Over the past few years, interest in the concept of accessibility has steadily grown. As a result, new movements and new levels of awareness have been generated, supported by relevant legislation (Stanca Law, PA Digital Code, Directive on user satisfaction etc.)
At a time when more and more information is published on the Web, the question of access to this information is not merely a legal obligation but a new way of concretely dealing with concepts of inclusion and participation.
Although the available technology has become so sophisticated that enormous progress has been made in terms of quality and speed of service, it is still not easy to design, produce and, particularly maintain, a web site which is accessible. The site's accessibility is something that influences every stage of the process, from the initial idea to everyday maintenance.
Taking it as read that we have a solid, flexible and up-to-date technological base, we can pinpoint factors which contribute to the success of a project which are connected to accessibility yet distinct from it. These are things like quality, usability, punctual and effective communication.
All these factors aim to do the same thing, namely make the site as user-friendly as possible by placing the user firmly at the centre of the project.
It is obviously extremely important to make a good job of the initial design and development of the site. However, the real challenge lies in providing the people responsible for the upkeep of the site with the right tools to ensure quality is maintained.
That is why the FlexCMP platform it runs on was designed and developed to be rigorous, flexible and expandable.
The authoring team can find lots of tools which were specially-designed to make it easier to maintain the quality of the site over time: link management, multimedia links, alternative texts to replace images, legibility indicators etc.
As far as the end user is concerned, what they get is an information space complete with coherent navigational systems, contextualised menus, and breadcrumb menus (which indicate current position of user within the system) site map and printable versions of each page (and all unnecessary information is cleared before printing), and an ecosystem of headings at various levels to divide up the content and make it easier to read.
There are also skiplinks on each page. This enables users who have screen reader to go from contents to menu and vice versa, making keyboard navigation of the site much easier.
This is why the code was designed to follow the standard visual reading order as closely as possible, both in terms of sequencing as well as language. If your browser doesn't support stylesheets or images, or they are not active, (a text browser for example) or if you cannot use Javascript code, or even if you navigate using the keyboard or other tools rather than the conventional mouse, the user experience, as the experts call it, is still guaranteed because of the way the page codes have been designed.
If your browser allows you to make the letters bigger (for example CTRL++ on Firefox and "Visualise" > "Font" > "Very big/Big", from the Internet Explorer menu etc) the percentage definition of the font used will enable you to make the text on your pages as big as you wish, making navigation easier.
At the same time, the fluid structure of the page means that the content can adapt to fit the size of your windows or screen setup, without any information being lost.
The combination of the above two factors makes it easier for a lot of people to read the pages without problems.
Again with this objective in mind, every color contrast and combination used for the text and its background was tested using the W3C algorithm (World Wide Web Consortium), adopted by Italian legislation in point 2) of Appendix A Regulations regarding technical validation of the Stanca Law.
There is also a search engine on every page of the site, which includes a comprehensive index of all the attachments in PDF, the Adobe standard which was also adopted by Italy in 2006.
If a first search doesn't produce the desired result, it is possible to go to an advanced search page, where you can refine the search criteria and include or exclude key terms, search within given categories or special channels etc.
Obviously there isn't a pre-packed solution to every problem so please don't hesitate to communicate any problems you have using the site by completing the relevant form Modulo Segnalazioni. We will do our best to deal with the problem as quickly as possible.