Website Accesibility is a Social Responsibility and a Business Necessity
this new partnership allows The Carroll Center to offer a more comprehensive evaluation of websites from the perspective of users with a greater range of disabilities.
Minneapolis, Minnesota (PRWEB) September 25, 2013
WeCo, a mission-based website accessibility company in Minneapolis, Minnesota and The Carroll Center for the Blind located in Newton, Massachusetts, announced today that they are partnering to provide enhanced services to governments, businesses, educational institutions and national and international organizations to help them meet the increasing pressure to make their websites accessible to people living with disabilities.
The Carroll Center believes that, “A website should never be an obstacle that prevents anyone who is differently abled from transacting business with any business, agency, or organization.” According to Bruce Howell, The Carroll Center’s Accessibility Services Coordinator, “this new partnership allows The Carroll Center to offer a more comprehensive evaluation of websites from the perspective of users with a greater range of disabilities. These additional testers will complement our expertise in Assistive Technologies required by blind and low vision individuals for web navigation.”
WeCo offers a highly-customized testing services and training which enable web and communication professionals to make corrections to existing website, or create new websites, that are highly accessible to people living with disabilities. The work is verified by a WeCo’s team of Certified Test Consultants, all of whom live one or more of the four disability classification recognized by the US Department of Human Services: sight, motor skill, hearing or cognitive-related disabilities.
The Carroll Center for the Blind provides its clients with expert evaluation, reporting, training, and ongoing support to improve the accessibility of websites for individuals with low vision and who are blind. This partnership now offers a seamless integration of website accessibility testing by adding motor skill, hearing impaired and cognitive disabilities with vision impairments, to identify key elements to make website navigation easier for more disabled individuals.
To stay competitive in today's global marketplace, companies cannot afford to overlook people with disabilities as a significant part of their available customer base. According to the U.S. Census, in 2009, 9.5 million people aged 16 to 64, had a disability. Providing access to your website is good business sense since this target market also has $220 billion in discretionary income.
For more information about creating an accessible website for individuals with disabilities contact Bruce Howell at Bruce.Howell(at)carroll(dot)org or by calling him at (617) 969-6200, ext. 210.
About Carroll Center for the Blind
The Carroll Center for the Blind is a not-for-profit national facility in Newton, MA that serves the needs of blind and visually-impaired persons by providing rehabilitation, skills training, and educational opportunities to achieve independence, self-sufficiency, and self-fulfillment and by educating the public regarding the potential of persons who are blind and visually-impaired. For more information, please visit: http://www.carroll.org
About WeCo
Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, WeCo is a mission-based, for-profit organization which believes that individuals living with disabilities become experts at access simply by navigating their day-to-day lives. The WeCo Accessibility Test Platform enables these individuals to put their life experience to work to help make web sites and electronic communications more accessible for everyone. WeCo is recognized by the State of Minnesota as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise. In WeCo’s first year in business they were featured in the MarketWatch Wall Street Journal, Google Finance and Tech{dot}MN. Find more about the company at theweco.com.