Jodi Mattes Trust for accessible digital culture

 Museums, art galleries, libraries, archives, heritage venues and disability organisations can submit a nomination, as well as commercial companies (commercial companies are invited to submit nominations in association with a service provider).

Nominations should be for services, projects or initiatives that make cultural collections and information more accessible to disabled people, involve disabled people in their creation, and use digital media.

Every kind of digital technology is eligible, e.g. computers, websites, mobile phones, interactive objects, audioguides, PDAs, multi-media, digital cameras and editing equipment.

We welcome nominations from all kinds of projects, small and big, low tech and high tech, for small and large audiences, short-term or long term, from small and large organisations. 

 Award Categories

• Digital Access Online • Digital Access Onsite • Digital Access for People with a Learning Disability – given jointly with the Rix Centre • Digital Access Online – International

The first three categories are UK-wide, the final category excludes the UK.

The 2011 Nomination Form will look similar to the 2010 Nomination Form below.

The 2011 Nomination Form will look similar to the 2010 Nomination Form below. 

Each project will be assessed on its own merit. Winning projects, services or facilities will meet several or all of the following broad criteria:

• involving users and communities

• use technology that is accessible (nominated websites will meet at least Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level A)

• innovative approach 

• organisational commitment to acess and equality for disabled people

The panel of judges are culture sector professionals and several have personal experience of disability.

The shortlist is drawn up on the basis of:

• the information provided with the nomination

• results of automated testing of home pages for web site nominations

• viewing the websites of nominated project

The Winners will then be selected on the basis of the above information and:

• a site-visit report by disabled assessors for onsite projects

• a report of extensive automated testing and testing of websites by disabled users

Projects, services and facilities will usually have been completed after 1 September 2009, or be continuously developed. Projects that do not meet these criteria will need to show that they remain active,  and/or have been augmented.   

The selection criteria are the same as for the UK Awards.

Nomination forms need to be completed in English language, so that all the judges can read them.

If your project is not in English, please use the Nomination Form to describe what makes the content of your website, webpages or web services so good for disabled people. As far as is possible, disabled users will assess the shortlisted websites which are in other languages than English. We invite you to help us make contact with users and user organisations (by asking for contact details at the end of the nomination form).

Currently, we cannot give an international Award for Digital Access Onsite, because we do not have the means to organise user testing outside the UK.