Paul Walsh, who chairs BIMA has been asked to give a keynote to the leaders of a group of London Councils. His topic: How to better engage with the public through the Web.
Paul will be addressing accessibility and the use of blogs. On accessibility, Paul proposes:
* Make local council staff more accessible. This can be achieved by putting names and contact details for every service that Councils offer the public.
* Make it easy for disabled users to access the same information as everyone else. This can be achieved by making sure their Web sites are designed and built with best practice techniques in mind. The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the defacto guidelines used to help developers build accessible Web sites.
* Make their content more discoverable for search engines so when users can find reliable and relevant content when searching for local information. This also covers internal search. This is automatically achieved when Web sites have incorporated Web accessibility best practice.
I feel a bit ashamed. These are issues I rarely think about in any depth and yet they are metaphors for the kinds of issue that many SMBs face. But could blogs really help? I’m 100% convinced. In comments to Paul’s post, I said:
I’d be stressing the community angle and maybe giving some examples out of the US. I’d definitely keep it 100% non-technical. I’d point up ease of use, choice, giving the citizen a genuine voice – with examples. I’d also as a finale talk about the power this puts back into people’s hands to help themselves, improve their social awareness, promoting social cohesion – which can be a genuine issue in under priveleged communities.
Translated into business speak, that means making it far easier for business to access the growing online communities of business people who are passionate about their wee patch. It is one of the reasons I find Stuart Jones such compelling reading. He’s operating in one of the toughest parts of the UK but never wavers in his support for the local economy. His wry humour is endearing and you can really hear the man’s voice. Paul – if you’re talking to council leaders, I’d point you to Stuart’s place. He is the mirror into which these folk have to look. If the audience gets that message, there is a strikingly clear opportunity for both sides to engage.
I am green with envy. This is a fantastic opportunity to foster inovation.
Disclosure: I am helping Paul in certain aspects of his Content Labels project.
Technorati Tags: bright ideas, innovation
