site was then re-developed along the guidelines set out by our recommendations.
Since re-launching their site early this year, Legal & General have enjoyed huge savings in site maintenance and development and a 90% increase in Life Assurance sales online.
In November this year Legal & General was the first Financial Services organisation to achieve the coveted “Shaw Trust Web Accreditation“ in recognition of their commitment to web accessibility. Their group site achieved accreditation in March.
“Because of our close work with the Shaw Trust we have an intimate understanding of the needs of people with a variety of disabilities,” said Grant Broome, CDSM's Web Accessibility Manager. “This enables us to give accurate information to our clients allowing them to meet the specific needs of disabled individuals”.
Find out more about CDSM's accessibility services or contact Grant Broome at grant.broome@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
People and Places Event a Resounding Success - 20/10/06
CDSM in partnership with the City and Council of Swansea (This link will open in a new browser window), Community Lives Consortium (This link will open in a new browser window) and Neath Port Talbot Borough County Council (This link will open in a new browser window) presented the People and Places service to over 20 public and voluntary sector organisations today.
Rick Wilson, CEO of Community Lives Consortium, Swansea , presents People and Places to the delegates. (this is the caption for the image above).
The event was held at the Metropole Hotel in the historic spa town of Llandrindod Wells. Attendees included Learning Disabilities Wales (This link will open in a new browser window and numerous local authorities and service providers.
Managing Director of CDSM, Dan Sivak and Debbie Marshall and Mark Ronconi (Business Development Managers at CDSM) introduced the service with an invitation to those present to participate in something unique for service providers: an online community and portfolio for users with learning disabilities. The service provides a powerful tool for service providers to allow their clients to control how they express themselves in a safe, managed environment. It also enables more effective communication between the service providers and their clients.
The response to the event was extremely positive. The attendees were very receptive to the idea of participation in a pan-Wales roll out of the service.
Contributions and suggestions made by the attendees demonstrated how engaged and enthused they were by the service. A number of further meetings have already been planned with management teams to look at how the service can be adopted in their organisation or community.
Debbie Marshall, Business Development Manager at CDSM, outlines the features of the service (this is the caption for the image above).
“I want to thank everyone who attended, our partners and also the Metropole Hotel,” said Dan Sivak, “The future of People and Places and its benefit to users across Wales is assured in the hands of the enthusiastic professionals that attended today.”
Find out more about People and Places or contact Debbie Marshall at debbie.marshall@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM becomes a Curriculum Online accredited retailer and content provider - 06/10/06
CDSM is proud to announce that they have become a Curriculum Online accredited retailer and content provider (This link will open in a new browser window). Schools and educational organisations around the UK can now use their government e-Learning Credits to buy our GCSE English Online courseware.
Designed to improve pass rates and currently being rolled out to hundreds of schools in the Northwest, GCSE English Online is a flexible and comprehensive resource covering the entire curriculum for Years 10 and 11, at Higher and Foundation levels. It has been designed by English teaching specialists and e-Learning experts to improve attainment levels by delivering student centred, high quality multimedia content. It gives teachers access to an interactive and editable Scheme of Work and 480 hours of lesson plans and resources that cover every minute of every lesson of the AQA's GCSE English curriculum.
CDSM value the opportunity that curriculum online accreditation gives them. “Our GCSE English Online courseware is now likely to sit in front of a wider range of students, enhancing their learning, which is ultimately our aim”, says Cathy Sivak, Director of Quality and Operations.
The evaluation version will be launched next week, providing access to a significant sample of the product and over 200 free GCSE English lesson plans and resources. As soon as the evaluation is launched CDSM will be inviting all the schools and CLCs in the UK to take part.
Find out more about GCSE English Online or contact Mark Ronconi at mark.ronconi@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666 for more information.
BBC "Welsh at home" interactive study course hits a new high! - 29/09/06
The BBC Welsh at Home interactive study course that CDSM designed and built has frequently achieved over 9000 hits per week.
A recent BBC commissioned report has found users responding positively to the course. Learners said the course was fun and had a wide variety of language resources. They remarked on how the site actively involved the adult learner via the use of games, activities and could share their learning experience with their children who study Welsh.
A spokesperson at the BBC said that they were very happy with the publics' response to this new online language tool that enables the study and practice of Welsh language for beginners to advanced speakers.
The course is based within a 3D domestic interior that the learner can explore and discover practical language development tools and resources.
The course is aimed at adults in Wales that have children currently studying Welsh as part of their curriculum. Welsh is a compulsory subject for all pupils in Wales up to 16 years of age.
