Thanks Terrence,
I tried to force change. I made a formal complaint under the Aust 1992
Dis Dis Act stating that I had trouble using a mouse and wanted
keyboard access. The bloody dramas that caused! I complained about the
Centrelink site, but AGIMO stated that their site was near enough. The
Chief Information Officer at AGIMO last worked at Centrelink. I got
nowhere and in the end withdrew the complaint or it was going to be
struck out by Human Rights who accepted advice from the Aust government
department AGIMO that another government department Centrelink was W3C
close enough and would be updated anway, so go away.
If I were blind, I would have had a better cause for keyboard access. I
could not get any support from any organisations and Vision Australia
stated to me in a job interview that they preferred to work with their
clients, not beat them over the head.
I prefer the beat them over the head approach having seen the
alternative fail so badly, but I have run out of sticks, I update a
review of Aust government websites occasionally and try to embarrass
them into action. I think they hope none notices except a few of us,
certainly there is no organisational support for an action like Maguire
v Sydney Olympics, it will take one determined individual to try and
force change.
I'm fresh out of sticks and sick of flogging a dead horse.
http://www.hereticpress.com/Dogstar/Publishing/AustWeb.html
Tim
Melbourne
On 30/07/2006, at 11:06 PM, Mark Harris wrote:
Terrence Wood wrote:
> WAI level A is great because you can get there by accident
> (which makes me wonder why so many people just can't do it),
> but I really think e-gov needs to be achieving level 2 compliance.
>
Oh, I agree completely - I was just trying to set the bar low enough
that at least some would pass ;-)
> Do you have any ideas on how to force government entities to comply?
> Personal accountability for stakeholders perhaps?
Apart from holding a gun to their heads? [sigh] I spent most of the 5
years from 2000 to 2005 trying to find ways to encourage NZ govt
agencies to do this. I got more traction with commercial web
developers than government agencies, sadly.
Which is not to say there aren't plenty of web people in the NZG who
believe in accessibility and the Guildelines, because there are. But
not their managers or senior managers, it appears.
I think we've got to go through the political reps and hold them
accountable, to get them to put pressure on their portfolio agencies,
but there always seems to be something with more priority.
> I think their advisors/suppliers (e-i-new media ltd and their ilk)
> should be held accountable as well - and that's easy to do, make it a
> term of the contract for services.
Yep, and many NZ govt agencies do put that in the contracts (which was
one of the things we promoted in the Guidelines) but keeping the site
compliant once it's built is a different matter.
Cheers
Mark Harris
******************************************************
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
******************************************************
The Editor
Heretic Press
http://www.hereticpress.com
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
******************************************************
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
******************************************************
