Social Media for the socially excluded

I had a meting today with an organisation - HeartsnSoul - who want to create a community web site to bring people with learning difficulties together with potential employers. They want to encourage use of personal blogs for their users and have a virtual meeting place (e.g. forum) where their users can ‘meet' potential employers.

I am looking into the issues and dependencies for providing all this through our existing CoP platform , but I think the interface design requirements may exceed the available budget and there may be implications for the future management and maintenance for what would have to be a separate bespoke development.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with designing, developing or using similar sites (i.e. with heavy emphasis on accessibility and usability), blending social media applications with a simple and intuitive front end design? Or perhaps anyone with experience in this whole area of bridging the digital divide for socially excluded groups. If so, I should be very grateful if you would contact me.

Comments

[David Wilcox]

Hi Steve - might be worth popping something in to charitywebforum http://snurl.com/25qjr on accessibility and also exploring blog-based solutions with our friends at Networksonline. http://snurl.com/24jee
It looks as if the great strength of HeartsnSoul is their arts content ... so needs to be public and as you say using a range of social media. Glad to discuss further ... how about a social media game workshop to do some collaborative design?

[Steve Dale]

David,

thanks for the suggestions - good ideas. Maybe the social media game would be a good way of taking this forward when I've identified a designer/developer.

Steve

[alex]

Why not ask Facebook to do some corporate social responsibility and help you out ? Now that Microsoft has a stake, there may be a double benefit. Between them they have a lot of technical expertise.

I can't see the point of re-inventing things and Microsoft has always tried to reach out to all potential customers as far as I can tell.

[Steve Dale]

Hi Alex,

well, it's a thought, but I'm not optimistic. I can't be the only one in the world who is seeking more accessible social networking facilities, yet Facebook have done precious little so far to widen their appeal to the socially excluded. The Facebook site is particularly poor in accommodating even the basic assisted technologies such as Jaws or Dragon.