The picnic lunch by the river at the State Rowing Championships was a welcomed distraction, particularly for Ruth and Jane, who had three hours to kill before they were to compete for the Junior Women’s Coxless Pairs title. Small talk and the various finals for the Senior events were interspersed with enthusiastic optimism tempered by [...]
The weekend of the State Rowing Championships had finally arrived. Year in, year out the program followed the same format: Heats for the Senior events on the Saturday, Junior heats Sunday morning and all the finals in the afternoon. On the Sunday morning, Abraham Goldsmith drove Jane Thomas and his daughter Ruth out to the [...]
Jane Thomas and her parents, Dean and Madge, stood dumb-founded as Sky Crystal told them the Japanese company taking over the shopping centre project had other plans for their land. “There going to build a fish processing factory and cold storage plant!” As Sky delivered her bombshell, the Merlin freezer in the Thomas deli started [...]
My presentation for the 2010 CSUN Conference, “Ten Years of Web Content Accessibility Rules: Time for a Rethink?” is primarily concerned with whether or not the way we have encouraged/required the development of accessible sites in the past has been successful, and how we might improve the accessibility of the web in the future. For [...]
After nearly a year of deliberation, the Australian government has finally decided to move from using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) to WCAG 2.0 as the benchmark for website accessibility. On Wednesday February 24, The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) announced: “Government agencies will transition to WCAG 2.0 over a four year [...]
All day there had been a buzz at the Whale Watch Society workshop about the last session. Very few recognised the presenter’s name or photo in the program, but he was described as an expert in communication by aquatic mammals. When Ralph Fly was introduced at the start of the final session, Sky Crystal was [...]
On Tuesday 23 February the Minister for Finance, Lindsay Tanner, announced the Australian Government had endorsed WCAG 2.0. The press release by Minister Tanner contained few details, but said all government websites would need to comply with WCAG 2.0 by 2015. “These new standards will improve the ability of people with a broad range of [...]
While there are many things to praise in the Government 2.0 Taskforce Draft Report, ‘Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0‘, sadly I find it very light-on when it comes to the whole issue of social inclusion for people with disabilities. How governments around the world balance the potential of web 2.0 with the reality of [...]
Every year, the old-money and new-money yachties put aside their schemes and scams, alliances and animosities, for one weekend. The RBT Ocean Classic was now an established part of the business calendar, where stockbrokers and loan sharks, property developers and company directors could go to sea for some serious competition and fun. The race always [...]
We no longer think it is acceptable to discriminate against people on grounds of gender or race and, as a community, we expect provision to be made for people with disabilities in public transport and building design. However, when it comes to making sure web content is accessible to all users of the web, including [...]