January 2007 - "Happy New Year!"
May I wish you a Happy New Year. I hope that 2007 brings with it everything that you are hoping for.
My reason for writing to you is to tell you about how excited I am having just launched a new version of our website at www.dsslaw.co.uk (old domain address). And this certainly isn't your normal kind of solicitor's website!
ACCESSIBILITY
As you know, I pride myself on being accessible to everyone, not only to my clients or other people that I work with but also to members of the general public. After all, there is no point in me advising and representing children with special educational needs or people with disabilities claiming that they do not have access to appropriate provision or have been discriminated against if I am not leading by example.
But access is not achieved by just by 'saying' that you are accessible; true access is achieved by actually doing something positive to address accessibility issues. For me, this is by providing information in a range of formats which can be accessed easily by people who may have differing disabilities or particular needs. I have often found that making information 'accessible' actually also benefits people who may not even have these needs.
SPEECH-ENABLING
The first thing that will strike you about our new website is the fact that it has been 'speech enabled'. I must admit that I looked long and hard and researched extensively into varying methods of ways of speech enabling websites but was very disappointed by what I found.
Either the websites required a download of software to be made to the user's computer (which I realised that people are often reluctant to do), would start to read out the whole of the page to you (including often meaningless hyperlinks and other irrelevant information), would take a long time to download properly or would be spoken in a very unnatural electronic voice which, frankly, got on my nerves after a few seconds!
So, as those of you who know me well by now will have already guessed, I decided to create a 'speech-enabling' method of my own!
Our new website uses voices which, although still computer generated, actually sound quite close to the human voice. The pages are read by both a female and a male voice (who we have affectionately come to know as Callie and David). In addition I have only allowed them to read out the 'proper' text on the actual page you are viewing and nothing else.
MP3 DOWNLOADS
And I have attempted something which I do not think has ever been done before on any website (at least to my knowledge). I have allowed each spoken page on the website to be downloaded individually as an MP3 file so that it can be played back later on an Ipod or another MP3 player away from the computer. Users can download sections or even the whole website itself if they have sufficient time (and inclination) to listen to it. Now that's what I call accessibility!
NAVIGATION
As before, the site is almost entirely text based but I have now found a way to make it more easily navigated, including a more comprehensive menu bar plus a 'quick link' section at the end of each page which allows you to jump to the exact page on the site that you want easily.
TRANSLATION
In addition, each page can be translated into one of eight languages instantly (look at the bottom of the menu bar for the 'Babel Fish' logo) and if you are looking for something specific you can use the powerful search engine to explore the entire site which has actually catalogued and indexed every single word that appears on the site so that you can look up things in alphabetical order as well!
MOBILE VERSION
If you are like me and love your use of mobile technology (such as browsing the internet on your PDA (personal digital assistant) or mobile phone) you will love the fact that I have also provided an instant link to a 'mobile version' of the site instantly which should make the site even faster to load than it already is (although it will not be able to read out loud to you) and which can be easily accessed from a mobile device. You can still download the pages as mp3 files.
EXISTING PAGES
I have made sure that I have still kept all of the existing pages as we had before, many of which have become extremely popular, but have now grouped them together in sections so that About Us includes the pages on Our People, Our Clients, Our Cases and Our Costs; What We Do includes sections on Education, Disability, Public Law. Education now subdivides into Special Educational Needs, Disability Discrimination and other types of Education; Disability subdivides into Disability Discrimination and Community Care; and Public Law subdivides into Healthcare and Human Rights.
Why We Do What We Do now links into Client Care and Why Instruct Us; and What People Say allows you to see/hear separately What Our Clients Say, What The Media Say and What The Public Say. I have also kept our very popular page entitled 'What We Don't Do'.
FREE FACTSHEETS/E-BROCHURE/E-MAIL COURSE
As before, you can still download our 16 FREE factsheets on various areas of Education, Disability and Public Law as well as request for an E-Brochure to be instantly e-mailed to you which has now been expanded from 4 to 10 pages in order to now provide a lot more detailed information about the work that we do.
But I have also now written a FREE 7 day e-mail course entitled 'How To Conduct a SENDIST Appeal' where over the course of a week's e-mails I talk you personally through the steps before, during and after an appeal to the SENDIST (Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal) in a detailed but easy to understand and follow way.
EDUCATION NEWS ONLINE
And if all of this were not enough... what I am really, really excited about is the brand new sections of the site. One of these, entitled Education News, was on the previous site in a similar way and is another of my 'inventions'. The idea behind it is described on the page itself.
