Justin Walters

A frank Q&A with Justin Walters, Chief Executive of Investis, an online IR and corporate communications services provider to more than 250 companies in nine European countries. His company recently began providing a range of accessible IR website products and services, beating many other large vendors.

Q. We've noticed that Investis has taken the lead among its peers to provide products and services that are accessible to people with disabilities. What was the impetus for this?

A. In the UK, our clients now have a legal obligation to make their websites accessible. This has certainly provided an extra impetus to an issue that has been part of best practice for some time.

We see it as a core part of our service to educate our clients about issues like accessibility, and to provide solutions for them.

Q. Are all of your products fully accessible? Stock charts, financial tables, PDFs?

A. We offer our clients the choice of accessible products wherever possible. For example, we have built an accessible alternative to a stock charting tool which we believe is the only one available on the market. It can be seen at www.bp.com. Or www.capita.co.uk.

PDFs are almost never accessible in our experience; specifically, the financial tables in a PDF document cannot be read effectively using a screen reader. Companies often think that a PDF is adequate, but this is rarely the case.

Q. The perception is that accessibility requires a lot of extra work for developers. Is this true and what sort of investments has Investis had to make to get up to speed?

A. Yes, it is true. We have invested heavily in R&D to build accessible versions of our products and services, and to train our people so that we deliver consistently in this area.

We have also invested in an accessibility testing lab.

Q. Is there a higher cost for corporate clients?

A. Yes, accessible websites are almost always more expensive for corporate clients for the simple reason that they require more time to build and maintain. For example, building accessible financial tables needs to be done every time a new set of results is published. And building HTML tables that are accessible takes about 25% longer than building tables to less exacting standards.

Q. One argument we make is that vendors have known or should have known about accessibility since 1999, and so they should have made sure their products where accessible in the first place. They shouldn't now try to pass on their own failure to meet standards through increased fees. What's your position on this?

A. I think you are partly right. It is certainly the case that a number of vendors have discovered accessibility rather late, and have then over-reacted and begun trying to scare clients into spending money using tactics reminiscent of the scare over the millennium bug. This is, of course, thoroughly reprehensible.

It is also true that some services can be provided with accessibility compliance included at no extra cost. For example, designing a website navigation system to be compliant as well as easily usable takes no additional time, and should not cost extra.

However, you seem to imply that the extra costs of accessibility compliance could have been avoided completely if vendors had planned better. This is not correct. For example, there is no way around the time consuming process of creating accessible HTML financial tables if you want your complex tables to be truly accessible.

Q. What percentage of your existing clients are using your accessible products?

A. The level of interest has been extremely high. Nowadays when we build websites 80% of our clients choose to meet level one or single 'A' accessibility criteria.

Q. Recognition of accessibility as an issue seems to be concentrated in the United Kingdom, what has your experience been?

A. I think the UK market is ahead of the others, driven primarily by the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act. However, we have found that clients all over Europe are taking accessibility seriously as a best practice issue, even where there is no legal requirement.

Q. As you know, we hate those image-based documents that companies like yours came out with a couple of years ago. How can you still offer these and at the same time claim to take accessibility seriously?

If I understand your argument about image-based documents (which we call Express documents) correctly, your point is that a full HTMLversion of a corporate document is better than an Express document; it offers superior design, navigation and, of course, accessibility.

I have always felt that this is a good point, but is rather naïve. The fact is that full HTML documents cost four to five times as much as Express documents - even more if you take into account the client's time that is required for final proofing and sign off of an HTML annual report.

In our experience, most communications professionals are pragmatists, and all have limited budgets. So it is no wonder that Express documents have proved to be so popular. Clients will do an HTML document when they can, but often they cannot.

On the subject of accessibility, after substantial R&D investment we are just about to launch a new generation of Express reports that are not image-based and are accessibility compliant. We believe we will be the first company to do so. We believe that the advantages of the Express format combined with accessibility compliance makes this a very exciting product for the future.

Q. We think Investis is doing a better job than most of its peers. How have you managed to service many companies at the same time while still providing high quality products and services?

I am delighted that you think we are doing a good job. What's the thing our competitors in the UK and mainland Europe find it hard to mimic? It's our strong culture of service and going the extra mile.

Q. What can we expect from Investis in the future, where are you focused?

We define our market as helping European public companies use the Internet for their corporate communications. We believe the market is still in its infancy, so we will be doing more of the same for a long time to come.