Case Study
The Client
 Warwickshire County Council DISCS (Disability, Illness,
Sensory and Communications Service) is a Warwickshire LEA Special Educational
Needs Support service. Their role is to support the inclusion of pupils with
physical disabilities, sensory impairments and communication difficulties. They
work to supplement and support the work of schools and pre-schools who retain
responsibility for making provision to meet special educational needs.
The Challenge
Warwickshire County Council DISCS had two distinct requirements which they
asked to Pin Digital to help them with.
The first was to produce a website that would be used to promote Warwickshire
DISCS and the services they offer. The website needed to comply with the latest
accessibility legislation and meet the requirements of the Bobby Approved
standard.
The second requirement was to create an online collaboration tool so employees
of Warwickshire DISCS could share information and resources. With a disparate
workforce based at several locations working different hours, there was a real
need for such a collaboration tool. Warwickshire County Council DISCS needed an
Intranet that could be easily accessed and was simple to use as there would be
over 100 users each with varying levels of IT knowledge and experience. The
intranet needed to be adaptable to their needs and be able to grow as their
requirements change.
The Solution
 Pin Digital created a new design for the
Warwickshire County Council DISCS website which complied with the 'Bobby A'
Approved Standard. Bobby provides a means to measure accessibility on websites
and their compliance with government standards. The new website has fully
resizable text so that users can increase or decrease the font size to enable
more comfortable reading of content. The website was also designed to include
equivalent information to the visual or auditory content to assist users of
speech synthesizers and braille displays.
The website was developed using a full Content Management System with an inline
editor. This allows members of Warwickshire DISCS staff to make changes to the
website content, simply and quickly.
For the Warwickshire DISCS intranet Pin Digital deployed a customised version
of Microsoft Sharepoint. This offered DISCS the ideal solution to their
collaboration needs. It is simple to use and was entirely customised to their
requirements. They can upload files such as documents and template enabling
them to be shared with other members of staff. With version controlling
enabled, changes to documents can be highlighted and stored in a document
history enabling users to roll back to previous versions if necessary.
Finally Pin Digital conducted an informal training seminar to familiarise the
staff at Warwickshire DISCS with the new intranet and website.
The Bottom Line
Warwickshire County Council DISCS now have a popular, fully accessible website
that can be used by teachers, pupils and members of the public alike.
With their new intranet all members of the workforce can now collaborate more
easily with each other and have access to a wealth of shared resources, thus
making working life both easier and more efficient.
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The new Warwickshire DISCS website helps to portray our organisation in a
positive and professional light and we are certain the new intranet is going to
make their lives easier. We also found the training we received was beneficial
and gave us a much better understanding of how to fully utilise both
facilities.
Mary Cobb, Warwickshire County Council DISCS |
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Project Specification
| COMPANY: |
Warwickshire County Council DISCS |
| SECTOR: |
Public Sector |
| THE SOLUTION: |
Accessible Website Development,
Intranet
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| URL: |
www.warwickshirediscs.co.uk |
| TECHNOLOGY: |
Windows 2000 Server
ASP.NET
XML
SQL Server Database
Microsoft SharePoint |
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