Please note: as of 30th June 2019 MyDonate has closed. Visit the BT website for information about the closure of MyDonate.
It’s over a decade since website accessibility became a legal requirement and yet more than 90% still exclude disabled people. Yet having an accessible website is not just about legal and moral obligation, it also makes good business sense as BT has discovered with its new online fundraising service, MyDonate.
The value of a more inclusive approach underpins AbilityNet’s usability accreditation, which has been awarded to BT’s MyDonate - a fundraising and donations platform which gives 100% of all donations commission-free directly to your charity of choice.
The ‘User Accredited’ badge is a graphic certification that you are committed to all your customers and have taken the appropriate steps to facilitate full access for everyone irrespective of their disability or the adaptive technology they use.
MyDonate Charities Manager is Christine Poole: "The virtual world has the scope to be fully inclusive which we have demonstrated with a site that has been tested by real end-users with a broad range of disabilities."
"The great thing about real life accessibility testing is that we’ve been able to work through the accessibility needs of fundraisers and donors to provide a simple yet efficient service which is open to more users. Put plainly - a more accessible service equals more donors which equals more money to charities and good causes."
Research shows that an accessible site can deliver a 35% ‘usability bonus’ for every visitor - a factor which translates directly into competitive advantage and time efficiency for the provider. The truth is that accessible sites are simply easier and more intuitive to use: they improve productivity for everyone.
However, adhering to the Equality Act (2010) and the global ‘gold standard’ of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) is not just a ‘box ticking’ exercise. With 12 million disabled people in the UK, a further 6 million with dyslexia and many millions more with a literacy or learning difficulty (a quarter of the population has a reading age of 14 or less), accessibility could be an issue for nearly half your visitors.
Says AbilityNet’s Head of Digital Inclusion: "It is inspiring to see an organisation take accessibility as seriously as BT and adopt such a clear sighted, pan-disability approach. We hope that by ensuring that MyDonate can be used by everyone regardless of any impairment, BT will help accessibility best practice become a benchmark industry-wide."
In this difficult financial climate price comparison sites play a significant role in making sure consumers get the possible deal. This is especially important for people with disabilities who often have less disposable income than others.
AbilityNet's Head of Digital Inclusion, Robin Christopherson, dressed as Spock to bring accessibility to life at ND2012, the National Digital Inclusion conference that took place in late May. Robin's highly popular speech showed how the future has already arrived for many disabled people as he demonstrated how his smartphone can tell him where he is, remind him of appointments, answer spoken questions and even tell him what money he's holding.
Nigel Lewis, AbilityNet's CEO, says that the high quality of the entries is matched by the diversity of organisations and individuals who have been selected. "We have multi-national companies like BSkyB and Panasonic alongside very small volunteer-only self-help groups and even a hash tag that was used on Twitter to rally people to clean up their streets after the riots. This demonstrates the power of technology to do good and we're looking forward to celebrating and being inspired by the hard work of so many different people."
BTL Group Ltd is delighted to announce that accessible e-Assessment content, created using the Surpass® Assessment Platform, has been awarded ‘Accredited Plus’ by the UK‘s leading pan-disability charity, AbilityNet. Achieving ‘Accredited Plus’ demonstrates that the Surpass® Assessment Platform can be used to create and deliver highly accessible e-Assessments. 
Head of Digital Inclusion at Abilitynet, Robin Christopherson says, "It is very encouraging to see an organisation take accessibility as seriously as BTL and adopt such a clear sighted, pan-disability approach. We hope that by ensuring that their products can be used by everyone regardless of any impairment, BTL will help accessibility best practice become a benchmark industry-wide."