2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

disabilities, especially those who had difficulties buying a newspaper or going to
shopping centres. The BBC representative agreed, stating that a recent study verified
that the most important requirement for people visiting the site was the fact that
information could be obtained at anytime.
Another significant difference was identified as the knowledge of AT. Both
the ABC representatives and the BBC representative had a thorough understanding
of screen reader and text-to-speech technologies and agreed that it was important to
ensure that their sites were compatible with these technologies. The W3C
Accessibility Guidelines, as outlined in Appendix C, were deemed to be of
significant priority to both organizations. The ABC Internal Production Policy
guidelines section 4.2 (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2003) states that:
all Commonwealth organisations should meet the W3C's WAI (Web
Accessibility Initiative) [Priority 1] checklist. Sites which don't comply are
liable for potential legal action under Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission regulations, as was the case with S.O.C.O.G. during the Sydney
Olympics.
Such policies demonstrate that the provision of accessible information is
taken seriously by the ABC. The BBC has similar policies initially ensuring that text-
based versions of all web site content is provided so that text-to-speech programs can
easily access the information. This policy has changed slightly in recent times. The
representative indicated that people with low vision would prefer to access the same
information as the able-bodied population and view the graphical information
wherever possible.
Media organizations have recognised that people with vision disabilities have
the most difficulty in accessing information through the WWW. At the same time,
they understood that people with vision disabilities could probably gain the most out
of the new medium through the ability to access information instantly without the
need to wait for information to be translated into a more accessible medium, such as
translating print to Braille.
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