An audit of Swansea University's website by accessibility firm Nomensa showed it to have limited accessibility and not to be compliant with the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act.
Despite a limited budget, Swansea was determined to offer an informative easy-to-use website that supported a spectrum of users and that complied with Senda.
It set itself the following objectives:
* To achieve A or AA accessibility standards, based on the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines
* To optimise pages to increase the number of users accessing the site
* To provide accessible educational information
* To develop a basis for adding new content without limiting accessibility.
The project also aimed to understand the web technology used for the site and to implement a programme of tutorials for the web team.
The team worked with Nomensa to bring about the following improvements to the site:
* Compliance with WAI standards
* Optimisation of page templates
* Smaller page sizes that display up to five times faster
* Optimisation of the site for printing
* The implementation of a training programme
* The use of validation tools to sustain accessibility.
The changes have also cut the site's bandwidth needs, reducing the strain on university servers.