Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities Bill Shorten issued a joint media release last Tuesday 23 February confirming that the Australian Government had endorsed the W3C's latest accessibility standard, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (or WCAG 2.0).
The media release also indicated that the Minister and Parliamentary Secretary are stipulating that all (Australian) government websites adhere to these new standards by 2015. Given it took
The Government is preparing a National Transition Strategy for the move, however there's plenty of resources already available on the web about how to switch to WCAG 2.0 - as the new standard has been out for about 14 months.
I am hopeful that government professionals responsible for the design, technical and content changes and strategies will work together across agencies to build their knowledge and expertise on the topic - we are all in this together and there are a number of highly experienced accessibility experts dotted across the public sector.
Perhaps this is an opportunity for AGIMO to expand its Web Publishing Guide Blog to encourage cross-government professional discussion on the topic of accessibility and implementing WCAG 2.0.
That's good news. Although the Human Rights Commission still hasn't endorsed the standard which is frustrating, I hope they update this page of theirs soon - http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html
ReplyDeleteHere in QLD gov we already use WCAG 2.0 as part of our web and Consistent User Experience standards. Thanks to some great help from the web accessibility working group here the transition has been (mostly) painless.
Harmony
www.harmonysteel.com