Accessibility on offenbach.de: New assistant helps with individual adaptation and use
21.11.2023 – After the city and municipal utility company geared their website more towards target groups last year, they are taking a further step towards accessibility this year.
"Accessibility is an important social concern, but also a far-reaching and unfortunately not always fully achievable goal. It goes without saying that we comply with the legal requirements arising from the Ordinance on Accessibility and the Disability Equality Act in Hesse for the municipal internet portal offenbach.de. This includes our offers in easy language and sign language as well as various technical requirements. However, just meeting the legal requirements is not enough for me," says Lord Mayor Dr. Felix Schwenke. "Wherever more is possible, we also want to try to implement more. Our aim with the municipal internet portal is to ensure that as many people as possible can use it easily and effectively, because offenbach.de is the central information portal for the citizens of Offenbach. That is why we are continuously improving and expanding the website's functions."
Focus on accessibility
When www.offenbach.de was relaunched in May 2022, the focus was not only on aligning the website with target groups and services, but also on accessibility. "Even before the relaunch last year, the website was optimally readable for screen readers. Screen readers are programs that blind people or people with severe visual impairments can use to have websites read aloud to them," explains OSG Managing Director and Head of Corporate Communications at Stadtwerke, Regina Preis. "In the new website, we have also sharpened the color contrast in various design elements and in the navigation and enlarged the font. All of this helps people with and without visual impairments to read our pages better."
This year, we also introduced an assistant that allows site visitors to adjust the colors, contrast and font to suit their individual needs. Since November, the "Eye-Able Assistant" has been accessible on large screens via an icon in the shape of a man, directly next to the search magnifying glass in the cyan-blue header of the website. In the mobile view, the function can be found at the top of the navigation menu, which can be accessed via the three horizontal bars, as on many other modern websites. It can be used to sharpen contrasts, display the website in black and white, activate a blue filter or night mode, hide images in order to focus on text and links and enlarge the mouse pointer. There is also a read-aloud function that reads aloud in German or a foreign language. The foreign language can be set in advance using the Google Translator in the navigation menu.
"Basically, it is not possible to develop a design that makes it equally easy for everyone to read or find their way around a site," says Fabian El-Cheikh, also OSG Managing Director and Head of the Public Relations Office of the City of Offenbach. "People's requirements are simply too individual for that. That's why it's important for us to provide this assistant, which allows each person to customize the website according to their needs."
The Offenbacher Stadtmarketinggesellschaft (OSG)
Offenbacher Stadtmarketinggesellschaft mbH, an associated company of the City of Offenbach am Main and Stadtwerke Offenbach Holding (SOH), is responsible for key marketing tasks on behalf of the city. It operates the joint internet portal of the city, SOH and Energieversorgung Offenbach, organizes events such as the two major city festivals, Mainuferfest and Lichterfest, and is responsible for visitor management at Wetterpark Offenbach. With the OF-InfoCenter (Salzgässchen 1), OSG also maintains an advance booking office in Offenbach for tickets to local, regional and national events. The joint part-time management is carried out by Regina Preis (Head of Stadtwerke Offenbach Corporate Communications) and Fabian El Cheikh (Head of the Public Relations Office). This partnership-based cooperation strengthens OSG's claim to act as a hinge company between the city administration and Stadtwerke Offenbach, bundling key tasks and jointly managing city marketing projects for the city.