The innovation behind the course is CDSM's new Adobe Director and Flash multimedia language components. They enable language learners to practice all the necessary language skills from reading, speaking & pronunciation, listening and responding to questions as well as writing exercises that can be emailed to BBC personal tutors.
CDSM's Flash based learning environment is currently being extended via the development of Pedagogue, an eLearning content development tool. Pedagogue will enable the swift authoring of multimedia learning content directly by the client's subject specialists. CDSM sees this as paving the way for clients to originate and manage content while reducing risk and accelerating the delivery of effective, compliant learning materials.
The BBC New media Welsh at Home site received funding from ELWA and was completed February 06.
View the BBC "Welsh at Home" Virtual Home (This link will open in a new browser window)
For more information on CDSM's eLearning services or Pedagogue, please contact Dan Sivak at dan.sivak@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM's Creative Design department publicised by the Independent - 28/09/06
CDSM's recent project with Corus, the new SCRiB website (http://www.scrib.org (This link will open in a new browser window)), has been highlighted by the Independent's environmental journalist, Will Anderson, as a "Great Website". He went on to say, "If your kids aren't convinced about the value of recycling, check out the Tale of Two Cans at www.scrib.org."
The SCRiB website has been receiving incredibly positive feedback from the market since its launch in June earlier this year but this recent endorsement by such a respected journalist has been a significant reward for CDSM's Creative Design Team.
Often overshadowed by CDSM's eLearning and Web Accessibility departments, the company's creative design team has always been a fundamental element in the growing success of CDSM and it is great to see the team receiving the public praise they so richly deserve.
It is safe to say that the design team, working closely with Corus, were instrumental in the success of the website. Once Corus had identified children as having the greatest potential to influence recycling behaviour, the design team pulled out all the stops to create a site that would educate youngsters. The aim was that by engaging with them emotionally through characterisation and a strong narrative, they would realise the importance and benefits of recycling.
View the SCRiB Website (This link will open in a new browser window)
View the "Tale of Two Cans" Animation (This link will open in a new browser window)
For more information on CDSM's design services, please contact Mark Ronconi at mark.ronconi@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM is holding a People and Places Marketing Event at The Metropole in Llandrindod Wells on the 20th of October - 15/09/06
Service Providers throughout Wales are being invited to the People and Places Community Portal presentation. The event is jointly sponsored by City and County and Swansea (this link will open in a new window), Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council (this link will open in a new window) and CDSM Interactive Solutions Ltd.
The purpose of the event is to introduce Local Authorities and their service providers to People and Places, the online service. It has been created to enable service users to develop their own online community and then transfer these relationships into real world experiences.
Person Centred Planning has been at the forefront of both Swansea and Neath and Port Talbot’s requirements for the People and Places Service. It enables users to share views and opinions about the services they use in an open way with their supporters. This puts the user at the centre of the service and in control. The portal is flexible, setting no unnecessary limits to the person’s wants, needs and dreams for their life.
The online concept of this service follows and adopts some very successful social and technical applications. You have probably heard about MSN and instant messaging, know about the buying and selling communities of E-bay. You might be a user of buddy lists in AOL or you might have a “My Space” account. You could even be a regular user of Wikipedia and other knowledge communities. Imagine if you took all of the features in this diverse range of products and applied them directly to the needs of your service users. Then imagine you applied the security levels you need to keep online personal data secure, the functions you need to engage teachers and supporters with, and the simplicity you need to help everybody make best use of learning technology – now you will have a sense of the range, power and flexibility of People and Places.
Rick Wilson, Chief Executive of West Glamorgan Housing Association will be presenting, along with Cathy Murray of City and County of Swansea, Mike Jones, Partnership Strategic Manager for Learning Disability Services and Steve Lewis, IM&T Advisor of Neath Port Talbot Borough County Council.
The presenter's contributions will focus on:
- Why the service is required in your Local Authority
- Who the service is for and how it benefits both service provider and their clients
- How this service and how it benefits both service providers and their clients
- The pricing and sustainability of the service
This presentation will demonstrate the technology at the heart of the service and provide case studies of clients with different needs in the community. The information will allow colleagues to evaluate and understand how the service can be adopted and supported in their own community
The event is jointly sponsored by the City and County of Swansea (this link will open in a new window), Neath and Port Talbot Borough County Council (this link will open in a new window) and CDSM Interactive Solutions Ltd.Find out more about People and Places or contact Debbie Marshall at debbie.marshall@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM launches a new high volume-low cost PDF to HTML conversion service - 08/09/06
With innovation at its heart, CDSM launches another ground breaking low-cost service designed to help solve the problem of PDF inaccessibility.
