BT’s partnership with Tate Online has helped i-Map, an arts resource for visually impaired people, to win the 2006 Jodi Award for Excellence in Museum, Library and Archive Web Accessibility.
Available at Tate Online, i-Map is aimed at blind and partially sighted people with a general interest in art as well as art teachers and visually impaired pupils. In giving the award to i-Map, the judges recognise the site as a world leader in making online collections accessible to blind and partially sighted people. The judges were unanimous in selecting the winning site, which they agreed had ground-breaking qualities.
The financial and technical support provided by BT’s sponsorship has enabled Tate Online to establish a dedicated digital programmes team to develop content and continue to make the website more accessible to its visitors.
User figures to the site have multiplied tenfold since BT’s sponsorship began in 2001.Thanks to BT hosting and its provision of online broadcasting to the site, which currently displays over 65,000 images of art from the Tate galleries, BT and Tate Online have been successful in their quest to make art accessible to all.
Paul Leonard, head of sponsorship at BT, says: “To win a Jodi Award is a prestigious accolade and it is a great reflection of the commitment and creativity from the Tate and BT teams who are actively involved in making this partnership an outstanding success.
“We are of course delighted to have won this award as it demonstrates that in the process of fulfilling our aim to make art accessible to all, BT and Tate Online have developed the site to be a powerful arts educational vehicle.”
Tate Online is the UK’s No 1 art website, regularly attracting over 900,000 visitors a month. In the past two years, Tate Online has won two BAFTA interactive entertainment awards for online content and has received 12 industry awards in total.
