Visionary Awards -- Something to Smile About

Libertas Solutions client Philip Murphy Associates has won a Visionary Design Award from the National Library for the Blind for the accessibility of the website for people with disabilities at an event in London hosted by Lloyd Grossman.

(PRWEB) November 28, 2004 -- Libertas Solutions client Philip Murphy Associates has won a Visionary Design Award from the National Library for the Blind for the accessibility of the website for people with disabilities at an event in London hosted by Lloyd Grossman.

The Philip Murphy Associates website (www.philipmurphyassociates.com) which was launched in August 2003, provides information on the Armagh based dental practice and its services as well as information on general dental health. The practice, which provides wheelchair access and ground floor surgeries for people with physical disabilities was keen to ensure that its online presence was as accessible as its physical location.

The website is powered by Libertas Solutions web content management software, Libertas Solutions CMS, which ensures that the code used to produce the site is compliant with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), UK Government Access Keys for easy navigation, as well as providing a separate text only version of the site which is useful for people with visual difficulties and those with dyslexia.

The only company from Ireland to have nominations in the awards, Libertas Solutions also had three other clients sites shortlisted because of the accessibility of their websites -- the Ocean Youth Trust (Ireland) (www.oyti.org), the University of Ulster Coleraine Fencing Club (www.uucfencing.co.uk) and Portadown based Turkington Holdings Ltd (www.turkington-holdings.com).

Neil Curran, managing director of Libertas Solutions explained Accessibility is like building a house -- if the groundwork is done from the beginning, making websites accessible to people with disabilities is not such a big job; if left until later, then the task becomes more difficult.

It is because of this that accessibility for people with disabilities has always been important to Libertas Solutions and we have developed our software from the ground up to ensure that websites are accessible for people with disabilities and to give clients the freedom to update and manage their websites themselves."

Chief Executive of the National Library for the Blind Helen Brazier outlined the rationale behind the event These awards are incredibly important. We estimate that less than a third of all websites are accessible to visually impaired people and our challenge to web designers and publishers is to create sites which are attractive and informative, but also comply with the Disability Discrimination Act by being accessible too."

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