Rachel May wrote:
This website is a government site - therefore should be support accessibility and web guidelines - and is our national museum and icon...
I agree with you, Rachel - all sites paid for with public money should be accessible. However, because Te Papa is an Autonomous Crown Entity (which is about as far outside the Public Service as you can get without being an SOE), the Government Web Guidelines are not mandatory (see the E-government website http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/web-guidelines for the Cabinet Minute establishing the boundaries).
We pushed it as far as Cabinet would go to include the Defence Force, Police and SIS, but we could only invite Parliament to take part.
While I absolutely support your gripe here, you might want to send it to the Ministers of Disability Issues (Ruth Dyson) and Arts, Culture and Heritage (Rt.Hon Helen Clark with Hon. Judith Tizard and Hon. Mahara Okeroa as Associate Ministers).
The Office of Disability Issues has just issued an RFP for an audit survey of Government Websites' Accessibility (MSD 2006/946) covering 159 websites (including Te Papa)
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 ******************************************************