It explains that the work that we do often requires us to have access to up to the minute information and news about what is happening in relation to education issues generally but that I have found that it can be extremely difficult, even following the widespread availability of news through the internet, to try and keep on top of all the current news articles being written in the media about education. As I could not find anyone who had yet tried to find a way of simplifying the process, I decided to create my own!
The result, Education News Online, is a page on our website which provides instant access to the latest 50 education articles published on the internet at almost the very moment that they appear. It sources stories from the media including the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Telegraph, the Times Educational Supplement, the DfES, the National Union of Teachers, to name but a few. What is more, you can instantly subscribe to receive the latest 15 education news stories automatically as soon as they appear online either by e-mail or by using RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
In fact, having already witnessed the success of the trial version of Education News Online being utilised by members of the public (who interestingly mainly seem to identify themselves as either teachers or lawyers) I have also expanded the 'News Online' services to include Disability News Online, Healthcare News Online and Legal News Online, although these are still in their infancy.
Before I forget to say, there is also a link on Education News to my Education News Blog where I am now posting (although not as regularly as I would like to currently) a collection of news stories and sometimes personal thoughts on current issues concerning education.
But I am actually leaving what I believe to be the best part of the new site to tell you about last.
LIST OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES/SPECIAL SCHOOLS
The idea for this was borne out of an idea that I had after being faced with one of the most frequent questions that I am asked by my education clients.
Many of them are parents of children with special educational needs who are looking for an appropriate school for their child. They have continually described to me the hours of time it has taken them to try and research and compare appropriate schools by trying to find information from their local authority, from Ofsted or from the school itself.
I realised that these parents had it tough enough already, often being involved in a dispute regarding their child's education without having this added hardship. I therefore set about creating two new pages (really three when you look at them).
One is a list of local authorities in England and Wales from which there are links directly to that local authority's website on education and also links to the relevant page on Ofsted's website where you can find out further information about all of the different services within that local authority to do with children or young people including education, care, joint area reviews, local authority inspections, etc. This also includes further links to nursery, primary, secondary, independent and further education as well as special schools, specialist schools and academies. You can even search for Ofsted reports via your postcode!
The second 'new' page is entitled 'List of Special Schools'. Many of these parents spend many hours looking into independent or non-maintained special schools. Although they also ask my advice on which schools would be best for a child with a particular type of special educational need, I make it clear that as a lawyer I am not in a position to give this type of advice. However, I realised that I could again make their lives easier when researching schools and so created two further separate pages (hence my saying that there are three not two 'new' pages) entitled 'Independent Special Schools' and 'Non-Maintained Special Schools'. I have also provided another page which explains the difference between an independent and a non-maintained school).
The list of independent special schools provides links to not only that school (where they already have a website of their own) but also their latest Ofsted report (if available) as well their address and a brief description of the type of special educational need that they cater for, their age population and gender mix. The list of non-maintained special schools is currently a download of the latest list from the DfES but which also provides links to the particular schools' website where available.
3,500 UNIQUE VISITS A MONTH
As I am sure you will have already noticed, I am passionate about the work that I do and I am extremely proud of the fact that my website has become such a popular resource on the internet currently attracting over 3500 unique visits a month with over 38,000 people accessing the website since it was first put up (in its original form) in August 2005, only 16 months ago. Not bad considering I am still just a solicitor at the end of the day!
FEEDBACK
I hope that you will find time to spend a few (or many) minutes 'surfing' the new website and hope that the information that you find there will be of interest and use to you, no matter what your background or interest.
I hope that we have already properly proofread and tested the site to ensure that all the links are working properly. However, if you do come across any 'spellies' or broken links I would be ever so grateful if you could point them out to me.
I would also be grateful if you would be willing to let me have some feedback on what you think, both good or bad. In fact, if you have any other ideas on how I may be able to improve the site with content or on how I could make it even more accessible it would be much valued by me. Any feedback you do have can be sent to suggestions@dsslaw.co.uk.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE!
Oh, and just to say, I already have plans for the third version of the website which I hope to have up and running by the time we reach our second anniversary on 3 May 2007. I won't give the game away by telling you some of the ideas now but, rest assured, you will be knocked out when you see what I have in store for the future! Don't you just love technology!!
And of course, if you or someone that you know still requires personal, specialist legal advice on an Education, Disability or Public law matter then please feel free to contact us on 020 8349 7700 or make a new enquiry online.
With my very best personal wishes, as always, and wishes again for a happy and peaceful New Year in 2007.
Douglas
P. S. I always find it extremely helpful to learn what people think about these updates. Please take a minute to tell me what you think by clicking on 'January 2007 Update - "Your Thoughts"'. Many thanks in advance if you get the chance to do this.
