The electronic notice board

By Daphne Chamberlain
For a useful, accessible website revealing the history of Finchley and modern day planning and environmental issues, try www.finchleysociety.org.uk.

The Finchley Society site was commended at the London Forum’s Walter Bor Media Awards Ceremony in November. These awards cover newsletters, one-off publications, websites and media campaigns. The judges look for presentation, content, readability, layout and design.
The Finchley Society website’s chief designer and maintainer is East Finchley’s Tony Roberts, society trustee and Membership Secretary and former copy editor of The Archer.

Tony believes passionately that the society has to use 21st century technology to communicate effectively. Barnet Mayor Councillor Maureen Braun and MP Rudi Vis were among the audience at a meeting in December, when he set out the advantages of what he called an electronic newsletter and notice board.

Electronic advantages
Compared to a traditional newsletter, Tony said, a website is cheaper to produce, can be in “glorious technicolour” with better quality photos and even moving images, is accessible anywhere in the world at the same time, is quicker and easier to update, and can be used by the blind and partially sighted.

Tony offers a change of font on the Finchley Society site for partially sighted visitors, and is careful with colour combinations to benefit the colour-blind. He told The Archer that even the totally blind can use an appropriately designed site with the help of an audio reader, which converts text to the human voice.

Accessibility
As an experienced website and database designer, he told us that his philosophy is to keep it simple, attractive, easy to navigate, and accessible to everyone.
The Finchley Society site includes information about news and events, membership details and application form, pages on its current projects in planning, environment and transport, local history and archives, and links to other websites, enquiry contact numbers, and local photos.
Tony updates the site about every two weeks, but can make amendments in half an hour.

He paid tribute to Peter Pickering, a member of the watchdog committee which “kept him on his toes” throughout the design, and to former Society President Bill Tyler, who entered the website for the Walter Bor award.
On the presentation night itself, Tony couldn’t be there, but the award was received by Stephen Yeo, who set up the original site.

The Archer

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