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Press Release
RFB&D
Announces Improved Website
New design offers improved accessibility
and online ordering
Princeton, NJ (June 30, 2004) Recording
for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D) will launch its newly
designed website at
www.rfbd.org on July 1, offering
members a dynamic, interactive and more accessible tool for ordering
books and products online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The new web-based ordering system is expected to facilitate and
expedite search and ordering processes for students, parents and
educators seeking books during the peak ordering times at the
beginning of the school year.
Visitors will notice improved search options to easily locate
a textbook on CD or cassette from RFB&D's CV Starr Learning
Through Listening Library of more than 98,000 titles. Revitalization
of www.rfbd.org also offers
more user-friendly navigation for people interested in supporting
RFB&D's national programs or any of the organization's
28 recording studios around the country through secure online
donations.
The current look, content and technical underpinning of
www.rfbd.org is the result of consultation with focus groups
made up of RFB&D members, parents, educators and other site
users. "Our challenge was to implement best practices for
web and e-commerce architecture and still have design and navigation
functions that are user-friendly and entirely accessible to screen
readers and other adaptive equipment," explained Morgan Roth,
vice president for public affairs. "In the end, we
were able to create a site that is attractive, informative, effective
as a marketing tool, and at the same time, accessible and intuitive."
RFB&D is the nation's first and largest
nonprofit organization to provide recorded textbooks on CD and
four-track cassette to students in kindergarten through graduate
school with disabilities such as visual impairment, severe dyslexia
or another physical disability that makes reading challenging
or impossible. RFB&D serves 127,000 students nationwide. RFB&D
has nearly 5,000 highly trained volunteers who read and produce
the organization's unique collection of titles which are housed
at RFB&D's master library in Princeton, NJ.
At the end of the 2003 financial year, the number
of people RFB&D served annually, increased by eight percent.
"As demand for RFB&D services continues to grow, so too
do requests for more access to our services beyond traditional
work hours; technology allows us to do that effectively and efficiently,"
said Peter Beran, senior vice president for information technology.
"Our members want the ability to look for and order books
at their convenience, and to be able to access personalized account
and ordering information when it suits them, whether that's
during standard business hours, overnight or over a weekend."
In addition to providing online service and transaction opportunities,
the expansion of RFB&D's web presence supports the organization's
nationwide efforts to expand awareness of RFB&D and the effectiveness
of its services. "RFB&D's web presence is potentially
the most immediate and viable means for us to communicate our
effectiveness as an accommodation for students with print disabilities,"
explained George Taber, a member of RFB&D's national board
of directors and chairman of its communications advisory committee.
"We developed www.rfbd.org
to make sure that, architecturally and graphically, we provide
a consistent and accurate portrayal of the value of RFB&D's
work."
In addition to the public website, RFB&D also
launched its intranet to facilitate internal communications among
RFB&D staff and volunteers at its Princeton, NJ, headquarters
and at its recording facilities nationwide.
additional
media inquiries:
RFB&D News Desk 1-800-803-7201
media e-mail inquiries
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