Community: Unique website offers extra help

The website, uses customised imagery to helps its clients find their way around the web.

It also features a tailor-made glossary which gives them clear meanings to words and expressions which could be confusing.

Sam O’Brien, web manager for MacIntyre, which runs over 400 homes across Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and into Hertfordshire, said: “We wanted to create a website which would serve the particular needs of our MacIntyre customers. It wasn’t enough simply to design a website along the lines of the others we operate.

“Throughout the process we worked in consultation with our customers who have a variety of learning disabilities, to make sure it suited their own requirements. We took particular care to make sure the language and pictures were right in helping to explain the services we offer to our customers.”

The website relaunch has come as part of the roll-out of a new suite of websites for Grand Union Housing Group and its subsidiaries Aragon Housing Association and South Northants Homes.

All the websites feature the latest systems to make sure they can be read in any language and ‘browsealoud’ software which makes them readable by those with visual impairments.