We’ve developed an accessible media player and we’re making it available to download for free right here on our website.

We started building our player towards the end of 2009 and have already used it as part of our work with clients. But with few robust, accessible players out there, we began to think about how we could do more with what we’d created.

Making the pledge

In March this year, we attended NDI10, a digital participation conference, where we pledged to make our accessible player available to all delegates. The idea was to make it easier for attending organisations to have a well designed, accessible media player on their website.

Before releasing it into the wild, we wanted to test the player with disabled users, as well as our own quality team. We have many years’ experience testing for accessibility, but we recognise that as non-disabled users, we’ll never be able to recreate the experience of a disabled user.

Working with Shaw Trust

Shaw Trust is one of few accessibility organisations who employ their own testing team. They provide full testing with disabled users who have a wide range of disability requirements. They’ve also advised the BBC on accessibility, so we thought they’d be the perfect people to give our media player the once over.

The web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) establish a common set of principles and standards, but the experience of disabled users is vital. Their feedback plays a key part of understanding how to interpret the guidelines. It allows us to create a site or product that doesn’t just meet the standard, but offers a good user experience for everyone. That includes people who access the site using screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Our project team spent a day at Shaw Trust in South Wales to put our accessible media player through its paces. Our time there was extremely valuable and by working together we’ve been able to refine our player before releasing it. Everyone was so helpful and keen to share their knowledge and experience – we left excited and inspired by our visit!

Find out more

You can read more about our media player and what makes it accessible, or you can go ahead and download it now.

Can you guess the footballer just by their haircut?

First, a big thank you to everyone who donned their footballer’s haircut and played our augmented reality Nutty Footy game over the last few weeks. It’s been great to see so many people wandering around in the hole, arriving late in the box and sticking it in the onion bag. That type of thing.

But there can only be one winner. And that’s Margaret Scott from Perthshire in bonnie Scotland. Her score of 1497 was the highest eligible score on our leader board, so a brand new Nintendo Wii will be winging its way northwards very soon.

So we have a winner after 90 minutes, but there’s plenty of extra time for you to play Nutty Footy and post your high score. There may not be a prize this time, but it’s the taking part that counts, isn’t it?

Thanks again and congratulations Margaret.

Design Week is the industry’s flagship magazine

The Workshop had some good news today. We climbed 23 places in Design Week’s top 100 list of UK design agencies, which puts us nicely into the top 30. We’ve moved into the top 10 digital agencies too, which reflects all the marvellous web and interactive work we’ve done over the last year.

We’re all very pleased about it. Now back to work.

The 2009 annual report we created for Sheffield charity Roundabout will appear in the 2010 D&AD Annual.

The Annual is widely recognised as the leading international showcase for design excellence and is a key reference source in universities, libraries and design agencies. Featured work is chosen by industry experts who judge entries in a range of design disciplines from around the world.

Left: Packaging for John Smedley. Top: The Roundabout annual report 2010. Bottom: Sheffield Cathedral's symbol.

The last time The Workshop entered the D&AD awards, our packaging design work for knitwear manufacturer John Smedley’s ‘Shapes’ range also appeared in the annual.

After the Roundabout report picked up three Cream awards last year, we’re chuffed to bits that it’s received D&AD recognition and is one of only 560 pieces of work chosen from over 20,000 entries.

We recently designed the 2010 annual report for Roundabout, which continues the theme of its predecessor and features images of young people in some of Sheffield’s iconic playgrounds and parks.

Symbol – Sheffield Cathedral

In other trumpet-tooting news, the symbol we created for Sheffield Cathedral is set to appear in a new book called… wait for it… Symbol. Due for publication this year by Laurence King Publishing, Symbol is a collection of effective and well-designed brand marks.

The Cathedral’s symbol was developed as part of a wider rebranding process and had to reflect its mission to be a place for all people. Two simple lines convey the Cathedral’s distinctive archway and its open-door ethos. Look closer and you’ll see one person supporting, or caring for, another.

When Symbol is published the Cathedral’s symbol will sit alongside other examples, including Nike’s ‘swoosh’, the WWF panda and the Shell logo. We’ll be sure to let you know when it hits the shelves.

We're developing Mission:Explore for the iPhone

The Workshop has teamed up with the Geography Collective to take missions from their interactive book and create a website and iPhone application called Mission:Explore.

Misson:Explore aims to get young people out and about, engaging with geography and learning about places. Through a series of playful missions, users get to explore new locations in novel and exciting ways, and see the world from a different perspective.

The missions are designed to get young people using and exercising their skills, often without even realising it. One mission asks the user to try and cross Trafalgar Square without scaring a pigeon – think of all the risk assessment and planning required!

We’re working on Mission:Explore at the moment, so look out for more information soon.

