SuperNova Access Suite Case Study: The Inland Revenue chooses Supernova.

The best solution for Visually Impaired staff.

Careers in call centres could be a step closer to becoming a reality for thousands of partially-sighted people thanks to pioneering work carried out by the Inland Revenue in conjunction with Dolphin Computer Access and Aspect Communications. The technology solution has enabled the Inland Revenue (IR) to successfully transfer Jamie Branford, an IR employee for 16 years, from his service office position at an IR Office in Liverpool to a customer-facing role at its Bootle Contact Centre. The move was made at Jamie's own request.

Jamie, who is visually impaired, is now a Revenue Executive at Bootle. His role involves both managing a team of eight Contact Centre Advisers and handling phone calls from IR customers. Bootle Contact Centre is the first contact point for the Liverpool Sefton area and Jamie handles general enquiries on topics such as Pay as You Earn (PAYE) and Self-Assessment. The centre also handles 'overflow' IR calls from other parts of the country. Jamie knew from the outset that, while he wanted a more challenging role, the technology used within the contact centre would present him with problems. "Having been in various jobs within the Inland Revenue - from working in local tax and training offices to being a Support Manager in a service office - I wanted to move to a job that involved less paperwork and that was customer-facing," explains Jamie. "Working at the Contact Centre in Bootle met those requirements - and was nearer to my home, however, it was clear that reading small type on a computer screen and using the keys on a telephone handset would present difficulties".

The IR called upon its key technology partners to work with Jamie. They approached Dolphin Computer Access to establish an effective means of computer access. After several evaluations the IR and Jamie decided that Supernova was the best solution, as it combined a screen reader and screen magnifier in a single package. Supernova allowed Jamie to magnify the screen focus area by up to 32 times, as well as providing a screen reader which gave Jamie additional voice output support. This helped Jamie to navigate around the computer screen using keystrokes rather than mouse clicks. Jamie now had complete access to the IR computer systems in a which ever way suited him best. Jamie still, however, had difficulties distinguishing the functions printed on the keys of his telephone handset, making functions such as 'transfer' and 'hold call' difficult to achieve. The solution was to use' Winset’, a software programme from Aspect Communications. Winset can replicate the standard functions of a telephone handset on a standard computer screen. With minimal mapping, the Winset programme was integrated with Dolphin’s Supernova software, enabling the telephone keypad to be magnified on Jamie's computer screen.

Jamie can now handle all his calls with mouse clicks or computer keystrokes without having to touch the telephone keypad.

"Everyone at Dolphin is pleased to have been able to provide such an effective solution for Jamie” said Steve Palmer, Dolphin CEO. “This case demonstrates just how important it is to provide solutions that are flexible and adaptable and able to work with many different and bespoke software programmes. By using some simple mapping techniques Supernova now provides total access at work for Jamie, and the Inland Revenue have been able to retain a key member of their staff.”

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