Accessibility Field Notes

Communis’ site for the Environment Agency’s SMURF Project website has been awarded the Special Award for Innovation at the Visionary Design Awards presented by the National Library for the Blind.

Held at the Russell Hotel in London on 2 March 2006, the Visionary Design Awards recognise organisations that have worked to make their websites easily accessible to blind and partially sighted people across the UK. After extensive testing by the NLB’s team of judges, seven awards were presented to winners chosen from a list of over 100 websites nominated by visually impaired people. This year’s awards were presented by Robert Llewellyn, star of Red Dwarf.

Communis designed the Smurf website http://www.smurf-project.info/, for a three year partnership project led by the Environment Agency. Offered in seven languages (English, French, German, Gujarati, Punjabi Urdu and Bengali), it describes the issues facing the River Tame and includes project reports, maps and information.

The site includes access to the WebSMURF system, a cut down version of the full desktop SMURF System that was developed for the SMURF project. People can use WebSMURF to find out information about the rivers Tame and Rea in the West Midlands in their browser without any special computer programs.

Communis are particularly proud to be recognised as innovation leaders in the area of providing GIS information in an accessible way, using a mixture of cutting-edge techniques to make Macromedia Flash movies more accessible, as well as presenting geographic information without using maps.

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