Persons with disabilities are often marginalised from economy and society due to the lack of access to disability related information and services. Through the use of assistive technologies access to the information and services can often be obtained e.g. a visually impaired user using a screen reader. The Deaf however, cannot use such technology to break the barrier because of differences in literacy and comfort with written material. The Deaf thus requires another intervention to improve their access to information and services. One such mechanism is by embedding animated Sign Language in Web pages. This paper analyses the effectiveness and appropriateness of using this approach by embedding South African Sign Language in the South African National Accessibility Portal. Through experiments, user evaluations and web-metrics it is found that such techniques can improve the accessibility for Deaf users in experimental conditions. However, real world pervasiveness will be limited because of practical concerns such as the difficulty to create and maintain animated Sign Language and bandwidth constraints that impact on users' browsing experience.

The National Accessibility Portal initiative is a large initiative aimed at improving the quality of life of people living with disabilities in South Africa. The initiative has several functional components, including the National Accessibility Portal, National Accessibility Portal Centers, research into developing localised client side assistive technologies and devices, advocacy as well as the development of a methodology allowing for replication in other developing countries with similar needs.The focus of this paper is on the research and development of the portal in the bigger National Accessibility Portal initiative.The portal's differentiating elements measured against other content portals is the ability to provide a configurable platform (based on the user's profile) for information sharing and communication in an accessible and usable fashion within the constraints of today's technologies, in the user's language of choice and in the most cost effective and sustainable fashion.In this paper we describe the process involved in developing version 1.0 of the National Accessibility Portal; from gathering user requirements, addressing the issue of multilingualism, accessibility and usability challenges. We present initial user feedback comments and highlight ongoing challenges. In addition we present the technology stack and implemented functionality.