Using a streamlined semi-automated processing model, CDSM has been able to dramatically reduce the cost of PDF to HTML conversion.
"PDFs are a problem for any business that wants to provide accessible material to their customers" said Grant Broome, CDSM's Web Accessibility Manager. "The format typically provides a clumsy experience for many disabled users as it lacks structure and user-friendly interface."
While Adobe have tried to tackle accessibility issues with the PDF format, the interface for making PDFs accessible is poor and isn't a practical option for converting a high volume of documents. Conversion to HTML has always been the best option for accessibility but manual conversion is expensive, time-consuming and unsuitable for high volumes of content.
CDSM needed to work with their partners to provide alternative methods of conversion. The method employed involves a multi-stage process with 2 levels of QA to ensure that semantic structure is added to the document. This is a tricky problem to overcome as the typical PDF provides no semantic structure to work with. Standards compliance is an important issue for CDSM and we needed a method to ensure that each and every page is valid XHTML.
"I'm really pleased with this new service" said Dan Sivak, CDSM's Managing Director. "We've provided a manual conversion service some of our existing customers. Converting PDF to HTML and making accessible PDFs and the results have been good, but the process is very time-consuming with high volume work typically taking weeks or months to complete. Our new process allows us to convert thousands of PDFs per day while still retaining the same level of quality".
The new PDF-HTML conversion service follows in the footsteps of Shaw Trust Web Accreditation, a pan-disability web accessibility accreditation service in partnership with the Shaw Trust, and the ground-breaking GCSE English, a Flash-based e-Learning program.
Find out more about CDSM's PDF to HTML conversion service or contact Grant Broome at grant.broome@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
CDSM delivers quality training to ATOC via BSI - 25/08/06
The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) (this link will open in a new window) recently commissioned the Shaw Trust and CDSM to deliver accessibility training to their web managers.
The training was delivered via the British Standards Institute (BSI) (this link will open in a new window) who have chosen to accredit Shaw Trust training courses.
"We're pleased that ATOC and BSI have recognised what we have to offer" says Grant Broome of CDSM who delivered training on the day. "A strong knowledge base in accessible web design and practical application is what's needed now. Web managers have come to realise that accessibility is an important feature of their websites, but some guidance is needed to make sure that guidelines are being read and understood."
The Shaw Trust-CDSM partnership has prospered in recent months as the Shaw Trust Web Accreditation Service has been inundated with requests for pan-disability audits from both public and private sectors.
Find out more about CDSM's accessibility services
CDSM Provides Cutting Edge Design Service for CORUS - 11/08/06
The recent, successful launch of the new SCRiB website (http://www.scrib.org (This will open in the new browser window)) has seen CDSM provide high-profile design and web services to Corus, one of the world's leading steel manufacturers.
The Steel Can Recycling Information Bureau (SCRiB) website is part of Corus's drive to promote recycling to young people in the UK. They required modern, vibrant design with a sensitivity towards education and accessibility. Their partnership with CDSM has resulted in a popular website which has been turning heads within the recycling community.
One consultant at WasteWatch, a London-based recycling charity, said "the animation is fantastic and really made [the children using the website] want to explore the site further."
For more information on CDSM's design services, please contact Mark Ronconi at mark.ronconi@cdsm.co.uk or 0870 904 1666.
GCSE English Online is released - 03/07/06
GCSE English Online is a comprehensive courseware package created by teachers for teachers.
Partnered with Salford CLC, CDSM has created GCSE English as a rich multimedia application to take teaching GCSE English into the 21st Century.
The courseware includes interactive multimedia learning objects, video narration, lesson plans and resources covering the entire GCSE English Curriculum.
The courseware authors at Salford CLC have nearly a hundred years of experience in the secondary and post-16 continuum, a track record of award-winning excellence in teaching and learning design and current practice in the classroom - all teachers engaged in the project were teachers at the time of writing and still are.
The design and technical development was undertaken by CDSM and involved a production team with 8 years experience of delivering pedagogically driven e-Learning content, and design experience focussed on delivering engaging and effective content.
Find out more about GCSE English Online
How to procure accessible services - 01/06/05
It's difficult for organisations to make the right decisions on accessibility. The problem is that those responsible for procuring websites generally do not have the knowledge or experience to identify accessibility issues and neither should they be required to. Nobody can be expected to specialise in everything, but the problem remains that even if 'AA' compliance is specified, it's nearly impossible to measure whether the work is actually accessible.
