[Sigia-l] NHS & Microsoft - accessibility guidance available

[Kit Lewis]

A new and (we hope) extremely useful set of accessibility prinicples and
checkpoints is now available for download. This has been produced as part of
the NHS Common User Interface programme, which is a collaboration between
England's National Health Service (NHS) and Microsoft. The aim of the
programme is to create design standards for point-of-care IT systems used by
doctors, nurses and other health professionals. The documents can be
downloaded here:



http://www.mscui.net/DesignGuide/AccessibilityPrinciples.aspx

http://www.mscui.net/DesignGuide/AccessibilityChecklist.aspx


While this work is aimed at complex clinical IT systems, it is drawn from an
analysis of eight industry-standard accessibility standards (including W3C,
ISO & the US Access Board), and is intended to be applicable to any rich
application. The work is informed by a strong understanding, based on
observation, of how disabled users actually access IT applications.



Special credit should go to Jon Dodd (
http://www.bunnyfoot.com/about/people.html) as the primary author – this
work would not have been possible without his experience and expertise in
the field.


The NHS CUI programme is keen to publicise this work both for its general
value and to hear any feedback. We need your comments in order to improve
the guidance and thence the accessibility of IT applications within the NHS
(the UK's largest employer). Please direct all comments to:
cuistakeholder.mailbox at nhs.net or to this list.

Thanks!



Kit Lewis

User Experience Architect
NHS Connecting for Health