Welcome to August's edition of Useworthy. The RNIB has held another successful accessibility conference - we give you the low down. Does your company have an Intranet? Or are you designing one? Catriona Campbell looks into the ideal Intranet, whilst Paul Blunden gives his opinion of the productivity and usability of Intranets.

The RNIB hosted an accessibility conference on the 5th July in Central London.

In May 1999, the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative published the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to help web designers create web sites that are accessible to everyone, regardless of ability/disability, technology or circumstance.

Since that time, many accessible sites have been created in accordance with the guidelines. On closer inspection however, while some of these sites are technically accessible, they are not always easy to use.

Are accessibility and usability different? Are accessible web sites automatically usable, or must designers also following guidelines additional guidelines to ensure usability? These are just some of the questions that were considered at this event.

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The Perfect Intranet

Intranets, productivity and usability

Anyone who has worked for, or with a large organisation over the last 10 years has probably experienced the implementation of the corporate intranet as it has been rolled out to the organisation. Many will have also been totally bewildered by the vast array of links and areas within the Intranet with apparently meaningless titles. The 2-hour training session, given by HR, was more of a sales pitch about how the organisation was investing in its employees than real training and in any case, as a result of geographic location, most of the organisation received it months in advance of the roll out and can't remember the details.

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The corporate intranet has been hailed as the most important business tool since the typewriter, but the track record so far has been mixed. Despite many successes, particularly in cost and timesaving, many owners of corporate intranets are dissatisfied. They have spent time and money on development, web-enabled desktops, even intranet training, but still aren't enjoying significant enough productivity or cost savings. Why? While critics often point to technological glitches, the real problem in my opinion lies in design and poor or no measurement.

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