All posts by Léonie Watson

7th January 2011 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

On Wednesday 5th January the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was ratified by the European Union (EU). The convention was adopted by the UN on 13th December 2006 and opened for signatures on 30th March 2007. It was an historic moment for human rights, and we were proud to [...]

10th December 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

British Standard (BS) 8878 is the new Web Accessibility Code of Practice from the British Standards Institution (BSI). It was officially launched on 7th December 2010, at an event held at the Royal College of Medicine in London.

25th November 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

When is a heading not a heading? Don’t worry, we’re not getting all existentialist on you. It’s a serious question, and the answer lies behind one of the most common accessibility problems on the web.

11th October 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

Consider the links, headings and other text content on your website. Do you think the colours you’ve chosen contrast well against their background? More to the point, how can you tell?

3rd September 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

Everybody’s using YouTube. Government departments, media corporations and individuals with bright ideas all broadcast themselves. YouTube might be everywhere, but is your content reaching everyone? Knowing about audio description, captions and transcripts, is the way to reach an even wider audience. In the third of a series of articles on multimedia accessibility, we take a [...]

2nd July 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) held the second meeting of the Digital Economy eAccessibility Forum yesterday. The forum is a platform for exploring eInclusion issues, and developing and sharing best practice solutions across all sectors.

30th June 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

If you shop at Tesco, you’ll know that “every little helps”. If you’re one of their blind or partially sighted online customers though, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. As Tesco close their access site and move people over to their new primary website, there are growing concerns about how accessibility has been factored [...]

9th June 2010 by Léonie Watson | Web Accessibility

It’s been 18 months since BS8878 first went out for public consultation. At the time, this forthcoming web accessibility code of practice from the British Standards Institution (BSI) received an unprecedented amount of feedback. Now a second draft is available for public consultation, and this is where we need your help!