GAWDS announce an exclusive partnership with Shaw Trust - 13/04/05
The Guild of Accessible Web Designers have formed a partnership with Shaw Trust Web Accreditation (STWA) - a web auditing service which combines pan-disabilities testing with experienced technical auditing to produce the most comprehensive web accessibility audit on the market.
As a response to rising demand for complete and comprehensive web accessibility testing, Shaw Trust, with the assistance of CDSM Interactive Solutions, have formulated a unique process for measuring web access against the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines.
Governments have began introducing laws to ensure that users with disabilities have the same rights of access to services as non-disabled users. Here in the UK the Disabilities Discrimination Act has been in force for several years and states that reasonable adjustments must be made in order to make services accessible to users with disabilities, says Andrea Kennedy of the Shaw Trust. Our accreditation service is designed to inform web owners of the current status of their site and provide advice on how to fix any issues that we find.
STWA was in need of greater exposure and looking for distribution channels through a strategic partnership. says Grant Broome of CDSM. What makes this partnership fit so well is that GAWDS members have already demonstrated their skills as part of the membership criteria. There's so much knowledge and experience in the organisation, which is home to some of the worlds leading web accessibility specialists.
As part of the partnership there are a number of opportunities for technical auditors for STWA. The accreditation comes in two parts. The multi-user pan-disabilities audit and a thorough technical audit. The results are then combined to produce a uniquely detailed report.
"We're looking to increase the number of technical auditors available to write the reports." says Grant. "Demand is increasing and very soon we're going to need help in getting these reports written. We're looking for self- motivated individuals with good writing skills who are able to demonstrate their experience of web accessibility auditing. GAWDS is the only place we need to look right now."
Jim Byrne the founder of GAWDS said,
"The participation of Disabled people in the auditing process was key when considering the partnership between the Shaw Trust and GAWDS. I'm delighted with this partnership, and I'm comfortable endorsing the work of the Trust. Both organisations can play to their strengths; a robust web accessibility auditing process combined with the proven technical expertise of GAWDS members.
I'm happy that this partnership provides opportunities for GAWDS members to be technical auditors as part of the Shaw Trust web auditing process. So yes, being recognised by a national UK Charity is excellent news for the Guild."
View the GAWDS Website (Link will open in a new window)
CDSM present Web Accessibility to the Public Sector - Leicester 23/03/05
CDSM were invited to speak at the Public Sector Forums event in Leicester to assess the issue of accessibility and in particular it's effect on Public Sector organisations.
Grant Broome, CDSM's Web Accessibility Manager and Shaw Trust Web Accreditation (STWA) Technical Co-ordinator delivered a talk on the merits and limitations of automated testing tools. During the presentation Grant demonstrated how not a single Priority 1 checkpoint could be fully measured by automated testing tools, and that human intervention is in every case required to ensure that sites meet even the most basic standards of web accessibility.
View the Public Sector Forums website (Link will open in a new window)
CDSM roll out WDA accessibility policy guidelines - 25/01/05
CDSM have worked with the WDA to develop their accessibility policy guidelines. On the 25th Jan the guidelines were officially handed over to WDA developers at a presentation held at the Millennium Stadium.
'Welsh IT sector growing faster' - 21/10/04
New research undertaken by the Welsh Development Agency has shown that ten leading players within the Welsh software and IT services sector are growing at a rate 7.0 times higher than that techMARK listed companies, and have a combined potential market value of £709 million.....
Central to this was the extent of innovation within the sector in Wales The range of software and services being created in and provided to global clients is significant, ranging from Comtec UK market leader in travel industry software to Avantis, a provider of software that distributes digital content over local area networks and the Internet....
Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and Transport said:"The results of this research are good news for the Welsh economy. This is further proof that Wales is well on its way to becoming a knowledge-based economy. It also shows that Wales has become the business location of choice for many home-grown and global enterprises, thanks to the support of the Welsh Assembly Government and its agencies."
CDSM represent UK web developers in Europe - Brussels 21/10/04
CDSM were in attendance at the Public Procurement in the ICT domain event where the concept of introducing European Policy similar to the section 508 legislation in the USA. A similar European legislation would require all IT suppliers to ensure that their products were accessible before they could be considered fit for use by Government and Public Sector organisations.
View the e-inclusion website (Link will open in a new window)
CDSM is committed to quality. We are an ISO9001 (this link will open in a new browser window) accredited learning organisation that employs a number of Prince2 (this link will open in a new browser window) qualified project managers.
As corporate members of The BCS' Disability Group(this link will open in a new browser window) we are committed to the UK web accessibility agenda, exclusively partnering with UK Pan-disability charity Shaw Trust (this link will open in a new browser window) and are members of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (this link will open in a new browser window).