The North-East is ahead of the game.

Mar 9 2006 By Herb Kim, The Journal

Many, if not all of you, are probably daily users of the internet. We now get much of our international, national and local news from the web - via sites such as The Journal's website, icNewcastle.co.uk and bbc.co.uk

The web has spawned a huge number of news sites serving a niche audience.

But while news and entertainment are two of the most obvious uses of the web, the ability to contact, collaborate and share with anyone from anywhere in the world is one of the fastest-growing and most valuable uses of the web.

Websites such as Flickr.com and MySpace.com, one of the world's fastest growing websites which enables anyone to have their own "space" on the net, have given us a low-cost way to share ideas, information, images and much more.

This increased ability to interact with others at a very low cost has real benefits for older, disabled and vulnerable people as it enables them to keep in touch with their relatives and maintain regular human contact, which is massively important to maintaining our cognitive abilities as we get older.

The challenge businesses face is ensuring the technology is as accessible as possible to those people who can use them most.

And now, businesses must make sure their websites meet the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) guidelines to make them accessible to people with hearing or visual impairments - or they could face a fine or court action.

The North-East is ahead of the game. Several companies in our region's vibrant web design/development community have been nominated for or won accessibility awards, such as Dpivision.com and Urban River Creative, which was nominated last week for an accessibility award by the National Library for the Blind.

But around 80% of UK websites do not meet DDA guidelines, so it looks like the coming months will be busy for web companies.