Accredited Websites and Testimonials

Aberdeenshire County Council

The accreditation service gave us lots of valuable feedback on our accessibility from a wide variety of actual users. This provided great value when compared with trying to arrange the same level of detailed testing ourselves. I would have no hesitation in recommending SHAW Trust to other organisations who are looking for a serious but realistic evaluation of what can be done to improve accessibility.

Regards,

Chris Clelland
ICT Project Leader - Internet Development

Audit Commission

"The Shaw Trust has been very supportive in helping us conduct accessibility audits of our key systems. There has been a general enthusiasm and a real desire to work with us to improve all aspects of accessibility.

The report was clear and instructive, with points for improvement and reasons why shown throughout the document. This has allowed us to plan and justify the actions easily, and to incorporate these points into our ongoing developments. We also found that visiting the test centre, whilst the audit was being carried out was invaluable for understanding why improvements were required"

Rob Phillpotts
Head of Development and Systems, Audit Commission.

First Group

At First we take accessibility for people with disabilities very seriously in all aspects of our public transport services, and our Group website is no exception. We chose SHAW Trust for our audit because we knew that the testing would not just be theoretical - it would involve practical work on relevant tasks by people who really need a site that has good clear design and structure and will make it easy to use adaptive technologies. I recommend making a visit to see the audit under way - it made me aware of just how important the improvement recommendations were - thank you and well done, SHAW!

Erik Stien
Marketing Executive
FirstGroup plc

South Cambridgeshire District Council

Meeting the team and watching them use our website was the most enlightening experience and really highlighted how easy it is to make a website more difficult to use, unnecessarily. There were things that required adjusting that should have been glaringly obvious, like providing a textual link beside a graphical one - something I myself had learned several years ago, yet had evidently not picked up in the new design. I was suitably embarrassed. This part of the service is absolutely invaluable and goes way beyond automated testing.

Keeping the website as accessible as possible is the biggest challenge and an on-going task. The very way we work can sometimes hinder our abilities to provide our information and web services in the most accessible way, yet we are committed to building this into future developments to improve things for the future. We will continue to work with The Shaw Trust to ensure accessibility is at the heart of everything we do.

Brigitte Wilson
Web Services Officer
South Cambridgeshire District Council

Gwalia Housing Association

"We test our web sites extensively using assistive technologies like screen readers during development, but no-one uses this equipment like the expert users at Shaw Trust - they are phenomenal.

We visited them during testing and spent an hour or so just watching them use our site and chatting about their experiences. They then produced a written report suggesting a couple of changes for us to make in order to meet the Shaw Trust Accessible standard. We complied and have also incorporated this feedback in developing our other sites.

The accreditation is great of course, but it was the user testing that was the real benefit in all this; the knowledge that these guys had checked out the site and given it the thumbs up".

Andy Elliot, Senior Web Editor, Gwalia Housing Association.

South Norfolk Council

Having made use of several automated testing tools, we decided to contact Shaw Trust and have the job of testing the accessibility of our website done properly. Shaw Trust are clearly passionate about making the web accessible for everyone. They tackled the issues we had with our website in a productive way, always explaining clearly the benefits of changing our practices rather than just saying 'You mustn't do it like this'. But what really sold it to me was the ability to visit the team and watch and listen while they tested our site. I have enormous respect for them and for the work they're doing, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone who is looking to improve how they communicate with people via the web.

Andy Bryant
Web Editor
South Norfolk Council

Back to Website Accessibility Accreditation Service