Equal access

From: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 08 Mar 2003

By Amanda Morgan
March 8 2003
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By 1997, radio station manager Stephen Jolley had heard enough talk of the internet and decided to get connected. The fact he is blind did not daunt him in the least. In the six years since, Jolley says his experiences online are getting better because of improvements in hardware technology, software and community awareness.

But people with disabilities - whether vision impaired, mobility impaired, speech or hearing impaired or with cognitive or dyslexic impairments - are still often left out of the browsing population equation by software and website developers who neglect to cater for the 3.6 million Australians who have a disability (about 18 per cent of the population).

Internet access for people opens up education and employment opportunities and means, like the able-bodied population, they can go online to do their banking without being charged fees, do their groceries and use government services.

Many organisations are driving customers online - banks, airlines and even universities, where lecture notes are often posted on the web. The Australian Bankers Association, recognising the shift in service, has released voluntary standards for the banking industry that aim to provide equal access for all.

For Jolley, from Melbourne, being able to surf the net means greater independence.

"The door is open for me now, a door that wasn't open before. I had to rely on other people to read to me the newspaper, look something up for me in the library, or check a word for me in the dictionary. I can actually do that myself now."

Jolley, 50, like many blind people who use the internet, has screen-reader software, which speaks the text to him. But he encounters problems when elements of a page appear in graphics - photographs, tables, buttons and, often, PDF files.

A text equivalent should be, but often is not, provided for people who are blind or vision impaired, according to the recognised website developing standards, the World Wide Web Consortium's (w3c) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

The guidelines describe how text equivalents facilitate, for example, a blind user's experience on a website with a photograph of Earth from outer space.

"If the purpose of the image is mostly that of decoration, then the text 'Photograph of Earth as seen from outer space' might fulfil the necessary function." If it is to illustrate specific geographic information, the w3c say, the text equivalent should convey that information: "If the photograph has been designed to tell the user to select the image for information about earth, equivalent text would be 'Information about the Earth,"' the guidelines say.

Including text equivalents does not only benefit people with disabilities. There are also benefits for those with slow connections, who may have graphics turned off to speed download times.

It was a complaint about inaccessible graphics and tabulated information on the Sydney Olympic Games website that is regarded as the watershed point for the testing of laws relating to the internet and people with a disability in Australia.

Sydneysider Bruce Maguire, who is blind, lodged a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) against the Olympics organisers, SOCOG, in 1999. He claimed parts of the website - including lists and results tables - could not be read by his braille reader (a braille reader outputs onto a small desk pad the text contents of a site in braille).

HREOC found the website to be discriminatory and ordered it be accessible by the Olympic Games in September 2000. But SOCOG defied the order, arguing it would cost $2 million and take 368 working days to fix.

The matter went to the Federal Court and SOCOG was ordered, in November 2000, to pay $20,000 for breaching the Disability Discrimination Act.

"That was the big impact. It really was the thing that focused the mind of a lot of webmasters," says Graeme Innes, the deputy disability discrimination commissioner with HREOC.

It was the first test of Australian law relating to equal access to the internet for people with a disability, and the precedent was set that non-compliance with the w3c guidelines was unlawful.

Innes says that as the internet becomes more ubiquitous in society, it becomes more isolating for a person who does not have net access.

"So people who are vulnerable in that context anyway, because they're a disadvantaged group, they're going to become more disadvantaged because of exclusion from the internet, unless we make the facilities accessible."

Just before the Olympics in 2000, HREOC completed a report, commissioned by the federal Attorney-General, Accessibility of Electronic Commerce and New Service and Information Technologies for Older Australians and People With a Disability. It found the main barriers to the internet, in order, were cost, limited public-access facilities, limited resources, assistance and information on equipment and inaccessibility of many web pages. A review in 2001 found progress had been made by government, business and the community to reduce barriers.

"There are still classic examples of websites that are not accessible ... but I think a lot more are accessible," Innes says. "It's hard for us to quantify because we don't have the resources to do continual audits, but my gut feeling from empiric research is there has been progress."

The executive director of Ability Technology, Graeme Smith, says for most people with a disability getting connected begins with hardware, or adaptive technology.

His expertise is helping those with quadriplegia set up work or home computer stations modified to suit their disability.

"The web side is kind of the end of the process, the person with a disability needs to have a computer, they need to have the adaptive technology to get onto the internet first," Smith says.

