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Shaw Trust accreditation

Improving accessibility standards

Shaw Trust - Click here to visit their web site

As part of our ongoing commitment to making our sites more accessible The Co-operative Financial Services have been working with Shaw Trust, a national charity which supports disabled and disadvantaged people to prepare for work, find jobs and live more independently.

Shaw Trust provide a Website Accessibility Accreditation Service endorsed by The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS). With their help our range of websites are being developed in line with the W3C guidelines for accessibility.

The vital difference provided by Shaw Trust in comparison to other accessibility review services is their rigorous User Testing. The Co-operative Financial Services have always strived to build accessible sites from a technical perspective but this does not in reality always provide the best solution for real people in real environments.

Manual accessibility checking by Shaw Trust is conducted using a range of adaptive technology (hardware and software designed to facilitate the use of computers by people with disabilities) to give the highest level of assurance that a Web site is accessible to all end users regardless of ability.

Since the initial review by Shaw Trust a different approach has been taken to the design of our sites with a focus on simplicity over complexity and greater emphasis on being accessible for everyone.

The Co-operative Financial Services is continuing to work with Shaw Trust and aim to improve our accessibility creditation rating by the end of 2009. To read about what we are doing to make our site more accessible visit the accessibility page.