issues

This page highlights some online accessibility issues in Australia and overseas.

It covers -

• introduction
• background
• online
• mapping the problems
• initiatives
• language

     introduction

How accessible is your site? 

Is it visited by people with hearing, sight or other disabilities (around 25% of the population, according to some studies)? Some authorities suggest that 4.5% of your visitors (ie 8% males, 1% of females) are likely to be colour blind. You can get some sense of what they see using the Q42 simulation here.

Are your visitors from regional Australia, often equipped with older browsers or who choose text-only access because of connection times/costs. In aggregate that is around 40% of the online population.

     background

Figures on the extent of disabilities in the Australian and New Zealand populations - and the significance of particular problems on a day to day basis - are often unclear.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has suggested that around 3.6 million people - some 18% of the Australian population - have some kind of disability. Approximately 3.2 million experienced a specific restriction in 'core activities' such as every day communication and access to schooling. A further 3.1 million people have

an impairment or long term condition that may, at times, restrict their every day activities.

In 1996 the Royal Blind Society (RBS) suggested that 300,000 Australians had "some difficulty" with print, even with glasses. The extent/significance of that difficulty is unclear.

The RBS estimated that in the ACT and NSW around 100,000 people are affected by "significant sight loss", commenting that for Australians older than 75 the incidence of blindness or severe vision impairment is around one in six. A 1992 EU telematics study suggested that were around 100 million people over retirement age (65+) and 50 million disabled (inc 1.1 million blind and 11.5 million people with low vision), with a substantial overlap between the two distributions.

The Internet Industry Association's 2002 Accessibility Web Action Plan (AWAP) noted that -

• not all Australians speak English as a first language, referring to a 1996 ABS Census report that 16.9% of people spoke a language other than English at home
• almost half of Australians aged 15-74, according to that Census, had poor or very poor literacy skills and could be expected to experience difficulty using many documents encountered in everyday life
• 30% of rural and regional dwellers surf the web with graphics turned off. This reflects the limited bandwidth available - 30% of Australians access the web using bandwidths less than 14.4kbps
• 12% of the Australian population is over 65. Loss of sight, loss of hearing and arthritis are the main long-term health problems encountered by older Australians. Disability and handicap increases with age.
• % of children under 5 years were disabled
• 64% of people aged 75 years and over were disabled

In 2006 the Australian Bureau of Statistics contrasted workforce participation by 'disabled' (d) and 'non-disabled' (n) adults -

Other dimensions were highlighted in the Blind Citizens Australia report on Accessible E-Commerce in Australia: A Discussion Paper about the Effects of Electronic Commerce Developments on People With Disabilities. For an international perspective see Aspasia Dellaporta's 'Web Accessibility and the Needs of Users with Disabilities', David Kreps' 'Failing the Disabled Community: The Continuing Problem of Web Accessibility' and Syariffanor Hisham & Alistair Edwards' 'Ageing and its Implications for Elderly Web Experience' in Advances in Universal Web Design & Evaluation: Research, Trends & Opportunities (Hershey: IDEA Group 2007) edited by Sri Kurniawan & Panayiotis Zaphiris.

A December 2002 report by Statistics Canada claimed that one in every seven Canadians aged 15 and over (ie 3.4 million people) reported "some level of disability" - ranging from mild limitations such as a backache to severe limitations such as loss of vision or loss of mobility because of arthritis. Over one million adults reported hearing difficulties; 600,000 had a problem with vision.

A UK advocacy organisation claimed that dyslexics comprised up to 10% of the UK workforce, suggesting that new typefaces would be an appropriate action under that nation's Disability Discrimination Act.

It is easy to be skeptical about the prevalence and severity of many disabilities, particularly when they are intangible, self-identified and promoted by particular solution vendors or advocacy organisations. However, the figures are a reminder that not everyone has the same access to online content.

Irrespective of legal requirements - particularly the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act - ensuring your site is accessible is good practice. 

     online

As we have noted throughout these guides, not everyone has the same browser, machine or connection to the web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the main internet standards body,  comments that many users will be operating in contexts very different from your own. 

