European Year of People with Disabilities

EBU Indigo - Project Review from the United Kingdom

Link Person for the project in the UK:
Nolan Quigley
Assistant European Campaigns Officer
Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB)
105 Judd Street
London
WC1H 9 NE
UK
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7391 2087
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7388 2706
email Nolan.Quigley@rnib.org.uk

1 How was the Indigo project promoted in the UK?

The INDIGO web site was promoted and publicised in the UK in various ways by RNIB. On RNIB’s web site we drafted a short summary of the project which also featured a link so that people interested could click straight on to the INDIGO site. We publicised and promoted the project internally within RNIB by email, through the intranet and through briefings. We also sent out information about the project to RNIB’s campaign supporters, a network of grass-roots campaigners and local activists.

At the initial stage, RNIB’s web accessibility experts looked over the site and made several suggestions for improvement to the site. We forwarded these to the web master who made the necessary alterations very quickly and efficiently.

2 What were the results?

Several comments were left on the site and on the UK microsite from people based in the UK. Issues raised included a need for information in accessible formats and problems that blind people can have access documents in pdf format. A respondent based in the UK communicated with a Finnish respondent on the issue of the employment of disabled people.

3 Further Comments or Feedback on the project

This was first and foremost and ambitious project, highly experimental in nature. The site was set up and launched in a very short timeframe, 1 year into its life, in web forum terms it is still in its infancy. The site would definitely benefit from being continued and developed in future years so that it can become better known and that blind and partially sighted Europeans can get to know it and feel ownership of it. The INDIGO project has the potential of becoming a real web community for blind and partially sighted Europeans.



Nolan Quigley, December 2003