News: 2009-12-14 to overview

BIENE Award: SWR.de award-winning accessibility

The jury's verdict has now provided official confirmation that the SWR portal is among the best accessible German-language websites.
Rainer Scheuffele, Project Manager and Accessibility Expert in the editorial department of SWR.de, believes that the reasons for the success are as follows:

"I think visitors to our website are particularly impressed by the solid base of basic tools that are available to help use in all areas of the portal. The website fulfils certain criteria that enable the majority of people with disabilities to really understand and use our internet presence easily".

The acronym BIENE stands for "Barrierefreies Internet eröffnet neue Einsichten". The two social welfare organizations "Aktion Mensch" and the "Stiftung Digitale Chancen" have been awarding this prize for the best designed websites for people with disabilities since 2003. The competition entries go through a multi-level testing procedure before being finally chosen by a jury. This year was the sixth time the competition has taken place and a total of 17 out of 24 entries in 7 categories were awarded a prize. The fact that only one single BIENE in gold (in the category Purchasing and Transaction services) was awarded this time shows just how hard the selection process is.

The high-quality, accessible, web portal, SWR.de, was able to convince the jury in the category of up-to-the-minute research and service portals.

Sybit is SWR's implementation service provider for their Content Management System CoreMedia. The accessibility concepts were continually improved and implemented by Sybit in cooperation with the partner agency 52eins (www.52eins.de).