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.

The latest in our long-running Design Talks series took place last month, with this one aimed at the local design community. You can watch part one via the video player at the top of this post and catch part two over on our Vimeo profile.

Bruno Maag is Managing Director of Dalton Maag, legendary font and logo agency and one of the world’s most celebrated typographers. He treated us to an hour-long insight into the world of typography.

Bruno’s talk looked at what it takes to create a good font, including the challenges involved in designing a typeface that works across different media and applications. He also talked about working with dual language and other script systems, such as Arabic, and the importance of accessibility and legibility in typography.

Inspirational stuff!

Post-talk drinks, nibbles and typography-based chit-chat in the courtyard

The Workshop recently designed and built the relaunched ‘Services for business’ section of Sheffield Hallam University’s website.

The site aims to challenge the assumption that a university can only offer training and development. It features news and case studies about the range of technologies, services, facilities and resources that Sheffield Hallam offers.

All content, including text and video, was created for the University’s business audiences. The University’s enterprise team manages relationships between businesses and academics, so we created a site that offered valuable, filterable content alongside clear contact information.

There are three paths through the site, each providing clear routes to a specific type of content. We also developed a bespoke tagging system that allows staff from across the University to tag content and keep it organised as the site grows. The system also allows users to filter and personalise content.

The site is built with Drupal, an open-source content management system. After training from The Workshop’s team, University staff can now create and refine their content based on feedback from customers and as the University develops new services and technologies.

We launched Nutty Footy at our 'Sun and Games' party

We take our fun and games seriously here at The Workshop. You may already know that from the highly competitive Wii Winter Olympics competition we held in London this February.

We recently created our fifth interactive website to support The Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures and we’re currently developing a game-based iPhone application for The Geography Collective.

Reality football

To celebrate the start of the World Cup, we’ve created Nutty Footy, an augmented reality football game, which we launched last night at a party at our Sheffield office.

We also offered an accessible alternative (of course) – lo-fi, augmented reality, footballer’s hairdo mirror sticker kits. We have a few kits left, so let us know if you’d like one of your own or to complete your set.

Our footballer's hairdo mirror stickers offer some back to basics augmented reality

Win a Nintendo Wii

If you weren’t part of the evening’s shenanigans, you can enter our online competition. Play at work (during lunchtime, of course) or even host your own league with friends at home.

We’re offering a Wii console with 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa game to the player who gets the highest score.

The competition runs for the duration of the World Cup – Friday 11 June to Sunday 11 July. The winner will be announced w/c Monday 12 July, so there’s plenty of time to get on the leader board.

What are you waiting for? You can play Nutty Footy now!

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.

Roadmap 2025 marketing materials match the look and feel of the new website

Recently we’ve been working with the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) to create a website and marketing materials for their Roadmap 2025 campaign.

Roadmap 2025 sets out complex information about the ODI’s strategy for achieving disability equality by 2025.

We developed a look and feel that works well for both web and print-based materials – it’s clean and simple, yet engaging for government departments and a wider audience. Information is conveyed in a way that’s user-friendly, easy-to-read and accessible in both mediums.

The website includes a handy search facility to help users find specific information. It also features updatable data that measures progress towards disability equality, including clear graphs and accessible tables. The site is designed to meet WCAG 2.0 AAA accessibility standards.

Roadmap 2025 is now being used by ODI staff as an exemplar of how to develop a suite of materials, online and offline, which maintains an engaging look and feel while achieving the highest levels of accessibility.

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.