The Draft Report was released just before I left for an extended holiday with my family and we were still away when the Final Report was released. The article specifically refers to the Draft Report, I made this clear in the article title and I repeatedly refer to it as the Draft report in the article. I wrote this response to the Draft Report because I felt that the Draft report suggests the Government 2.0 Taskforce did not fully understand the concept of ’social inclusion’ and the Draft Report did not adequately address the issues of accessibility.

I agree the Terms of Reference do not include “Arguing the Case for Social Inclusion”. However, the terms of reference require the Taskforce to advise and assist the Government to do a number of things: The first is to, “make government information more accessible and usable…”. And the second is to, “make government more consultative, participatory and transparent… “. Frankly, without embracing the notion of Social Inclusion I don’t see how it is possible to satisfy these two criteria for surely in a Gov 2.0 world the needs and abilities of all Australians have to be considered.

I did read the report, ‘Enhancing the Discoverability & Accessibility of Government Information’, commissioned by the Taskforce and agree with most of its observations and conclusions. Nowhere in this report however, did I see the suggestion that agencies should be able to “elect to proceed with a project that is not fully (WCAG) compliant” (as suggested in both the Draft and Final reports). Rather, the ‘Enhancing the Discoverability & Accessibility’ report argues for greater compliance with WCAG 2.0 and urges compliance be applied retrospectively (not something I fully agree with).

I haven’t had the time to fully consider the Final Report of the Taskforce, but I am relieved to see that it does acknowledge the “Disability Discrimination Act” and appears to give greater consideration to issues of accessibility. However, it seems to me the final report is still more interested in arguing the case against accessibility rather that exploring ways to make web 2.0 accessible to all.

The Final Report still recommends agencies should not need to comply with accessibility guidelines when they believe, “strict compliance with WCAG accessibility guidelines risks preventing a project from proceeding.” The recommendation now goes onto suggest agencies provide “plans for compliance within a reasonable timeframe” a small improvement on “plans for future compliance” as was the case with the Draft Report.

It appears from your comments above that you are only referencing the Taskforce’s draft report.

I recommend that you both review their Final Report (released 22 December 2009) and the Terms of Reference for the Gov 2.0 Taskforce to understand the basis on which they reported and the specific goals of their report. “Arguing the case for social inclusion”, which seems to be the measure by which you have decided to judge the report, is not listed in the Terms of Reference.

The Terms of Reference is available in http://gov2.net.au/about/ or within their Final Report at http://gov2.net.au/report/.

I believe you should also review the ways in which the Gov 2.0 Taskforce could apply the $2.4 million of Microsoft funds available to it. The Project reports were the direct outcomes of this budget. The first considered accessibility to some extent and other reports touched on the topic. These should be considered when assessing the level of engagement by the Taskforce on the topic of accessibility (http://gov2.net.au/projects/)

I don’t know if an organisation such as yours suggested a project to the Taskforce for funding that looked at the accessibility of social media in detail, but if not it was a missed opportunity.

Cheers,

Craig

Interetsing post, i think one of the things about the web is the way it helps with social inclusion by in a way removing other social barriers, i myself have autism and i communicate most effectively online, sites like wrongplanet and the multiple autism chatrooms and IRC channels have been a HUGE part of my social network for year! This one one of the ways that technology empowers people to help themselves and become less dependent on the world!

^licks^

Jamie & Lion

Despite living in Switzerland at the time, I only visited Berlin a few years later, when it was already a gigantic construction site.

Your recollection here filled in some gaps between the frantic news footage and the guns-blazing development of my visit.

To me the problem is how to ensure that accessibility can be incorporated into the new tech. More importantly, how can we help the “amateur” user (instructors, teens, grandma) create accessible content without attending a week-long seminar?

For instance, you can create a tagged PDF, but only if you invest in the full-featured Adobe Acrobat Professional. Using the daefulat Print as PDF doesn’t cut it (at least not on a Mac), even if you begin with a Word file with Heading 1/Heading 2 within it. To make it worse, accessibility is buried under an “Advanced” option.

If you’re NOT a Web Professional (and most generators of PDF files are not Web professionals), it sounds like a rip off and a major pain. No wonder most PDF files are in accessible. It won’t improve until Adobe or a competitor builds in default options for accessibility in a PDF like in Dreamweaver…and makes it cheap.

So…since most HTML editors like Dreamweaver, now enhance accessibility, I do recommend using HTML whenever possible at the moment to anyone creating content.

P.S. Flash requires a LOT of Actionscript know-how and fiddling to implement key items like keyboard functionality. I don’t see that many accessible Flash objects will be created until Adobe implements the kind of easy accessibility checks that are in Dreamweaver.