Beijing 2008 Paralympics Games Website Launched

On the occasion of this milestone, the new Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games was officially launched during a ceremony in Beijing, attended by Tang Xiaoquan, Vice-President of the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF) and Executive Vice-President of BOCOG, various officials from the city of Beijng and BOCOG as well as Vice President Chen Luming of Sohu.com Inc.

The new Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games website is a comprehensive information platform that serves to spread the Paralympic spirit and informs about the Paralympic Games. Offered in English and Chinese, the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games website will provide detailed information on all the Paralympic sports. During the Paralympics, the Beijing Paralympic website will post official news, competition results, medal standings and Paralympic news, as well as live coverage of important press conferences.

The design of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games website emphasizes service and functionality. With dedicated pages like Venues, Spectator Services, Ticketing and Media Operations, users will find detailed information on accommodation, transportation and information services. Visitors can use the e-map to locate competition venues and points of interest and look up public transport routes and driving directions. The website also includes information about accessible facilities. Netizens can see exciting photos and videos of competitions from the Paralympic Games as part of the website's enhanced multimedia content.

Accessibility played an important role when the Beijing 2008 Paralympic website was developed using W3C's guidelines on Web Accessibility. Furthermore, both the English and Chinese versions of the website include a Web browsing tool, Easy Web Browsing, which supports people with a visual impairment by reading website text out loud and allowing users to adjust the text size.

Designed by Sohu.com, the official Internet Content Provider for the Beijing 2008 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 2008 Paralympic Games, to create a high-quality Paralympic information platform.

The Beijing 2008 Paralympics will be held from 6 to 17 September with around 4,000 athletes, 2,500 coaches and officials from 150 countries participating in 20 sports.