2007 PhD Thesis Final Revised.pdf - Curtin University

The United States Section 508 has demonstrated how a uniform approach to
information technology needs of people with disabilities could be used to resolve
these ambiguity issues. Such legislation has not only resolved the issue of who is
responsible for accessibility but has also encouraged the development of accessible
IT products and services. Many manufactures included accessibility features in their
mainstream products as it was easier than making specific products for the US
Federal government. However, there was some criticism of Section 508 in that
non-government entities who provided public information, complied with the W3C
Single-A standard. This issue was of particular interest to Australia given the
landmark case of Maguire v SOCOG in 2000 where the ambiguity of the current
policy and legislative frameworks resulted in Maguire winning the case. However,
the web accessibility issue was not addressed.
The accessibility of web pages was the most well documented disability
divide issue with much publicity over the need to ensure Single-A compliance. In
order to examine the provision of online information, it was necessary to interview
media organisations who specialised in the provision of online information. The
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) emerged as being a specialist in ensuring
that its online content met at least the W3C Single-A accessibility standards and in
many cases Double-A accessibility standards. The BBC representative explained
that in order for information to be made accessible, it was important that total
integration of accessibility was used rather than creating an alternate text-only page
as was the former policy. Such integration was important as text-only pages were
often not included and thus did not provide the full features beneficial to people who
were vision impaired but who would still like to participate in visual aspects of the
web site.
The provision of online information in Australia was determined through
comparing the BBC initiatives with those of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC). The ABC representatives indicated that they based much of their
accessibility initiatives on the BBC model but that were unaware of the move away
from the text-only alternative. As such, there were areas of the ABC site at the time
of interview which had limited or inaccessible material. Although these issues have
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