Tenuta: Strategies for Providing Guidance on Usability and Accessibility

The EU Tenuta project was funded to assist EU eTEN projects improve the usability and accessibility of new e-services that are being validated on a European scale. The challenges facing Tenuta included how to initially convince projects that these were important issues, how to gain the confidence of projects that they would benefit Tenuta assistance, and how Tenuta could make an effective contribution with only a few days support available to each project. The eventual strategy was to arrange activities such as training courses where we made personal contacts with projects, which resulted in being invited to provide on-site support. We carried out usability and accessibility evaluations before visiting projects, and reported the results as part of a two to three day workshop with the project, which included assistance with redesign, and a roadmap for future activities. Projects gave very positive feedback on the benefits obtained.