Web Access Centre

BT Intranet case study - Web Access Centre

Summary: Find out about how BT built an accessible intranet

• History
• BT’s vision
• BT’s intranet and publishing standards
• Publishing community
• Accessibility
• Websight
• Future developments
• Case studies

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BT is dedicated to the aims of accessibility. It is no good expecting this to be a “quick fix” or something that is “flavour of the month”. Accessibility is here to stay and makes sound business sense for every publisher and designer to practice.

It needs continuing support and reinforcement. It cannot be easily imposed but can be achieved through good education and communication of the benefits.

Many publishers, who use publishing tools like Microsoft Frontpage or Macromedia Dreamweaver once or twice a week as an “add-on” to their main role, need help and guidance to understand the technical issues related to accessibility. Websight’s user and results guides have explained in plain language the complex problems identified and how publishers can resolve them.

Accessibility is now firmly in BT’s bloodstream. For more than five years the company has worked with its publishing community to achieve this. The drive now is to continue setting best practice standards through RNIB audits of sites, benchmarking with other organisations and ensuring that every publisher continues to put the needs of all users of their sites at the forefront of their mind.

History

BT’s intranet was launched in 1994 as a cost-saving initiative aimed at reducing the amount of paper and printing in the organisation. Eight years later it is a success story with BT now largely a paperless company managing over 200 processes on-line. Additionally, it has resulted in a huge improvement in BT’s communication capability, positioning it at the cutting edge of information and communication technology. And it has also engaged BT people, making them more efficient, effective and empowered – characteristics that are in line with BT’s overall strategy.

BT’s vision

BT’s vision is that information users should expect:

• information that’s easily accessible, timely, accurate and relevant, and appropriate to their business situation and needs
• consistency between information and BT’s behaviours and values
• location and time not to be barriers to accessing and using information
• to receive information through the most appropriate media
• to exert choice and control over the information they receive
• changing requirements will be met in a timely way.

BT’s intranet soon developed into one of the biggest in Europe with more than seven million pages, and nearly 200,000 users. All BT employees have access to it as well as suppliers and other partner organisations.

Pivotal in this has been the focus on content and not technology. Removing duplication and clarifying ownership has improved users’ confidence so much so they can rely on the content for accurate and up-to-date information as they go about their day-to-day jobs.

Responsibility for publishing and maintaining the content on BT’s intranet belongs to the owner of that information. Representatives in each of BT’s business units are responsible for costs and ensuring information standards are adhered to.

BT’s intranet and publishing standards

Key information management standards have underpinned the integrity of the intranet. In particular, the following standards apply to all BT sites:

• the BT global navigation bar should be on every page. The bar has links to key sites used frequently such as Directory, Search, BT A-Z and BT Home (the top level of BT’s intranet)
• the page owner and review date is available on every page
• a feedback link is available so users can give their comments on any issues or request clarification of content
• Pages must comply with BT’s accessibility priorities.

Publishing community

BT has a publishing community consisting of over 2,000 publishers. An intranet site provides on-line advice, latest news and best practice to ensure publishers are well informed of their responsibilities. A discussion group allows publishers to discuss issues amongst themselves and share hints and tips.

A range of intranet tools help the publishing community conform to BT’s standards. As well as content management, BT has developed an accessibility checker tool, Websight, to make it easier for publishers to make their sites accessible.

Accessibility

BT takes its responsibilities to its employees seriously. It had already developed guidance on accessibility issues before Section 21 of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act came into force in 1999, requiring owners to make every reasonable effort to have accessible sites.

All new websites designed by internal and external design agencies need to be accessible. BT also works very closely with Able2, a network of disabled users, who provide valuable first-hand advice on what will or will not help them.

BT has communicated and educated its publishing community on the value of an accessible intranet while using Websight to enforce the accessibility of BT’s Intranet.

As part of the communication and education plan, guidance covering areas such as moving images, colour, applets and alt tags is available, and publishers are encouraged to complete training covering applets and scripts, alt tags, movement, colour, table tags and frames. Publishers can also contact accessibility “experts” if they have any issues that cannot be resolved through guidance and training.

Websight

As well as the guidance and training, sites can be checked using Websight - an accessibility checker tool that scans for errors which need to be corrected before launch of any new Intranet content.

Websight was developed by BT to identify accessibility errors in line with the W3C WAI guidelines. Websight currently checks for over 30 of these accessibility errors, and other problems non-compliant with BT policy. It helps publishers focus on priority problems with the aim of saving publishers' time by identifying problems before users do.

Websight will identify a range of problems and categorise them into three categories: Errors - there are 32 error categories identified which need to be addressed immediately by publishers. Examples include:

• missing anchors
• broken links to local files within that site
• broken links to Internet files outside the firewall
• broken links to Intranet files remote to the site
• broken links to File Transfer Protocol
• badly formed URLs (bad requests) Warnings - these warnings result from publishers not following the Intranet publishing guidelines. Where applicable a link to best practice for web publishing is given. Examples are index/default page missing or large page sizes
• information - this is mainly information about files and structure of the files in the Intranet site, given in various formats. In most cases the publishers require no immediate action. An example is images that are too large.

In order to help publishers understand the technicalities of the errors identified, a results guide now gives simple, easy to follow, explanations of the problems identified by Websight and how publishers can resolve them. It splits the guidance into the three categories. There is also a user guide for those who need further help with Websight.

Websight sends weekly email messages to publishers who have accessibility errors identified and publishers can check Websight themselves at any time to get an up to date assessment of the quality of their content.

One key benefit of Websight has been the ability to compare easily good and bad sites for accessibility. This is possible through Websight’s Quality Factor which is an error weighted number calculated from the number of HTML pages checked and the number of errors and warnings found. The lower this value the better the site (0 is best).

Websight’s Quality Factor’s provides a levelled comparison of the quality of the various sized websites checked. For example, a one-page site with a dozen errors might seem to a user as being as bad as or worse than a 1,000 page site with 100's of errors. The Quality Factor is calculated within a few minutes of the site check being completed.

It has created peer pressure amongst the publishing community to improve their Quality Factor, and so improve the accessibility of their site for users. Every result is available and publishers can easily check the top and worst sites scores.

Future developments

So, where does BT go from here?

Intranet

With one of the largest intranets in Europe with millions of pages to be checked by Websight and over 2,000 publishers, it is a case of BT continuing to educate and communicate the benefits of accessibility as well as individual responsibilities to the publishing community.

Websight will be developed to identify more accessibility errors and enable their resolution more easily. Information across BT’s Intranet will be available so groups of sites can be compared and trends identified, making action easier to target.

Internet

Bearing in mind that around 10 per cent of potential users have accessibility problems, it makes sound business sense for a website to be accessible by everyone. This is in addition to the legal requirement.

Websight can now also be used on any internet site as well as intranet sites. All internet sites owned by BT will be using Websight.

Customers

BT provides intranet products to many customers. Websight will be launched as a product for existing and new customers to buy and achieve the same accessibility benefits as BT with their intranet and internet sites.

Case studies

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Content author: webaccess@rnib.org.uk

Last updated: 06/03/2008 15:41