Discapnet

Acronym of the case:

DISCAPNET

Web address of the case:

http://www.discapnet.es

Country of the case:

Spain

Posting Date:

25 August 2008

Last Edited Date:

08 January 2010

Author:

Jose Angel Martinez Usero (Technosite, ONCE Foundation)

disabilities | integration | Accessibility

Type of initiative

Promotion/awareness campaign

Case Abstract

Discapnet is a website created in 2000 to promote social and labour integration of people with disabilities. It contains a wide variety of contents, services and applications oriented to satisfy information needs of people with functional disabilities and other related stakeholders. Discapnet is an accessible website in Spanish, with an average of 1.000.000 visits a month and more than 74.000.000 visited pages. In fact, it is the world's biggest and most visited website dealing with disability issues. Discapnet is a success story, even though it is now facing major challenges. The main one is financing.

Description of the case

Domain

eInclusion

Topic

(public) e-services for disadvantaged people | eAccessibility

Sector

Culture and Media | Education, Science and Research | Employment | Social Services

Start date - End date

January 2000 (Ongoing)

Date operational

January 2010

Target Users

Any citizen | People with disability

Target Users Description

Discapnet is oriented to people with disabilities and the elderly, but as it contains a wide range of subjects, several target groups are common users, such as: researchers, journalists, social carers, students, public managers, legal experts, etc.

Scope

National

Status

Operation

Language(s)

Spanish

Policy Context and Legal Framework

Discapnet is a website created to promote social and labour integration of people with disabilities. It has two priorities: training and employment, as well as actions aiming to improve the employability of people with disabilities. The main sources of funding of Discapnet are the ERDF and the ONCE Foundation. 2008 will be the last year with funding from ERDF, as it is considered that the website is mature enough and sufficiently accepted by the internet community in order to start a new period by its own means. ONCE Foundation has accepted to support Discapnet during a transition period before the website is able to finance itself with funding collected mainly through advertising and sponsoring services. Currently Discapnet offers advertising services such as links directing users to other websites. While a million users per month are referred to other websites by Dispanet, this is far from being enough to provide full funding support to thw portal. Therefore, it is necessary to restructure the way the website is currently run and strengthen its commercial team. Nevertheless, we believe that in the future it will be possible for Discapnet to be self financed, taking into account the big acceptance of the website.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Awareness-raising information

Overall Implementation approach

Partnerships between administration and/or private sector and/or non-profit sector

Technology choice

Standards-based technology | Accessibility-compliant (minimum WAI AA)

Funding source

Public funding EU | Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €5,000,000-10,000,000

Yearly cost:

€500-999,000

Implementation and Management Approach

Discapnet was born in 2000 after observing that people with disabilities in Spain could not access many media online products, as they were not adapted to them. Discapnet was designed as a website accessible to people with disabilities fulfilling WAI guidelines. From the first day it was felt that it was necessary to obtain direct feedback from the users. This feedback made the administrators aware of the needs of the users, which has lead Discapnet to many other areas that were not expected at the beginning. Following this feedback, Discapnet no longer limits itself to social and labour issues: it tries to deal with all the issues that affect people with disabilities. For instance, Discapnet contains a channel that provides legislative news, a FAQs section explaining all the Spanish disability law and a legislative news magazine that has been very successful. There are many other services that have been created over these years like a consultation service by email, new services based on web 2.0 technologies, such as an accessible blog or an interactive accessible street map. Discapnet has also developed sections addressing special issues for disabled people such as Braille or home automation.

Technology solution

Discapnet has been developed enhancing Double-A Level of conformity with W3C WCAG. Nowadays it is migrating from CMS 2001 to SharePoint 2007, so latest versions of startandard XHTML and CSS will be implemented. As programming language .NET is used; the database system is SQL 2005. The basic interface is Double-A XHTML, but in some cases Accessible Flash is promoted for banners and a game about Europe. Moreover, some modules are implemented using JAVA technology. The most innovative applications developed are related to web 2.0 and social networks (accessible blogs, rss support and recommended items). There is also an accessible chat application and forums. One of the most visited and interesting services is the accessible street map with special directions for blind users.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

With a population of more than 3,5 million of disable people in Spain, the website has exceeded its expectations. The website contains an average of 300 new job offers per month, with a section dedicated to jobs reserved for people with disabilities in the public sector. Discapnet is always in a process of incorporation of new contents and updating the existing ones. For instance, in Summer 2008, Discapnet has updated the guide of accessible beaches of Spain that is contained in the website. This work has been done in the collaboration with more than 300 city councils that have sent the information about their beaches. Discapnet updates its contents on a daily basis with new events: bibliography, news related incapacity and the standards current national and international news. The incredible amount of news it deals with is indexed and sampled by Google in its news channel. As an example of our vocation towards making information society accessible to people with disabilities, we have been surprised by the enormous success of sending news in an Easy Reading format, made to allow people with intellectual and visual disabilities to read and understand the news. In fact, Discapnet has grown and into a very successful website that in 2007 was visited by more than 9 million users. In 2008 the website is currently receiving an average of 1.000.000 of visits a month with and more than 74.000.000 visited pages. It is the world's biggest and most important website dealing with disability issues. Discapnet is a success story but it is now facing major challenges. The main one is financing, as explained previously.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Developing interesting, appealing, updated and accessible content for people with functional disabilities and the elderly is a way to build a wide social network of loyal users. Lesson 2 - Obtaining permanent feedback from users is the best way for technology innovation, the interoperability of content and the development of new services according to users desires and needs. Lesson 3 - Web 2.0 (accessible blogs and accessible chats, for example) and interactive applications (eg. interactive accessible street map) are the trend and the challenge in the development of accessible information services Lesson 4 - Initial public funding can be the basis for developing a stable and successful business case for information services. Therefore, when the service is mature, publicity and sponsoring can be the main input for self-financing.