Coillte is pleased to announce the launch of their new web site which has been redesigned to conform to the first level of the global Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines. It also conforms to most of Level 2 and much of Level 3 requirements set out in the guidelines. The WAI was established in 1997, by the World Wide Web Consortium. The underlying principle of these guidelines is that websites are required to create an interface that adheres to a set of guiding principles and regulations that allow people with a range of disabilities, not just the visually impaired, equal access to internet services and content, resulting in a better overall service to more people. Further information on WAI can be found on
http://www.w3.org/WAI

It is estimated that the number of people with disabilities in Ireland is 360,000, which represents approximately 10% of the population (http://www.nda.ie). Coillte's website has been redesigned so that people with disabilities can also browse through the website and extract the same level of information enjoyed by the rest of the population. This is now possible, as blind, wand and other assisted-technologies users can now navigate the site and access information on pages more efficiently and in a way that makes much more sense. The main features of Coillte's new WAI-compliant website include:

• The ability for users to choose a size of text setting that they are more comfortable with
• The ability for users of assistive technologies to easily navigate to pages or parts of a page using keyboard shortcuts
• Readable tables especially for assistive technologies
• Meaningful alternative text for images which make sense to non-visual readers

A core philosophy within Coillte is one of Continuous Improvement, and the website is no different. In the future we hope to bring the website to the next level of WAI compliancy and will keep you informed of this as it happens.