London

Accessible website for constituents

In March 2004, John Bowis's Assistant attended a Workshop on "Website Tools for Disabled Users" hosted in the European Parliament by Liz Lynne MEP.

This included practical tips and tricks and an assessment of MEP's websites.

John Bowis is pleased to report that the assessment of this website: www.johnbowis.com was very positive. The layout is easy to navigate; the colours are easy to change and the text easy to enlarge. Technology reading the contents of the site for blind users would not encounter too much trouble!

Since this workshop in March, some improvements to the accessibility of this website have been made including the following:

- the replacement of violet letters against the dark blue background - something difficult for partially sighted people to see - with yellow headings - which are much clearer to view;

- the extension of hyperlinks so that it is clear for people listening to the website contents what the links link to and so that people experiencing trouble navigating the cursor with the mouse have more "clickable" area;

- the addition of tags to many pictures so that anyone not able to view the pictures have an idea or description of what is there.

John Bowis's London constituents should find the websites of their elected representatives to be as accessible as possible. If you have any comments on how you have found navigating this site or any ideas on how to improve this site, please contact us by e-mail.

John Bowis is a Member of the European Parliament Disability Intergroup.