The National Archives uses the internet to make documents available online, to provide historical and educational information, to help visitors plan a trip to The National Archives and generally to make the organisation more accessible to the public. Below are interviews with two web designers - Bob and Kwok, who work in the e-Access (electronic access) Department, where The National Archives websites are produced.

Bob, what does your job involve?

I am a web designer here in the e-Access department at the National Archives. I work with certain departments, most specifically the education and reader enquiries departments. They write exhibitions that showcase the documents here and I put them on the web, on a site called the Learning Curve.

Can you tell us more about the Learning Curve?

The Learning Curve is the web arm of The National Archives' education department and is produced in association with the National Grid for Learning.

The exhibitions are written with a curriculum and a key stage in mind. If the National Grid for Learning is concentrating on, for example turn of the century politics, then we would have an exhibition written relating to the time, with an educational slant. It might include worksheets, games or some interactive elements.

What sort of tools do you use to do this?

For images I use graphics packages such as Photoshop and Flash, and to make pages I use a web page creation package called Dreamweaver.

Have you ever done any research into your own family history here?

Yes, I managed to trace my surname back to its emergence in Canada in the seventeenth century.

What's the most rare or most interesting document you have seen or handled here?

The most interesting document I have come across while working here is a set of X-rays of Hitler's skull which I came across when designing an exhibition for the virtual museum.

X-ray of Hitler's skull (extracted from file ref: WO 208/3789). Extracted images listed in ref: CN 4/13

The X-rays were requested by Hitler's physician Dr.Theo Morell after the 'July Bomb Plot' of 1944, when a bomb was planted in Hitler's Rastenburg HQ by Colonel Claus von Stauffenburg. As a result of the bomb Hitler sustained minor internal injuries. The X-rays were taken by Dr Giesing at the Army Hospital, Ratsenburg, Sep-Oct 1944. They were discovered in 1995 amongst a set of military files, during an investigation into the circumstances of Hitler's death.

I suppose I find the X-rays fascinating for several reasons. They are not documents that convey information in the conventional sense, yet they are a one of a kind historical artifact and certainly were an unusual thing to come across!

Do you think renaming the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission, "The National Archives" is a good idea?

Yes I think it sounds more like the kind of institution people will like – National sounds better than Public in my opinion. I also prefer the new logo.

Kwok, what does your job involve?

I work in the multimedia web design and development of the interactive elements of websites such as the learning curve.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have just finished working on an exhibition called 'Britain 1906-1918, Contrast Contradiction and Change'. I programmed the templates for the site and made sure that the pages were accessible for all users.

At the moment I am working on an exhibition called 'Secrets and Spies' - it's for the Interpretation team and it's about espionage, codes and ciphers.

Could you tell us more about web accessibility?

We take accessibility very seriously because all of our sites must be viewable by everyone. So this means that all the pages we make must work in all the different types of browser, and must conform to government accessibility guidelines. These guidelines are to help people with visual impairment or colour blindness.

We can make web pages easier for them to view by making the text size of a page adjustable, avoiding the use of glaring bright colors that are harder for people with color blindness to read, and by establishing keyboard short cuts through which the site can be navigated.