The Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) modernised its online presence with Unic in 2007. At the same time, the requirements of disabled persons were to be supported. Back then, we already posed René Weiss a few questions for an internal blog. His answers are still relevant today.

Unic Magazin: http://www.zkb.ch was awarded AA+, the highest degree of quality certified in Switzerland. What benefits does the bank expect from this?

René Weiss: The ZKB hopes to provide an Internet presence which reaches as many people as possible due to its optimised user-friendliness. With its new Internet presence, the ZKB offers information to all interested parties and addresses more than just a subgroup. What enterprise can afford in current times to consciously withhold its range of information from potential clients?

Apart from the direct addressees. Does the accessible website have further advantages?

The ZKB only sees “direct addressees” – namely everyone who wishes to visit the website. This means that the advantages of accessibility directly affect all website visitors. The advantages at content level include the clear navigational structure, the clear and understandable text design, as well as the labelling of files foreign to HTML (e.g. PDFs), at the visual level, the good contrast as well as the elastic design with which font-size scaling has been realised, and from a technical viewpoint compliance with the standards, which positively influences browser compatibility, search engine suitability, and release capability. Accessibility thus opens the door to the ZKB in many different ways.

Were you able to measure the success of accessibility?

Measurement of accessibility was necessary from the start of the project in order to ensure that we really had successfully realised accessibility upon completion of the project. The independent foundation “Zugang für alle” (Access for All) certified the successful creation of accessibility by the ZKB. However, the positive feedback from internal and external users related to the improved user-friendliness of the new website www.zkb.ch is even more important to the ZKB. The very good search engine rankings indicate further measurable success.

How did you approach the accessible website project? What preparatory work was necessary for it?

Following comprehensive work on the topic of accessibility, I was able to find several supporters for the cause with my argumentation. The project team was enthusiastic about it right from the start. Therefore, the accessibility requirements were already taken into consideration, planned, realised, and checked in the hour of the project’s birth. Graphic, content-related, and technical requirements or policies were defined and served as policies for all persons involved, from the software engineer to the editor. They were regularly sensitised to the subject matter and looked for solutions together with experts. Specific education and training was also necessary because until then know-how in the field of accessibility was still inadequate. Observation of accessibility was always and still is a declared project goal.

Re-launching a website of ZKB’s scope is a large-scale project per se. What was decisive for a simultaneously implemented, efficient, cost-effective, and workable WCAG conformity?

Accessibility was already defined as decisive and a requirement for the workability of the project right from the start, and therefore clear policies existed. The complexity could be further reduced because on the one hand it was decided to use new templates and on the other hand the information on the website was reworked. This meant that existing data was hardly used at all. The additional qualification of the technicians involved was a cost driver on the outset of the project; however, it will pay off during the course of the project and in the future through more efficient programming and improved quality. In a nutshell: if accessibility is known as a requirement from the outset, it can be realised both cost-effectively and efficiently.

What were the most demanding challenges within the course of the project?

Numerous policies, guidelines, and forums on the topic of accessibility can be found on the Web. However, actual implementation is not merely dry theory, it is a practical challenge. The ability to display the new website in various browsers while avoiding too many visual restrictions was the next challenge. As only little knowledge of the field of implementation of accessibility and realisation of an elastic design existed when the project started, knowledge frequently had to be gained independently. Motivated and ambitious project employees, as well as continuous quality assurance conducted by experts were therefore indispensable for the success of the project.

The ZKB’s corporate design doesn’t really attract attention with distinctive contrasts. How was it possible to reconcile the WCAG 1.0 specifications with regard to colour and brightness contrast?

The ZKB colour design already existed, so we focussed primarily on differences in brightness when creating the design. We tried to make the colour difference as obvious as possible.

Accessible programming is one side of the coin; the other side is content management. For example, in a film by the «Access 4 All» foundation, a visually impaired user criticises the missing alternative text for an image picture. How do you cope with this challenge at the ZKB?

In as far as it makes sense, we describe all pictures alternatively with text. A corresponding input field was realised in the ZKB content management system for this purpose. The editors were trained to file a meaningful alternative caption. Moreover, all contents are quality assured before going live. Image pictures are pictures which are intended to trigger an emotion, but at the same time do not have any information content. According to WCAG, such pictures must be marked with an empty ALT attribute (alt=” “), so that the voice output for the blind ignores these pictures and does not read them out. The rule “describe as much as necessary but not more than really necessary so as not to unnecessarily slow down information intake” applies to these ALT attributes.

You offer the majority of your documents also in PDF format for the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Does this confront you with special challenges?

The ZKB’s goal is to also offer accessible PDF documents. The PDF files already created before the re-launch are only accessible in part. The ZKB editors were specifically trained to be able to gradually replace the existing documents. Newly created PDF files already meet the accessibility standards.

The Web is becoming more and more geared towards multimedia. New techniques and opportunities alternate at breakneck speed. Has the goal of accessibility prevented you from using such new techniques?

No, we were able to use all necessary functionalities required for the ZKB website.

If the ZKB Internet re-launch were not to take place until tomorrow, what would you do differently?

With regard to accessibility we would use the same procedure. Of course, the implementation of such a project would now be a lot easier, as the know-how would already be available and would not need to be acquired additionally.

The «Access 4 All» foundation awarded the ZKB website AA+, the highest degree of quality certified in Switzerland. Have you already received direct feedback from you customers?

None regarding the certification, but on the other hand only positive feedback regarding accessibility, including from disabled persons. The feedback is a motivation for us to design other online areas with accessibility for all people and not only the website www.zkb.ch.