Jadu, the leading Web Experience and CRM provider for Local Government and Higher Education has announced its intention to become ‘the most accessible digital platform in the world’.
Since Jadu was founded in 2001, it has been known for delivering accessible websites for its customers who use the Jadu Web Content Management and eForms platform ‘Jadu Central’. Jadu Central powers hundreds of Local Government websites in the UK and Australia, and dozens of University self-service portals and forms in North America. High-achieving websites leveraging the Jadu platform and CRM include; Birmingham City Council, City of Edinburgh Council, Coventry City Council, Runnymede Borough Council, North Sydney (Australia), as well as commercial organisations such as Highlands and Islands Airports (HIAL), which has recently received a AAA rating from the Digital Accessibility Centre(DAC).
“We've always been passionate about delivering accessible, web-based products that work for everyone. Web standards and accessibility have always been baked into our design and product development, as well as our culture,” says Jadu Chief Executive Officer and Founder Suraj Kika. “We are privileged to be the UK CMS market leader in Local Government and now that we are growing rapidly in the US, we want to redouble our focus on digital inclusivity as the standards evolve.”
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) who set international standards for accessibility has announced that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, the latest update of the internet's accessibility standards, has been released.
For organisations that have accessibility as a high priority, such as Government and Higher Education, this will be an important consideration in selecting the right platform to deliver accessible digital services.
James Jacobs, Jadu’s Accessibility Lead says, “At Jadu, we view WCAG as the minimum baseline for accessibility, and have renewed focus on pushing our software beyond WCAG towards best practices. As a business, we are committed to undertaking a huge review of our software and leaving no stone unturned to ensure our software is accessible. While we have lots of work to do and this is a journey we are on, with accessibility embedded into our culture, our team’s mindset and our high expectations, we are focused and prepared to deliver on this mission.”
As part of the mission, Jadu will launch initiatives to embed accessibility further into the business and the market including; continuous training and upskilling the team, opening up new learning and development opportunities, launching developments across product engineering and design departments and educating the market including customers and partners.
In 2020, Jadu established partnerships with leading accessibility testing and software providers including AbilityNet, ShawTrust and Silktide to ensure that its skills and technology would be ready to take on such a mission. New partnerships are on the horizon to further strengthen how the tech and accessibility industries work together to enable digital inclusion.
“It’s about building an accessibility alliance with organisations who have the same mindset, it’s about doing the right thing for the end-user”, Suraj says.
Jadu has produced a new Whitepaper on Digital Accessibility, which includes contributions from the company's customers and partners, including Hyland Software and Konica Minolta Business Solutions, who distribute Jadu software across North America. This will be shared digitally within the next few weeks.
Suraj continues, “we’re now on a mission to become the world’s most accessible digital platform. In our team, accessibility is as important as security - and both drive all key technology decisions in our products and services. We will focus on significantly delivering on this mission. While this is a journey we are on, we’ve already started.”
Jadu will share quarterly updates on the journey.
