Accessibility Law in Australia presentation

Some people who listen to pod­cast or read the tran­script (both avail­able soon) of my present­a­tion on Access­ib­il­ity Law in Aus­tralia to the Perth Web Stand­ards Group may think I was down­play­ing the import­ance of access­ib­il­ity law (the Dis­ab­il­ity Dis­crim­in­a­tion Act 1992) in Aus­tralia. That was not my inten­tion, what I wanted to do was reflect the cur­rent situation.

Very few people make com­plaints about web­site access­ib­il­ity in Aus­tralia. The Human Rights and Equal Oppor­tun­it­ies Com­mis­sion provide inform­a­tion on the com­plaints they deal with, and in the past six years since Maquire vs. SOCOG, HREOC indic­ated there has only been three com­plaints. All three were from people with visual impair­ments try­ing to access inform­a­tion that was sig­ni­fic­ant to them. Most import­antly all three were resolved to the sat­is­fac­tion of the per­son lodging the com­plaint. Given the num­ber of Aus­trali­ans with dis­ab­il­it­ies access­ing the web and the num­ber of inac­cess­ible Aus­tralian web­sites, this num­ber is very low.

So my advice for avoid­ing com­plaints about web­site access­ib­il­ity in Aus­tralia is:

1. Build the most access­ible web­site you can with the resources available;
2. Make sure the web­site works in a screen reader; you can get a demo ver­sion of JAWS to run on a USB stick.
3. Make sure if any­body has quer­ies or prob­lems about the website’s access­ib­il­ity, be they cli­ents, web­site vis­it­ors or any­body else. The can eas­ily con­tact your “access­ib­il­ity per­son”. A per­son in your organ­isa­tion with great com­mu­nic­a­tion skills, who can identify what the prob­lem is and arrange a solution.

The present­a­tion slides are avail­able, but without the pod­cast or tran­script, they will little sense as they are just visual cues.

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