They may -

not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all

have a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection

have difficulty reading or comprehending text

not speak or fully understand the language in which the document is written

not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse

be in a situation where their eyes, ears, or hands are occupied (eg driving or working in a loud environment)

have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.

We have noted sites that are not functional with 'alternative' browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Netscape (ie they will only work with Microsoft's IE) or that require the user to change browser settings to gain access. For example, if you have turned off javascript you will simply get a blank page on visiting some corporate sites.

     mapping the problem

How big is the problem? The answer is unclear, given significant variation in results from some automated evaluation tools, disagreement about interpretation of results and uncertainty about the construction of some samples.

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed (Indianapolis: New Riders 2001) by Jakob Nielsen & Marie Tahir reports on empirical studies of use of sites in North America, the EU and Japan. It suggests that many sites fail basic accessibility tests, significantly impeding access by users with motor/vision or language problems and 'standard users'.

The 2004 study A comparative assessment of Web accessibility and technical standards conformance in four EU states by Carmen Marincu & Barry McMullin suggested that 94.0% of a sample of Irish sites, 94.5% of UK sites, 95.6% of German sites and 98.6% of French sites failed the Bobby evaluation tool at the minimal accessibility level. 99% of the UK sites and all of the Irish, French and German sites failed Bobby at the professional accessibility level.

That is consistent with the 2002 Two Fails out of Three in the Automated Accessibility Assessment of World Wide Web Sites: A-Prompt v. Bobby (PDF) by Dan Diaper & Linzy Worman. A separate study Assessing the accessibility of fifty United States government Web pages: Using Bobby to check on Uncle Sam by Jim Ellison suggested that around 78% of the sample failed.

In Australia a major report by the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission, the national anti-discrimination watchdog, on its 1999-2000 inquiry into Access to Electronic Commerce, New Service & Information Technologies for Older Australians & People with a Disability is available online. The report is complemented by documentation regarding the Accessible ecommerce Forum established by HREOC and the Australian Bankers Association following that report.  

The 1999 report (PDF) on Web Sites for Rural Australia: Designing for Accessibility by the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation (RIRDC) highlighted issues relating to regional use of the web, including uncertain (and expensive connections), slow download times and older machines or browsers. 

The report cited the W3C guidelines as a useful tool for addressing accessibility problems experienced by regional Australians, disabled or otherwise.

There is increasing academic, consumer and industry interest in readability. Information may be available online but what if it is saturated in jargon, displayed only in upper case (a fashion in many site 'terms & conditions' statements, hidden in an obscure location or in a small pop-up box).

An example is the US Privacy Rights Clearinghouse's 2001 report on about the readability of online bank privacy statements.

Some observers have commented that, contrary to pronouncements from some accessibility purists, graphics do have a place online. Users with poor sight, with English as a second language or with reading disabilities may appreciate cues provided by graphics - so there is reason for wariness about a "text, text and nothing but the text" approach.

     initiatives

During the late 1990s the Internet Industry Association (IIA), though its Disability Access Taskforce chaired by John McKenna, developed Australia's first industry-wide Web Access Disability Action Plan (WADAP) in conjunction with the Australian Interactive Multimedia Industry Association. WADAP aimed to provide all internet businesses with a framework for implementing accessible site design.

The document was revised to become the AWAP and registered with the HREOC. The IIA site includes resources such as the paper by US advocate Dennis Hayes on A Vision of the Web.

     language

Marieke Napier's 2000 Cultivate article The Soldiers are in the Coffee - An Introduction to Machine Translation points to resources about automated translation of web sites. There is a more detailed analysis in the Compendium by John Hutchins.

Most solutions currently reside within the browser (eg BabelFish or the translation facility in the Google search engine) rather than as cheap facilities that can be incorporated within sites. Worldlingo is one of several site-specific commercial services.




     next page  (accessibility law)