Ofcom surveyed deaf people with different levels of hearing loss to assess the use and value of current text relay and other services and whether or not new technologies provide better means of communication for Deaf and hearing impaired people.
Key findings of the survey were that:
Conducted by the Australian Institute, the survey showed that out of the 1294 respondents, 94% said they were aware of captioning, 30% said they sometimes used it and 3% said they always used the service when watching television.
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 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.
