Vision Australia takes a Squiz at accessible intranet

National technology consultancy Squiz has delivered a new intranet with user accessibility for Vision Australia's 700 employees.

Squiz built the new system from the ground up to meet the accessibility requirements of Vision Australia staff, of whom 15 percent have visual impairment.

"Vision Australia had very specific requirements that did not simply call for an ‘out of the box’ service," said Squiz group chief executive John-Paul Syriatowicz.

"We needed to find a solution whereby employees could share knowledge in real-time with relevant team members, as well as integrate the social functionality that we have come to expect from our professional intranets, including posts, tagging, and video and photo sharing."

The previous system had been developed a decade ago and did not attend to the accessibility requirements sufficiently to engage users.

The intranet had to be functional to all users across a range of devices and encourage collaboration both professionally and socially, according to Squiz. Single sign-on across the different platforms has encouraged users to switch between devices and applications.

Vision Australia started to rely on email as an alternative, which was slowing processes down. The new system was then designed "to be an efficient and attractive information repository".

"Squiz's system was so intuitive and so familiar that those who use consumer websites and known social media platforms required little to no training at all," Vision Australia chief executive Ron Hooton said.

"Within the first two weeks, 20 user groups were created, including professional information exchanges and even footy tipping competitions."

Staff in the field are also able to send information, questions, documents and images to resolve client issues faster.

Sydney-headquartered Squiz is currently working on including a user dashboard enabling users to have a quick overview of everything relevant to them in one place.

The technology consultancy is one of the companies to replace NSW Department of Family and Community Services child protection system, ChildStory, in a $100 million project.