Federal disability commissioner threatens to “name and shame” government departments and agencies
Via our friends at PropellerGlobal we read at Yahoo!7 that
The federal disability commissioner has threatened to “name and shame” government departments and agencies which do not make public information accessible to people with disabilities.
Commissioner Graeme Innis said
Making information as socially important and highly publicised as the GROCERYchoice website and the green paper on carbon emissions trading inaccessible to a significant sector of the population is, put bluntly, a disgrace.
Hear hear.
BTW, any folks interested in getting up to speed quickly with accessibility, there’s few better places to start than world expert Derek Featherstone’s one day workshop, and presentation at Web Directions this year.
Interesting news. This is generally, IMHO, a useful thing if done alongside some constructive approach - and the government should be in a position, after so many years, to put in place a framework that helps to ensure these sites are being built right…
Hi Chaals,
the constructive approach has been there for a long time now - let the naming and shaming commence!
But seriously, when such a high profile site can launch in 2008 (this is probably the single most promoted Australian government web site ever) with strong protestations about its accessibility, while failing even the most basic accessibility criteria, well, whatever we have been doing has not been enough.
I’m increasingly coming to believe that making people understand their legal and ethical obligations, and backing that up with a good business case (you could get named and shamed).
I spoke at a conference only last week, where one of the speakers, the founder of a very large web development company in Australia had not heard of the SOCOG case, did not know about the Disability Discrimination Act, and argued that accessibility is desirable, but an option.
Advocacy might not be enough.