Improving Usability and Accessibility

There are significant barriers preventing many users, often disadvantaged citizens such as people with disabilities and elderly people, from accessing many services and information provided by e-solutions, especially governmental and commercial web sites and public access systems. Tenuta is a project funded by the European Union (EU) that is helping improve the usability and accessibility of eservices supported by the EU eTEN programme, by providing guidance on how to produce e-services that are not only accessible, but also easy to use. The paper explains why usability and accessibility are important and the economic and social benefits that can be obtained from improved usability and accessibility. Tenuta has supported projects in the use of well established but pragmatic usability and accessibility methods and techniques. Projects are reviewed, e-solutions evaluated and improvements to both process and product recommended. Few projects have existing expertise in this area, which presents a major risk to the successful uptake of the project results.