New Forest recognised for website accessibility following work with GOSS

New Forest District Council has been shortlisted for a Hantsnet Award for website accessibility, following development in partnership with GOSS Interactive.

The Hantsweb Awards celebrate excellence in website design, accessibility and service. The awards are open to any website based in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and only entrants nominated by a third party are considered.

The New Forest web team has been working with GOSS Interactive for a number of years. Using GOSS Interactive's intelligent Content Management (iCM) system, New Forest can ensure that the website meets the highest accessibility standards. Vanilla functionality for iCM includes a configuration that gives contributors guidelines and work flow processes in its templates, plus validators that check each page has met the set criteria before publication.

Tina Seabrook, systems development manager, ICT Services at New Forest District Council explains, "When websites are designed and developed in the right way, all users can have equal access to all the information and functionality – this is a fundamental concept for local authority web teams and one which we aspire to. Being shortlisted for the Hantsweb Award is recognition of just how far we have come towards this ideal.

"Using iCM from GOSS Interactive, with its in-built accessibility guidelines for web templates, makes our job a lot easier and enables us to concentrate on future development. In fact we're in the process of launching a new look to the site which will improve further on the accessibility."

Rob McCarthy, managing director at GOSS Interactive adds, "Managing a local authority website is a complex job, often with thousands of pages to maintain. And ensuring accessibility is a major consideration; whether it is coding the site with meaningful HTML to support text-to-speech software, or writing content in plain language with illustrations to support users with dyslexia or learning difficulties. iCM from GOSS Interactive has several features, such as automatic validators, developed specifically to help organisations meet the highest accessibility standards as easily as possible. We are delighted that New Forest has been recognised for its work utilising the system and look forward to working together on future improvements."