My reason for writing to you is to tell you about how excited I am having just launched a new version of our website at www.dsslaw.co.uk (old domain address). And this certainly isn't your normal kind of solicitor's website!
ACCESSIBILITY
As you know, I pride myself on being accessible to everyone, not only to my clients or other people that I work with but also to members of the general public. After all, there is no point in me advising and representing children with special educational needs or people with disabilities claiming that they do not have access to appropriate provision or have been discriminated against if I am not leading by example.
But access is not achieved by just by 'saying' that you are accessible; true access is achieved by actually doing something positive to address accessibility issues. For me, this is by providing information in a range of formats which can be accessed easily by people who may have differing disabilities or particular needs. I have often found that making information 'accessible' actually also benefits people who may not even have these needs.
SPEECH-ENABLING
The first thing that will strike you about our new website is the fact that it has been 'speech enabled'. I must admit that I looked long and hard and researched extensively into varying methods of ways of speech enabling websites but was very disappointed by what I found.
Either the websites required a download of software to be made to the user's computer (which I realised that people are often reluctant to do), would start to read out the whole of the page to you (including often meaningless hyperlinks and other irrelevant information), would take a long time to download properly or would be spoken in a very unnatural electronic voice which, frankly, got on my nerves after a few seconds!
So, as those of you who know me well by now will have already guessed, I decided to create a 'speech-enabling' method of my own!
Our new website uses voices which, although still computer generated, actually sound quite close to the human voice. The pages are read by both a female and a male voice (who we have affectionately come to know as Callie and David). In addition I have only allowed them to read out the 'proper' text on the actual page you are viewing and nothing else.
MP3 DOWNLOADS
And I have attempted something which I do not think has ever been done before on any website (at least to my knowledge). I have allowed each spoken page on the website to be downloaded individually as an MP3 file so that it can be played back later on an Ipod or another MP3 player away from the computer. Users can download sections or even the whole website itself if they have sufficient time (and inclination) to listen to it. Now that's what I call accessibility!
NAVIGATION
As before, the site is almost entirely text based but I have now found a way to make it more easily navigated, including a more comprehensive menu bar plus a 'quick link' section at the end of each page which allows you to jump to the exact page on the site that you want easily.
TRANSLATION
In addition, each page can be translated into one of eight languages instantly (look at the bottom of the menu bar for the 'Babel Fish' logo) and if you are looking for something specific you can use the powerful search engine to explore the entire site which has actually catalogued and indexed every single word that appears on the site so that you can look up things in alphabetical order as well!
MOBILE VERSION
If you are like me and love your use of mobile technology (such as browsing the internet on your PDA (personal digital assistant) or mobile phone) you will love the fact that I have also provided an instant link to a 'mobile version' of the site instantly which should make the site even faster to load than it already is (although it will not be able to read out loud to you) and which can be easily accessed from a mobile device. You can still download the pages as mp3 files.
EXISTING PAGES
I have made sure that I have still kept all of the existing pages as we had before, many of which have become extremely popular, but have now grouped them together in sections so that About Us includes the pages on Our People, Our Clients, Our Cases and Our Costs; What We Do includes sections on Education, Disability, Public Law. Education now subdivides into Special Educational Needs, Disability Discrimination and other types of Education; Disability subdivides into Disability Discrimination and Community Care; and Public Law subdivides into Healthcare and Human Rights.
Why We Do What We Do now links into Client Care and Why Instruct Us; and What People Say allows you to see/hear separately What Our Clients Say, What The Media Say and What The Public Say. I have also kept our very popular page entitled 'What We Don't Do'.
FREE FACTSHEETS/E-BROCHURE/E-MAIL COURSE
As before, you can still download our 16 FREE factsheets on various areas of Education, Disability and Public Law as well as request for an E-Brochure to be instantly e-mailed to you which has now been expanded from 4 to 10 pages in order to now provide a lot more detailed information about the work that we do.
But I have also now written a FREE 7 day e-mail course entitled 'How To Conduct a SENDIST Appeal' where over the course of a week's e-mails I talk you personally through the steps before, during and after an appeal to the SENDIST (Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal) in a detailed but easy to understand and follow way.
EDUCATION NEWS ONLINE
And if all of this were not enough... what I am really, really excited about is the brand new sections of the site. One of these, entitled Education News, was on the previous site in a similar way and is another of my 'inventions'. The idea behind it is described on the page itself.
