The "Gateway" Project Summary

Early in 1998, the Division of Social Policy and Development of the United Nations Secretariat began a project to improve its web sites. The challenge was the development of web pages that would present the work of the Division, aimed at several sets of audiences, and most importantly, ensure that these pages are accessible to people with disabilities.

By mid-year, the Gateway to Social Policy and Development web site became a model for the rest of the United Nations secretariat web sites for both functionality and accessibility. The Persons with Disabilities site in particular is perhaps the first fully accessible site on the United Nations' web server, earning a "Bobby Approved" rating.

The project aimed at providing a set of web sites that would deliver key messages and, at the same time, be accessible to persons with disabilities or those with inadequate Internet capabilities. Initially, the main Social Policy and Development web site (later called the "Gateway"), and the sites for Persons with Disabilities and Ageing were identified. Later, the World Summit for Social Development and International Year of Older Persons were added to the project scope.

The project had three phases: (1) Communications assessment, (2) web site development and accessibility research and (3) training. Although allocation was taken from training to augment additional requirements in the web site development, all phases were completed successfully, on time, and within total budget.

The assessment phase proved to be an important component in the Gateway’s design. The assessment was carried out by Serinfor, a consulting company based in Spain. Oliva Acosta of Serinfor, applied communications principles she used in successfully launching the UN's WomenWatch web site to deliver a thorough determination of messages and target audiences for each identified web site. This, with the functional design document produced by Vision Office, provided the for the web sites.

At the end of the first phase, a conceptual model was produced as a web site, though not accessible. Web development continued in Vancouver, British Columbia, utilizing a selected product FrontPage 98. The accessibility research ran parallel with development, using new lessons learned to implement accessibility in the HTML code of the identified web sites.

During the study for determining how to make the "Gateway" web site accessible, researchers were encouraged by a large resource of web accessibility sites, from both commercial and public organizations and individuals. Based on the findings, it was determined that web site developers can make web pages both accessible and visually appealing by following good and simple Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) programming practices. These findings were documented by Vision Office, and the resulting article was graciously hosted by the Persons with Disabilities web site in a Priority Theme paper entitled "Accessibility on the Internet".

The "Gateway to Social Policy and Development" and the World Summit for Social Development sites were the first delivered, in mid-April 1998. They provided an earlier showcasing for accessibility and functionality. The web sites for Persons with Disabilities, Ageing and International Year of Older Persons were delivered end-May 1998, a few days ahead of schedule.

The pages were checked on various browsers and "HTML validators". A validator checks for HTML code that may not be correctly translated by several browsers, or are not specified in the HTML Recommendation. The project chose the Bobby validator from CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology.

Due to the full conversion of documents to HTML in the Persons with Disabilities site, it became the first site to achieve a "4-star Bobby approved" status, indicating it is fully accessible.

In the last phase, Vision Office delivered courses on Web Management and FrontPage 98 to selected staff. Additionally, two new brochures with design guides, web tools and other project documentation was provided on compact disk (CD). With this summary, most of the documentation is now provided online.

This documentation web site provides a limited edition of the project documentation delivered on compact disk. Permission to publish this was provided by the Division of Social Policy and Development of the United Nations secretariat. The Division of Social Policy and Development does not warrant the information provided in this site. The material here are copyrighted to Vision Office Support Services unless otherwise specified.

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