Examples of hardware and software that Smith uses to help his clients include keyguards on keyboards (to stabilise hands), large text keyboards, trackballs (which need less dexterity than the traditional button mouse), switches (when people can give a command and enter text by operating a single switch), word prediction software and speech-recognition tools. A system that uses a camera to track the movement of an eye to control the cursor is also available for those with severe disabilities.

Although a solution can be found for most types of impairment, Smith says there are some drawbacks for users of these less common types of technology. For example, the more complex the device, the more likely it is to interfere with existing computer systems. The less common a technology is, the more expensive it will be. And there are continual upgrades.

The manager of online accessibility consulting with Vision Australia, Andrew Arch, says one of the biggest hurdles in getting online for people with a disability is cost.

"For some of the devices it is very prohibitive. Jaws for Windows and Windows-Eyes [screen readers] can cost between $1600 and $1700. A refreshable braille device can cost up to $12,000," he says. "It's very expensive for someone who isn't in a work situation where their work pays."

And as most employment now revolves around computers, it means more than ever people with a disability need to have access to training and the means to use a PC.

The executive officer of Blind Citizens Australia, Marianne Diamond, says there are four real barriers to the internet for those she represents: compatibility (of hardware and software); exposure (community awareness); opportunity (public access, work access); and cost (of adaptive technology).

"It's like we seem to do a catch-up, something comes along and we have the speech program to read text and then all these Flash graphics render the speech program unusable. This [technology] field is chasing the [internet] industry all the time."

But, of late, product makers of rich-graphics programs - such as Macromedia - have been developing software to facilitate accessibility. More often than not, it is producers using the products who neglect to use the tools.

"Developers don't know these techniques are available, or how to use them, that's the biggest issue," Arch says.

Macromedia is making much of the new accessibility features in its latest Flash products (especially after a prominent United States web design expert, Jakob Neilsen, declared in 2000 that Flash was generally "99 per cent bad"). It has an accessible website dedicated to explaining how to use its product.

"It would be boring to have all the disability compliance sites in pale blue and with a blank background," Smith says. "It should be an option in some parts, but still include the razzamatazz, if you want it."

Often, websites have a text-only index, free of graphics. But they are often treated like a poor relation, Jolley says.

"They tend not to be updated automatically in sync with the rest of the site so I try and shy away from those."

Adobe also has a website (access.adobe.com) with "resources to help people with disabilities work more effectively with Adobe software, and to aid content creators in producing content that is as accessible as possible". The major technology companies, such as IBM (www-3.ibm.com/able) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/enable), also have online resources dedicated to accessibility information.

There are a number of Australian websites that are aimed at people with disabilities. One is aAccessibility.com.au, begun soon after the Sydney Olympics by Nick Morris, a wheelchair basketballer, and David Goding. Both acted as consultants to make the Games disabled-friendly. "During the process of building the Games we realised there was bugger-all information out there for people with disabilities," Goding says.

Over the past three years, the Accessibility .com.au team have built the site up into an information database, with the latest news, a product directory and city guides.

"I guess what we've done is proved there is a lack of information for people with disabilities [online] because they've certainly come to our site in droves," Goding says, adding the site gets about 400,000 unique visitors a month.

Another useful Australian site dedicated to people with disabilities is enable.net.au, a disability portal created by the South Australian Disability Information & Resource Centre.

More generally, there is an international stamp of approval for accessible web sites - Bobby. It has a number of levels of compliance tests, based on the w3c's guidelines and United States law requirements. A site with the Bobby icon (a cartoon of a British police officer) means it has complied with the standards. Anyone can test a website on the Bobby web page by entering the URL.

But people with disabilities do not use the net just to explore accessibility. It is a resource for education, recreation and meeting people, just as it is for the able-bodied.

"They can study, they can access information, download newspapers and magazines, they can do banking," Smith says.

"When you watch this stuff unfold ... the excitement I felt when I saw the first CD encyclopedia, I just had tears in my eyes. I know lots of people who are quadriplegics [who couldn't turn pages] and what this would have meant to them."

Arch, of Vision Australia, says the future holds just as much promise.

"For the first time, blind people will be able to have a secret ballot and possibly even fill the census in for themselves," Arch says. "That will mean a huge amount to people."

Infofile

Less than 10 per cent of private sector websites meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, according to the last survey conducted by the Australian Internet Industry Association. While the private sector lagged, the IIA says many State and Federal government websites "generally" meet the requirements of the DDA. The group has developed a Web Action Plan, which sets out the legal and business case for providing an accessible website, as well as the remaining barriers.

Copyright © 2003 The Sydney Morning Herald.