The importance of web accessibility

8 July 2012

Roberta: For people who are blind or vision impaired to effectively use the web, websites need to be designed with accessibility in mind. Today we are joined by Dr Scott Hollier, Western Australia’s Manager for Media Access Australia who will be talking about the importance of web accessibility, and some important changes and projects that are happening at the moment. Welcome Scott.

Scott:  Thanks Roberta, thanks for having me back.

Roberta: Now why is web accessibility so important?

Scott:  Well in order for people who are blind or vision impaired to effectively access the web, there’s two things that have to happen: firstly people have to have the right tools on their computer, so things like a screen reader so that blind people can hear their computer reading things out; they also need to have like a screen magnifier, if people have low vision to make things bigger and change the colours and things like that. But in order for those tools to work you really have to make sure that people who build websites also put accessibility features into their sites. So if those websites aren’t built properly, then unfortunately those technologies don’t work. So it’s really, really important to make sure that if the people have the right technology on their computer, and that people who build websites, like developers and designers, put that accessibility into their site.

Roberta: So what is the government doing which will help people who are blind or vision impaired to use websites?

Scott:  What’s really exciting is that two years ago the Federal government introduced what they called the National Transition Strategy. So what this means is that all government websites by the end of this year must adhere to the minimum requirement of accessibility. So what that means is that by the end of this year we should start to see a lot more accessibility happening on government websites, which will be great, and then by the end of 2014 they have to meet that second level, it’s called Level AA, they have to meet that requirement which will even further improve accessibility.

So it’s really exciting that the government are doing a lot of work in this area and we should start to see more and more government information become assessable.

Roberta: Of course Media Access Australia and other blind organisations have been doing this kind of lobbying for quite a while, haven’t they?

Scott:  Yeah, we’ve really been championing the importance of accessibility because, now we really want to make sure that people get full access to not just government but all the information across the web; it’s such an important part of independence that we want to make sure that happens.

Roberta: Now I believe you are currently teaching a course to help people with web accessibility. What’s it about?

Scott:  Yeah, well what we’ve offered, to try and, what you were just saying before about trying to do some work in this area is that we’ve teamed up with the University of South Australia and a lecturer there, Dr Denise Wood and myself, we co-teach a course called the Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility for the Blind. And that is a six week online course, so people can do it from anywhere in the world, and basically we teach people who work in the industry like developers and designers and ICT professional on how to incorporate accessibility.

So in the course we cover things like how people with disabilities actually use the technology, and it’s really important that people working in this area understand just exactly how a blind person or a vision impaired person may use the net, and then we teach them all about the web content accessibility guidelines too, which is about important accessibility criteria they have to put in their sites. And then we give them some assignments to really incorporated it into their work practices. So we’ve run the course twice so far; we have another one coming up in August and a fourth one in October. And yeah, so far it’s been really successful.          

Roberta: It sounds a lot to put into a course, but I’m sure you do it step by step by step.

Scott:  Yeah, there’s six modules over six weeks, and we do step people through the process. But a lot of people come to us because they’re already familiar that this is something they need to do, so often they have a little bit of knowledge already, and then we just walk them through how they can put that into their work practices.

Roberta: Terrific. Now how can people get involved with the course Scott if they’re interested?

Scott:  Well, there’s a few ways they can get involved, but yeah, probably the best way is to come to the Media Access website: mediaaccess.org.au and we’ve got a big banner on our page at the moment about the course, and we’ve got all sorts of links for the course as well. So people are welcome to call us or go to our website, and yeah, if people are interested in this type of course we’d be very happy to get them enrolled.

Roberta: Well that sounds like a really good thing. I’ve been speaking with Dr Scott Hollier, West Australia’s Manager for Media Access Australia. And if you’d like to find out more about web accessibility, visit the Media Access Australia website, www.mediaaccess.org.au and for more information you can also call 02 9212 6242 or email at info@mediaaccess.org.au, and that phone number again is 02 9212 6242. And Media Access Australia are supporters of this programme.