It explains that the work that we do often requires us to have access to up to the minute information and news about what is happening in relation to education issues generally but that I have found that it can be extremely difficult, even following the widespread availability of news through the internet, to try and keep on top of all the current news articles being written in the media about education. As I could not find anyone who had yet tried to find a way of simplifying the process, I decided to create my own!
The result, Education News Online, is a page on our website which provides instant access to the latest 50 education articles published on the internet at almost the very moment that they appear. It sources stories from the media including the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Telegraph, the Times Educational Supplement, the DfES, the National Union of Teachers, to name but a few. What is more, you can instantly subscribe to receive the latest 15 education news stories automatically as soon as they appear online either by e-mail or by using RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
In fact, having already witnessed the success of the trial version of Education News Online being utilised by members of the public (who interestingly mainly seem to identify themselves as either teachers or lawyers) I have also expanded the 'News Online' services to include Disability News Online, Healthcare News Online and Legal News Online, although these are still in their infancy.
Before I forget to say, there is also a link on Education News to my Education News Blog where I am now posting (although not as regularly as I would like to currently) a collection of news stories and sometimes personal thoughts on current issues concerning education.
But I am actually leaving what I believe to be the best part of the new site to tell you about last.
LIST OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES/SPECIAL SCHOOLS
The idea for this was borne out of an idea that I had after being faced with one of the most frequent questions that I am asked by my education clients.
Many of them are parents of children with special educational needs who are looking for an appropriate school for their child. They have continually described to me the hours of time it has taken them to try and research and compare appropriate schools by trying to find information from their local authority, from Ofsted or from the school itself.
I realised that these parents had it tough enough already, often being involved in a dispute regarding their child's education without having this added hardship. I therefore set about creating two new pages (really three when you look at them).
One is a list of local authorities in England and Wales from which there are links directly to that local authority's website on education and also links to the relevant page on Ofsted's website where you can find out further information about all of the different services within that local authority to do with children or young people including education, care, joint area reviews, local authority inspections, etc. This also includes further links to nursery, primary, secondary, independent and further education as well as special schools, specialist schools and academies. You can even search for Ofsted reports via your postcode!
The second 'new' page is entitled 'List of Special Schools'. Many of these parents spend many hours looking into independent or non-maintained special schools. Although they also ask my advice on which schools would be best for a child with a particular type of special educational need, I make it clear that as a lawyer I am not in a position to give this type of advice. However, I realised that I could again make their lives easier when researching schools and so created two further separate pages (hence my saying that there are three not two 'new' pages) entitled 'Independent Special Schools' and 'Non-Maintained Special Schools'. I have also provided another page which explains the difference between an independent and a non-maintained school).
The list of independent special schools provides links to not only that school (where they already have a website of their own) but also their latest Ofsted report (if available) as well their address and a brief description of the type of special educational need that they cater for, their age population and gender mix. The list of non-maintained special schools is currently a download of the latest list from the DfES but which also provides links to the particular schools' website where available.
3,500 UNIQUE VISITS A MONTH
As I am sure you will have already noticed, I am passionate about the work that I do and I am extremely proud of the fact that my website has become such a popular resource on the internet currently attracting over 3500 unique visits a month with over 38,000 people accessing the website since it was first put up (in its original form) in August 2005, only 16 months ago. Not bad considering I am still just a solicitor at the end of the day!
FEEDBACK
I hope that you will find time to spend a few (or many) minutes 'surfing' the new website and hope that the information that you find there will be of interest and use to you, no matter what your background or interest.
I hope that we have already properly proofread and tested the site to ensure that all the links are working properly. However, if you do come across any 'spellies' or broken links I would be ever so grateful if you could point them out to me.
I would also be grateful if you would be willing to let me have some feedback on what you think, both good or bad. In fact, if you have any other ideas on how I may be able to improve the site with content or on how I could make it even more accessible it would be much valued by me. Any feedback you do have can be sent to suggestions@dsslaw.co.uk.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE!
Oh, and just to say, I already have plans for the third version of the website which I hope to have up and running by the time we reach our second anniversary on 3 May 2007. I won't give the game away by telling you some of the ideas now but, rest assured, you will be knocked out when you see what I have in store for the future! Don't you just love technology!!
And of course, if you or someone that you know still requires personal, specialist legal advice on an Education, Disability or Public law matter then please feel free to contact us on 020 8349 7700 or make a new enquiry online.
With my very best personal wishes, as always, and wishes again for a happy and peaceful New Year in 2007.
Douglas
P. S. I always find it extremely helpful to learn what people think about these updates. Please take a minute to tell me what you think by clicking on 'January 2007 Update - "Your Thoughts"'. Many thanks in advance if you get the chance to do this.
