What was the challenge?
The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is the UK's leading charity offering information, support and advice to over two million people with sight loss.
Among its many services, RNIB offers accessibility consultancy and training, and has pioneered accreditation for websites that are accessible to blind and partially sighted users.
As part of RNIB's work to make society more inclusive and remove barriers to information for people with disabilities, they wanted to provide improved services for customers and staff via their website and intranet.
To achieve this, they worked on three distinct streams of work: a corporate intranet, a new public website and an ecommerce platform.
How did we help?
After reviewing three of Microsoft's top recommended SharePoint Services Providers, RNIB chose to work with Content and Code to develop and launch the three streams of work, and the corporate intranet was the first phase.
The infrastructure and operational accessibility improvements resulting from the new intranet would impact over 2,500 RNIB users throughout the UK.
Content and Code worked with RNIB to redevelop and redesign their intranet using Microsoft SharePoint 2007. The new intranet is called iSite and features a more powerful search engine that is able to find information no matter what document library or database it is stored in.
RNIB wanted iSite to become the prime source of knowledge and information within organisation and a key channel for communication.
What were the features of the solution?
iSite was delivered with a multitude of additional features. These included:
- Discussion forums where users can share information and opinions
- A corporate directory fed directly from the HR system
- The capacity to display very small or very large resolution screens, with expanded and contracted views to help users
- A more flexible home page, where content managers can quickly publish news headlines on a daily basis
- Page layouts, offering a pre-defined style and layout.
How did we meet our client’s goals?
iSite users can enjoy most of the benefits offered by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 regardless of their disability. This accessible platform provides RNIB with a central hub for communication and knowledge sharing, enabling all staff, sighted and non-sighted, to support themselves in their daily work.
RNIB can now be more productive by making use of different SharePoint features that have all been made accessible, including shared documents, lists, forums and Meta data.
What did our client have to say?
“Our previous intranet was very text heavy and the search functionality was not advanced making it difficult to navigate. Because of the text bias, there was far too much content on each page.
We needed a solution that would allow users to find information easily and rapidly whether they were blind, partially sighted or sighted.”
Xanthe Childs, Web Strategy Programme Manager at RNIB
"An intranet is key to good internal communications and knowledge sharing. An accessible solution was essential to us so by adapting SharePoint 2007, we have an intranet that can be used to its full potential by all staff. It is growing daily in popularity."
Fiona Batchelor, Head of Publishing and Internal Communications at RNIB