Sarah, who has been at Media Access Australia since the beginning of 2010, is one of three non-profit staff awarded Connecting Up Australia's scholarship, with entries submitted from all over Australia. Worth up to $5,000 each, the scholarships cover return airfares, a $500 contribution to meals and accommodation, and registration to the March conference, organised by the US Nonprofit Technology Network.
John Rafferty, President and CEO of CNIB, said, “The fact that it took a court case to plead for full web accessibility in the first place is bad enough, but to learn that the government plans to spend more time and taxpayer money fighting the court’s ruling is just appalling.”
Robin East, President of the nationwide Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, echoed these sentiments, saying, “we are outraged by the government’s decision to appeal this landmark decision”.
The accessibility features that are enabled in the plug-in, which is currently not available in Australia, include:
The court decision was won by a blind Toronto woman in November 2010 after she discovered she could not apply for a federal job online or complete the 2006 census. The court found that government websites were not compliant with accessibility standards and constituted a breach of equality rights. It gave the government 15 months to make its websites compliant with the Canadian Charter of Rights, under supervision by the court.