We moved into our newly-built office in January 2008

Our Sheffield office, designed by drdh architects, is in the running for a prestigious architecture award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The folks from RIBA came to visit us this week and are now locked in careful deliberation before they make their final decision.

We’re keeping our fingers firmly crossed. Feel free to join in.

Earlier this year, The Workshop designed and built a giant ‘AidPod’ for the ColaLife campaign. Watch the video above to see how we did it.

The concept behind the campaign was dreamt up by Simon Berry and submitted to Google’s 10^100 project. It’s an absolute corker too.

The idea is to send aid to developing countries in specially shaped AidPods that slot nicely into crates of Coca Cola (whose distribution network happens to be more wide-reaching than any aid or health organisation).

Transported inside each AidPod will be health and hygiene products, including rehydration salts, vitamin tablets and condoms.

Our giant AidPod was built to promote the ColaLife campaign. We put the AidPod together on a not-for-profit basis and already it’s been on display at Nesta and on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of the One & Other project.

Now the AidPod is heading to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts (RSA), where it will be on display over Christmas and into January.

For more information about the campaign, you can visit the ColaLife website or get updates from the ColaLife team via Twitter.

The Transport font used on the report's wraparound features on all British road signs

Last night, Colin, one of our directors and Andrew, our design communications manager, travelled to Leeds for the annual Cream Awards, which are about recognising and rewarding design excellence in Yorkshire.

We’d entered the annual report that we created for Sheffield charity, Roundabout, into two categories: ‘Publications and Annual Reports’ and ‘Craft’ – we came up trumps in both!

Best in show

The Workshop collected the top prize in each category and received some high praise from the judging panel. Then, just as they were settling down for the rest of the evening, Andrew was called to the stage a final time as the report collected a third gong, the crème de la crème of the evening’s awards, the Grand Prix!

It was a great night for The Workshop and we’re extra pleased that the awards came for our work with Roundabout, a charity we’ve supported for several years.

It’s been a tough year for the industry and even at last night’s awards, there was an element of stripping back and getting back to basics. The truth is, it’s creativity that really matters, not big budgets and indulgence, so it feels kind of fitting that an annual report created on a not-for-profit basis proved such a winner.

You can find out more about our good news over at The Drum’s website, where you’ll also find a full breakdown of the evening’s various winners and commendations.

The report's photography shows the more vulnerable side of the young people supported by Roundabout

About Roundabout

As well as running a hostel, Roundabout provides a life skills programme for young homeless people between the ages of 16 and 25, which teaches them cooking, budgeting, self-esteem building and healthy living.

Founded in 1977, Roundabout helps 120 people a day and more than 1,200 youngsters every year.

Images of young people from a distance contrast with more personal close-ups

About the winning project

The 2008-9 Roundabout annual report incorporates a unique photographic collection of some of the young people who use Roundabout’s hostel.

Each of the volunteers was photographed twice by Sheffield’s Nigel Barker at different city centre roundabouts – one image shot from a distance, with a second, close-up image showing a more vulnerable side of their personalities.

A smaller booklet containing the Sheffield charity’s report data and information is stitched to the outside of the pictorial anthology, incorporating the words ‘Round’ on the back cover and ‘About’ on the front.

The typeface used is Transport – the principal font used on British road signs. By adopting the same principles as road signage design, the key information is presented clearly and can be absorbed quickly.

The overall design has connotations with both the word ’roundabout’ and the work carried out by the charity, on many different levels.

The smaller wraparound element is partly intended to show how Roundabout supports and protects young people like those depicted in the larger brochure within. But the fact that the outer booklet is smaller shows that the problem of young homeless people in Sheffield is currently bigger than the resources available to the charity.

Left: Nick Clegg and Mark. Right: Gordon Brown with Morrisons staff.

The Workshop has been rubbing shoulders with some of the UK’s highest and mightiest this past couple of weeks.

Last Thursday, Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, popped in to our Sheffield office to take a sneaky peek at the marvellous interactive whiteboard resources that we created for the Houses of Parliament website. Mark, one of our directors, showed him the ropes and shared the limelight (see image above) as part of a story for the Sheffield Star.

Nick also had some very nice things to say about us:

“The Workshop is a real hidden jewel in the creative industry of Sheffield. My visit here has been a real eye-opener, finding a company that is doing such cutting-edge educational work. It’s a company everyone in Sheffield should be proud of.”

Then on the very same day Tiina, Richard and Katie were in Bradford for the launch of Morrisons Academy, a new scheme to help Morrisons’ staff gain nationally recognised qualifications as part of what they do every day.

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was also there to help get things underway. Having provided a range of consultancy, design and copywriting services for the HR Department and Morrisons Academy project, it was fair smashing to see the PM handling our goods, so to speak!

Of course, in the interests of impartiality, we’re more than happy to rub shoulders with David Cameron too, should he be interested.