The site – www.bvik.co.uk – has been developed and designed by a team of visually impaired members of various local organisations including those at the Whifield Centre in Soothill.

The website aims to reach out, inform and involve the visually impaired community throughout Kirklees, particularly those who are not supported in any other way.

BVIK is a collaboration between the Society for the Blind of Dewsbury, Batley and District, the Kirklees Visual Impairment Network (KVIN) and the Huddersfield branch of the Macular Society but other organisations have also been encouraged to put their details onto the site.

Hilary Shreiner, general manager at the Whitfield Centre, said: "BVIK is unique in bringing together local visually impaired organisations in a meaningful and positive project that has allowed members to research, edit and enter content onto the website themselves."

The project began in March 2006 following a meeting to discuss a website funding proposal between the Society for the Blind and Kirklees Council.

Out of this spun a project to build a website for all the visually impaired people in Kirklees and involve as many organisations and members as possible.

"Invites were sent to all local VI organisations and following this a project team was put together of visually impaired members most of whom had no previous computer experience other than as users," said Hilary.

"The team selected Nemisys Enterprises of Ware, who have previously designed websites for visually impaired users, to build an empty web shell for the project team to fill with all of the local content.

"They have created a site for the local blind and partially sighted which aims to be informative, newsy, challenging and dynamic.

"It encourages user participation and over the months ahead will grow and change to reflect the demands of the users."