Ryedale DC uses Immediacy for accessibility compliance
 
Ryedale District Council, located in North Yorkshire, has launched a new website at www.ryedale.gov.uk as part of its continuing programme of meeting the 2005 e-Government targets.
 
Ryedale District Council was one of the first UK councils to launch a website back in the late 1990's.  However, with technology moving on at such a pace and in order to meet the targets set by central government, Ryedale District Council harnessed the skills of third-party providers including web solutions agency NetConstruct, content management provider Immediacy, taxonomy-based search and automated content categorisation specialist APR Smartlogik, and e-forms managed service provider Toplevel. 
 
Councillor (Cllr) Keith Knaggs, Ryedale District Council’s E-champion explained, “The launch of Ryedale District Council’s improved website has provided a gateway to a host of accessible information.  It opens the internet window to council services a little wider, particularly to those with disabilities, and thanks to the developments that have been made to the new site it is now much more accessible and meets various accessibility guidelines.”
 
Cllr Lindsay Burr, Chairman of Ryedale District Council, added, “The new website provides the latest technology allowing greater access to council services for local people, businesses and tourists. These new developments allow people to carry out a wide range of transactions and provide them with more information about the range of services provided by Ryedale District Council and its partners.”
 
As well as focusing on meeting e-Government targets, Ryedale District Council hopes that its new website will make a good impression in this year’s Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) review.  In preparation for this, Ryedale District Council took advantage of the website audit service provided by Soctim and was encouraged by the positive feedback received: “This is a huge improvement on the previous Ryedale site.  Much thought has been given to the navigation and the result is a fresh, clean site which shows lots of promise.”
 
David Bentley, managing director of NetConstruct, the web solutions agency behind the new website added, "Ryedale District Council has so much to offer businesses, residents and visitors and Ryedale.gov.uk has to ensure that this is readily available and easily accessible online. The site's in-depth levels of integration make it a flagship example of what can be achieved when Local Authorities embrace new technologies and systems, resulting in a website which reaches out to the local community and can attract visitors, new business and inward investment from the same platform."
 
Nigel Jackson, CEO of Immediacy added, “Functionality inside the latest version of our CMS provides A, AA or AAA-compliant accessibility checking in author mode to ensure compliance with the latest standards, helping councils to avoid breach of the Disability Discrimination Act. This capability, together with the system’s ease-of-use and cost effectiveness, is making it very popular as local councils rush to complete implementing e-Government-related upgrades.”
 
The council is also in the process of implementing APR Smartlogik’s Semaphore solution which will provide a powerful search facility for finding information on the website.  Jeremy Bentley, CEO, APR Smartlogik, commented:
“Ryedale District Council is successfully embracing Sir Peter Gershon’s vision of migrating citizen queries, transactions and other services to the internet.  The key to the success of this project is ensuring that users can find online documents quickly and easily, using everyday language.
 
“From a technological point of view, this crucial ‘search and find’ element is delivered by consistent categorisation of shared content, using automated software. In conjunction, taxonomy management software vastly increases the intuitiveness of search engines, helping them ‘translate’ non-standard search terms into recognised government subject categories – resulting in quicker and more accurate results for users.
 
Finally, electronic forms on the new Ryedale District Council website are provided by the Toplevel e-forms managed service.  As a small district authority resources at Ryedale are often less than many other local authorities.  This managed service has significantly helped the Council to meet the requirements of the BVPI 157 Applications for Services online interaction.  Jane Roberts, sales director at Toplevel commented:
“The managed service that Ryedale have chosen suits their needs perfectly, which is why we offer the choice of OfficeForms as a product or a service to local authorities.  We've enjoyed working closely with Ryedale's staff to produce significant results in a short timescale; Ryedale now have over 40 interactive e-forms, which were created in less than a month.  Ryedale citizens will benefit from transactional e-forms services and, of course, it is a key part of the Council's e-government targets.”
 
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About Immediacy
Immediacy provides its content management system (CMS) to a wide range of UK customers including the BBC, JPMorganChase, Avis, Principality Building Society, British Transport Police, The British Council, National Express, The Hilton Group, phones 4U, Equal Opportunities Commission, Amicus Trade Union, British Gypsum, ElanIT, MerseyCare NHS Trust and numerous local authorities.
 
CMS has been consistently developed and improved since its launch in 1997, but still maintains Immediacy’s core values:
 
  • Simple- the software will always focus on ease of use because this leads to immediate productivity and greater take-up by those tasked to create content.
  • Powerful- the system provides industrial strength flexibility and scalability along with the regular integration of new features and technologies.
  • Affordable- we maintain a transparent pricing policy that will always aim to deliver better value than competitive products.
 
Current features of the latest version include:
  • In-built accessibility checking
  • Robust and scalable .NET version
  • An XML based content storage system
  • A powerful WYSIWYG content editor
  • Drag and drop document importing
  • Comprehensive administrative control
  • A facility for developers to write plug-ins to enhance both editing and server functionality
 
Information about Immediacy can be found at www.immediacy.net
 
For further information, please contact:
Matt Goode
Chief Commercial Officer, Immediacy
Tel: +44 (0)1202 250 000
Fax: +44 (0)1202 250 001
 
For further information on Ryedale District Council please contact:
Jo-anne Houghton
Web and Content Manager
Ryedale District Council
Tel: +44 (0)1653 600 666 ext 348