IT project- SW London Mental Health

BlankJust had a thought, and I am bored with the other threads I have been involved with.

I am about to start phase 2 of a project working with a mental health trust in south west London. Phase 2 involves teaching mental health users to build, maintain, and control (within the law!!) the site content. (eat your heart out poptel beat you to the project) The objective is to deliver information on services and help that the users want to see and not what the professionals think they should see, and make the site as accessible as possible.

These people have no experience of web design, in fact most have never used a computer. Yet Phase 1 built 100 pages using skills that were learned in 4x2 hour sessions. It's not totally accessible yet but you cannot tell these people "you cannot do that!" you have to lead gently. 

This was highlighted to me by one guy who makes bigfoot look like a size 2 and spent 30 minutes knocking hell out of a keyboard writing the "about us" page. I looked over his shoulder (bad idea) and noticed the page background was pink, (interesting) and inspite of his problem with the P and S constantly moving places on the keyboard, ( I swear Mr, it was over there a few minutes ago) his fingers were bashing out the letters at at least 10 letters a minute....fast, trust me on this, yet nothing was appearing on the page!! The truth dawned....pink font. On challenging him on this, I was informed he did not want the world to know about him, but did not want to refuse me my request either.

Set The Scene?

I may be flipant but it is really rewarding and I enjoy every minute. I have a request of this group.

I need a couple of people to take a small interest in the site as it develops and and take 5 minutes a week/month or so to suggest changes/alterations where required, if I could show them that there is interest internationally in their efforts, it may help the pink font guy and others who at the moment refuse to accept "because it has to be that way" The biggest problem is their skill levels are zilch. So indepth explanations whilst helpful could be lost on them. Suggesting HTML coding answers could also be a none starter.

any one fancy the idea??

smiles
Paul