Catriona Campbell, our CEO and an increasingly popular speaker, has been busy presenting to packed audiences at The New Media Age Show on both usability and accessibility. Those of you that attended would have heard the interesting case studies and offerings that usability and industry experts had to offer.

Catriona was thrown in at the deep end, discussing the importance of usability to 'creatives.' Catriona stood out amongst the 'creative teams' sighing and groaning at her insistence of designs, which are usable. After explaining that a usable site does not necessarily stunt all creativity the crowd began to relax. As Joe Noburn of The Royal Bank of Scotland pointed out, designers should still: ' push the boundaries. You can still use rotating banners, Pop-Ups, Pop-Unders' DHTML, and Flash but only if it has a purpose.'
The boundaries between a usable site and an accessible site became blurred, but Catriona hastened to add that a usable site might not necessarily be accessible and vice versa.

Catriona also chaired a panel on which Donna Smilie (RNIB) Helen Baker (MD, Lastminute.com) and Joe Norburn (Royal Bank of Scotland) also participated in.

The panel highlighted the importance of accessibility and warned that it was only a matter of time before a big case comes to the UK courts similar to that of the Sydney Paralympics Web Site being inaccessible to its' audience of disabled users . The organisers of the Olympic Games are being sued somewhere in the region of six million Australian dollars, and UK organisations could face a similar punishment. It seems unbelievable that the web, although designed by Tim Berners- Lee to be used by everyone, is still problematic for 1 in 7 users who have some form of disability.

That translates to a potential spending power of £50 billion. Considering that designing a sight with accessibility and usability in mind has only a nominal cost and frequent testing is only a fraction of the amount that a business can save it seems strange that businesses do not offer an accessible and usable site to their customers.

Catriona acts as a representative professional for the field of Usability on the E-Envoy's Government Framework Committee and is setting down guidelines for government sites and also advises on International Standards Committees in the field of Human Centred Design. We are therefore well positioned to inform you of any new developments in the accessibility world.

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