Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital School
Hospital School Point Enabled
The Children’s Hospital School at Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College Hospital is now using the Widgit Software ‘Point’ on their website.
Visitors to the website now have the option to have the support of Widgit Symbols for words within the website text they don’t recognise or find hard to understand by hovering their mouse over the word in order for a list of symbols illustrating the word’s possible meanings to appear.
The Children’s Hospital School at Great Ormond Street and University College Hospital is a group 4 foundation, special, hospital school, teaching school-aged pupils ranging from Year 1 - Year 13, as well as children under five with Statements of Special Educational Need. Children of all abilities and all nationalities are taught.
The school is comprised of two sites: at The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and at University College Hospital. Great Ormond Street Hospital is a tertiary referral paediatric-only centre: it only accepts patients referred by other consultants from other hospitals all over the UK and indeed the world.
The pupils therefore have a huge range of severe medical and/or psychological conditions, and hence special needs, although not always in the ‘normally accepted educational sense’.
The Children’s School’s website consists of areas aimed at its different aged pupils (Early Years Foundation Stage, Primary and Secondary), which feature a variety of fun activities, news items and games, as well as an area for adults featuring information such as school term dates and timetables. The addition of symbol support to all these areas allows visitors to the website, whether a student, parent or general visitor, to have the option of Widgit Symbol support for any words they are struggling to read or understand, greatly increasing the website’s accessibility.
John Sosna, Assistant Head of ICT and Learning at the Children’s School, said,
“The implementation of Widgit’s Point software on the School website, and its seamless integration with the content management system we use, has really made the content vastly more accessible to a range of different user groups. Feedback from pupils, parents, teachers and other professionals has been most positive and we look forward to extending this facility by incorporating Insite in the near future.”
Simon Thomson Business Development Manager at Widgit said,
"Working with GOSH School and E4E was a real pleasure for Widgit. Both organisation's have similar commitment to quality and customer care as Widgit and we were delighted to launch the GOSH School website with Point. Improving access to online information is key to the School visitors and raising inclusion for the School users was a key driver behind the project. Hopefully we can progress to the integration of Insite with the School and use this project as a great example for the delivery of Widgit's online products as part of E4E established web product portfolio."
