overview

This guide considers questions about online accessibility, highlighting accessibility issues, standards and resources.

It complements our more detailed Design guide.

     contents of this guide

The following pages cover -

• issues - an overview of key issues and background documents
• law - accessibility and anti-discrimination legislation, of increasing importance in Australia and overseas
• standards - WCAG, WAC, PAS 78 and other global online accessibility standards and tools
• studies and sizes -  writing about online accessibility and statistics on monitor sizes and other device questions
• bodies -  government and other bodies concerned with web accessibility
• checklist - a basic list of points, derived from the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, for assessing barriers to use of your site
• the politics of online accessibility - justice, discrimination, advocacy and markets
• cases - highlights of Australian and overseas litigation regarding online accessibility ... or inaccessibility

For those interested in questions of access to telecommunications infrastructure and skills there is an introduction in our Metrics & Statistics guide.

The supplementary Digital Divides and Internet Demographics profiles explore particular issues in more detail. The Divides profile for example highlights global and national access initiatives and reports.

This site also features a separate profile on Australian and overseas anti-discrimination enactments and other Human Rights legislation.

     orientation

In Australia and other countries anti-discrimination law requires web site owners to remove online barriers.

Irrespective of legal requirements, good accessibility makes good sense for businesses, government agencies and other site operators. In principle few can afford to exclude people who are colour-blind, have old browsers or a 'slow' connection to the web (around 40% of the online population in Australia and New Zealand as of 2005) ... although many clearly do. 





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