Segala News & Events - Press Releases

Segala Sets Up Debate For Opening Another Door

Released: 19 July 2005

In conjunction with internet portal Netimperative.com, Segala pulled together an expert panel debate on web accessibility. Gathered in a private room at the Zinc and Zetter restaurant in London, the panel included Liz Faherty of Cheapflights, Andrew Gerrard of IAB, Ivan Imhoff of the Hilton Group, Katie King of 2thefore, Rupert Marsh from the DTI, Dermot O’Mahony of O2, Chris Wills of Rufus Leonard, Timur Shah of Kings College London and Dave Demeda of Corporate Edge.

Called Opening another door for those missing customers, the debate focused on why companies are still failing to make the web accessible for all.

The debate was lively, thought-provoking and a broad range of issues were addressed, said Paul Walsh, CEO of Segala. I was very pleased to hear both sides of the story being discussed at one table; executives who felt it was either too expensive or too difficult to sell internally to their business and those who saw accessibility as an integral goal that should be understood before forming an opinion.

Commenting, Editor of Netimperative, Mike Butcher, said: Attendees discussed how feasible it is commercially to bring down the online barriers to the disabled and at the same time open up sites to whole sections of the less able population.

Read more about what each person had to say at the debate

Note to editors

About Segala

Segala is a worldwide independent authority and provider of web accessibility and mobile content auditing, testing, certification and Trustmark services. Segala provides accessibility conformance evaluations, audits and certification for web and mobile publishers, developers and agencies to satisfy usability and accessibility guidelines and legislation.

Segala is a sponsor member of the W3C Content Label Incubator Group (XG-CL), a worldwide initiative to develop content labelling standards for the web. As an Associate member of the W3C, Segala also participates in the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and is a Founding Sponsor of the Mobile Web Initiative (MWI). Segala is the first testing and compliance specialist worldwide to become an associate member of the GSMA. Segala has global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. For further information visit www.segala.com.

About the Segala-Certified™ Trustmark

Segala is the first company worldwide to make a machine-readable content label available for web accessibility and mobile content by providing a visible Trustmark that is detectable by search engines and browsers. The Segala-Certified Trustmark provides a branded, certified and verifiable method that enables search engines and browsers to develop systems for users to filter and trust content that contain this Trustmark. It is the first Trustmark worldwide to be based on the method proposed by members of the W3C XG-CL activity and which is expected to exceed the previous content label standard, PICS, currently used by Microsoft Internet Explorer. O2 is the first major organization worldwide to adopt the Segala Trustmark as standard throughout its online content.

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