The new Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) consumer website, www.askcomreg.ie, was launched by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey TD at ComReg's "Serving the E-Consumer" conference in Kilmainham's Royal Hospital. The site is designed specifically for consumers and provides them with information in relation to mobile phones, fixed-line phones, the internet and the postal sector.

askcomreg.ie is the second site Webtrade has designed and developed for ComReg, having already built www.comreg.ie. It was designed to be accessible for all types of users, with special attention to people with disabilities. The design is friendly to those who are slightly visually impaired, needing larger text sizes; users with colour blindness or disabled individuals using adaptive keyboards, screen readers or other assistive technologies to access websites.

A text only, high contrast, version of the site strips away graphics and makes navigation much more visually friendly, with black backgrounds with highly visible text. Text/font sizes can be changed through our accessibility bar or through your normal browser settings, where you can click to change the site to three different text sizes Normal, Larger or Largest. A print friendly link creates a page which prints out neatly on your printer.

The site has been built to facilitate a mirror of site content in Irish (as Gaeilge), in accordace with requirements under the Official Lanugages Act 2003, with this phase of the project to be carried out over the coming months.

The site adheres to W3C web standards, including WAI Accessibility standards for the disabled and is fully content managed through our eGovernment LiveEdit™ content management system, which has been developed to fully support public sector web publishing, accessibility, metadata and dual language guidelines.

The Chairperson of ComReg, John Doherty, said: "ComReg believes that this new Website will greatly assist consumers by answering queries and providing information. The site provides information in an accessible and user-friendly fashion that will assist consumer as they make choices in relation to communications services." Minister Dempsey said that the new site will go a long way to address the public's informational needs.

Pictured: Joe Conlon, Technical Director, Webtrade, with Barbara Delaney, MIS Manager, ComReg.

Text Only / High Contrast Version of askcomreg.ie