Guide Dogs Selects Percussion Software to Improve Online User Accessibility

LONDON, UK — 18 April 2006 — The Guide Dogs For The Blind Association has chosen Percussion Software's enterprise content management system, Rhythmyx, to improve the accessibility of its intranet content to its blind and partially sighted staff.  Rhythmyx was chosen from a list of thirty eight vendors because of the software's capability to comply with all Government accessibility guidelines as well as the ability to transfer content creation and approval away from the IS department to specialist departments and functions within the organisation.

An investigation by the Disability Rights Commission revealed that 81 per cent of UK websites are not making services accessible to disabled people (Disability and Discrimination Act, 1999). An estimated 10 million people, who have rights under the DDA legislation are having their legal rights ignored.

Guide Dogs For The Blind Association is the world's largest breeder and trainer of working dogs. This year it is celebrating the 75th anniversary of the first guide dogs to be trained in the UK.  Since 1931, dedicated staff and volunteers have enabled over 21,000 blind and partially-sighted people to experience the independent mobility that a guide dog can bring.

Pat Farr, Guide Dogs' New Media Development Manager: "As well as redesigning the intranet site and improving the site content we are making the site fully accessible to our partially sighted staff. Rhythmyx was the only solution that gave us the capability to effectively manage content creation, approval and publishing as well as deliver full accessibility options. The next phase of the project will include the redesign and redevelopment of the public website which will also be made fully accessible."

Previously, there were six content contributors within the organisation who worked with the IS department to publish site content. By adopting Rhythmyx, the Association will be able to significantly increase the number of contributors and remove the publishing burden from the IS team to allow them to concentrate on more pressing and strategic projects.

Rhythmyx provides full interactivity  because it is compatible with software such as Freedom Scientific's JAWS Screen Reader version 6*.  In addition, Rhythmyx fully conforms to a wide variety of international standards (including: the UK Data Discrimination Act (DDA), US Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, UK eGovernment Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) and W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) standards) which requires compliant tagging throughout the user interface.

Rhythmyx offers Guide Dogs a scaleable content management system enabling it to track and streamline the content authorisation processes through Rhythmyx's audit trails and workflow capabilities. The software's De-Coupled Delivery architecture, which separates the management of content from the content delivery environment, allows information to be published to multiple sites.

Joseph Wykes, managing director, European operations said: "The redesign of the Association's intranet will improve the way staff go about their day-to-day job making information more readily available. It's also an example of how Rhythmyx can help companies to improve accessibility ensuring they comply with UK law."

* JAWS® for Windows is a screen reader which enables information from the screen to be read aloud.