The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, Paralympic.beijing2008.cn, was launched on Friday, May 29, on the occasion of the 100-day countdown to the start of the event.
The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games, Paralympic.beijing2008.cn, was launched on Friday, May 29, on the occasion of the 100-day countdown to the start of the event. [beijing2008.cn]
A ceremony was held the same day to celebrate the website's launch. Tang Xiaoquan, Vice-President of the China Disabled Persons' Federation and Executive Vice-President of BOCOG, officials from Beijng and BOCOG, Vice President Chen Luming of Sohu.com Inc., were present at the celebration.
The Beijing Paralympic website is an authoritative and comprehensive information platform that serves to spread Paralympic knowledge, share the Paralympic Spirit and advocate the Beijing Paralympic concept of Transcendence, Equality and Integration. It will bring attention to the Paralympic Games and to people with a disability while further boosting development of sports for people with a disability.
Offered in English and Chinese, the Beijing Paralympic website will provide detailed information on all the Paralympic sports and disciplines. During the Paralympics, the Beijing Paralympic website will post up-to-the-minute official news, competition results, medal standings and Paralympic news, as well as live coverage of important press conferences.
The design of the Beijing Paralympic website emphasizes service and functionality. With dedicated pages like Venues, Spectator Services, Ticketing and Media Operations, fans will find detailed information on lodging, transportation, shopping and information services. Visitors can use the e-map to locate competition venues and points of interest and look up public transit routes and driving directions. The website also includes information about barrier-free facilities.
A great deal of consideration was given to barrier-free access when the Beijing Paralympic website was designed. The website is designed according to W3C's guidelines on Web accessibility, so people with a disability who use Web browsing tools will be able to navigate the website with ease. Meanwhile, both the English and Chinese versions of the website include a Web browsing tool, Easy Web Browsing, which aids people with a visual impairment by reading website text out loud and allowing users to adjust the text size. The Beijing Paralympic website is the first Paralympic website to ever offer barrier-free information service.
The website's Paralympic Spirit, Image and Look, Paralympic Culture, Ceremonies and Education pages offer information on the history and development of the Paralympic Games and showcase the athletic careers of athletes with a disability from China and around the world.
Netizens can see exciting photos and videos of competitions from the Paralympic Games as part of the website's enhanced multimedia content.
Designed by Sohu.com, the official Internet Content Provider for the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games incorporates the experiences of websites from past Paralympic Games and input from domestic and foreign experts, as well as the actual needs of the Beijing Paralympic Games, to create a high-quality Paralympic information platform.
