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Within organisations there are many roles and functions,
particularly those that involve technology
that are completely off-limits
to blind and partially sighted people.
RNIB is an organisation set up
to support blind and partially sighted people.
SharePoint was the ideal platform to deliver
the RNIB’s requirements for a website, an intranet,
an extranet and an ecommerce platform.
The only real problem with SharePoint out of the box
is that it is not accessible
Once we started working with Content and Code
they made it very clear
that their priority was to deliver what we needed,
which was an efficient system, not just accessible.
And that was a real relief because
it showed us early on that they understood
what our needs and what our biggest problems were.
S.A.S. stands for the SharePoint Accessibility Solution
that is provided by Content and Code.
Essentially it is an overlay or a piece of software
that you add to SharePoint that effectively
makes the output of SharePoint fully accessible
to the RNIB’s See It Right guidelines.
People who are using access technologies
like screen readers are using it to translate
structure and text into either speech output or Braille
but it does need to have to be there
in the code at the time.
We have replaced a lot of the screens,
a lot of the controls and functionality in SharePoint
to make sure that the blind, partially sighted
and pretty much anyone in terms of accessibility
can use the SharePoint product.
They can go in, they can search and they can
find the information and they can provide
useful and pertinent help to clients
who actually need that help.
One of the key problems that came up with the project
was the issue of the rich text editor.
When it comes to creating methods of
putting information into web pages
most screen readers still are quite old fashioned.
They make the assumption that web pages are there
to read from rather than input too.
If a rich text editor is not accessible,
blind and partially sighted people cannot edit content.
Basically there was a worldwide search and there wasn't
one found that was completely accessible.
So being the SharePoint accessibility experts
we got in touch with Telerik.
And Telerik have been only too pleased to work
with Content and Code, with ourselves,
all in the same room,
Two gold partners working side-by-side.
they showed a real willingness to make
the rich text editor not just
produce accessible output pages
but be useable by people who are blind.
What we want those people to do is have
the basics to be able to put content on the web,
to format it, to insert images, to insert links.
Here we had the great opportunity
to actually test and try things
immediately and get feedback.
On any given day we’ve got
people with guide dogs, people from
all kinds of different suppliers for the RNIB.
It is going to be the first time that
this level of integration of sighted users
and visually impaired users will have been achieved
within the UK certainly and possibly in the world.
It is not just for the RNIB,
this solution is for anyone out there who
has a SharePoint system that wants it to be accessible.
Our vision for the SharePoint Accessibility Solution
is that it will actually empower people
throughout the world to have a better
standard of working life and be able to
access information more readily.
There are jobs that are now open to
the blind and partially sighted people,
and what better people to be doing content editing
for websites because they know exactly
what is and isn’t going to be available
to a screen reader or a Zoomtext
And it’s not just about the technology
that you use internally but also the people
who are going to come to your site and use it.
Now those people have enormous spending powers.
If a blind person cannot go out and choose a book
or go out and choose a tin of beans from the supermarket,
where else are they going to shop.
And we are already starting to build their
next solution which is an ecommerce platform.
It’s become very much more collaborative.
It feels like it is part of the RNIB team.