Guest post: We should be celebrating our victories

Hi, today I'm featuring a guest post by Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz

Gian is Australia's leading specialist in accessibility and was on the working group that designed the WCAG 2.0 guidelines that agencies must follow.

Gian will be speaking at a series of free breakfast seminars at the start of April in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney with Texthelp Ltd on products available to improve the accessibility compliance of your site. This include BrowseAloud (an assistive technology) and OzPlayer (an accessible video player).

For more information visit www.accessibilityoz.com.au/2014/03/accessibility-breakfasts-melbourne-canberra-and-brisbane/

Or register here

We should be celebrating our victories

Recently AGIMO released their Progress Report into the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy. I have sat back and watched as a number of commentators have focused on the negative; that Government web sites are still not fully accessible. A rumour has been doing the rounds that accessibility compliance is just too hard and that AGIMO is backing away from the National Transition Strategy and that web sites won’t need to meet the Level AA deadline of December 2014.

A recent study on assessing and promoting e-accessibility has been released which compared the accessibility of the EU27 countries, Australia, Canada, Norway and the US. In terms of the overall test scores, as seen in the graph below, Australia ranks second of all 31 countries, just behind the UK.

Bar graph of overall percentage test scores for each country, long description at the end of the article (click to enlarge image)

Countries were given a score of zero, one or two, depending on their accessibility compliance pertaining to a particular test. Zero means the accessibility requirement was not met, 1 point means the requirement was partially met and two points means the requirement was fully met. Australia has the third lowest percentage of zero scores (no accessibility), behind the UK and Canada.

Bar graph showing the percentage of each test score (0, 1 or 2) for each country, long description at the end of the article (click to enlarge image)

When we look at Australian statistics, we see an impressive increase in the accessibility of Government sites. The 2010 NTS Baseline Report indicated 4.7% of Government web sites met WCAG2 at a particular level. At the end of 2012, 26% of Government web sites met Level A of WCAG2; that’s a 450% increase! And another 46% of sites are aiming to meet the Level AA requirement at the end of December 2014. In addition to this, 73% of all agencies have re-evaluated their web publishing processes, with an additional 21% intending to do so in the near future. Over half (58%) of agencies have changed their CMSes, with an additional 27% intending to do so in the near future. In procurement - the one area of accessibility where agencies have little control - over 97% of agencies are intending to or have already reviewed procurement strategies. More than 80% use an automated accessibility testing tool regularly.

Australia is certainly not alone in having Government requirements around accessibility, but, as this recent study suggests, we are leading the world in terms of accessibility compliance. We should be celebrating our victories; yes, there is a long way to go, but look at what we’ve done!


Overall scores for each country long description:

The highest ranking country is the UK with approximately 72% of the maximum score, followed by Australia with approximately 67% of the maximum score. The average score for the EU27 countries is approximately 52%. The lowest scoring country is Greece with 30%


Distribution of test scores for each country long description:

The country with the lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores is Canada, with an approximate percentage of 25% 'zero' scores, approximately 24% of 'one' scores and 51% of 'two' scores. The country with the second lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores if the UK with approximately 28% 'zero' scores, 1% 'one' scores and 71% 'two' scores. The country with the third lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores is Australia with approximately 29% 'zero' scores, 11% 'one' scores' and 60% 'two' scores. The country with the highest percentage of 'zero' test scores was Greece, with approximately 68% 'zero' test scores, 3% 'one' test scores and 28% 'two' test scores.

For more blog posts from Gian visit www.accessibilityoz.com.au/accessibility-blog/

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Learning how to crowd fund - and launch of Social Media Planner Kickstarter

This morning at BarCamp Canberra I gave the presentation below on how to setup a crowdfunding campaign, based on my personal experience setting up a Kickstarter for Social Media Planner.

For people interested in crowdfunding I've embedded my presentation below.

If you're interested in learning more about Social Media Planner, and potentially backing it, see: kickstarter.com/projects/socialmediaplanner/social-media-planner

Crowdfunding: How to set up a campaign (from my personal experience) from Craig Thomler

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Launching my Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign at BarCamp Canberra

Tomorrow is BarCamp Canberra, a festival of ideas and experiences, where participants decide what to present and attend on the day.

While it is hard to predict what people will talk about, I expect topics will range from technology and design to open data and social change, with a seasoning of personal experiences and interactive workshops.

For my own contribution to BarCamp this year, I decided to talk about crowdfunding - but not just from the position of someone who has looked into it and spoken to people who have done it before.

What I have done is created my own crowdfunding initiative, around a card-based tool I designed and have been using in social media training and consulting for about eight years.

As a result my talk at BarCamp will share my experience in setting up this campaign, from concept through to launch.

In fact I will be pushing the button to launch the crowdfunding campaign at the end of my presentation, seeking to raise the funds required to commercialise my tool, Social Media Planner.

That will give attendees a chance to follow my crowdfunding experience through to success, or learning experience. There's also a few early bird specials which people at BarCamp will get access to before anyone else.

So if you're interested in learning more about the process of setting up a crowdfunding campaign, any of the other topics likely to be discussed at BarCamp Canberra, or simply want to hang out with interesting and thoughtful people, come along tomorrow.

BarCamp Canberra is being held at Gungahlin Library from 9am on Saturday 15 March.

It is being sponsored by Inspiring Australia, a joint initiative of the Commonwealth and ACT governments.

Register at: https://barcampcanberra2014.eventbrite.com.au

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Time has run out for Australia to meet its April 2014 Open Government Partnership commitment

Last year the Australian Government (under the Labor party) made a commitment to the international and Australian community that it would take the necessary actions to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) by April 2014.

The OGP is a group of 63 nations committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. It was co-founded by nations such as the US, UK and India and is currently co-chaired by our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, which is hosting the OGP's Asia-Pacific Regional Conference this year.

As one of the fourth wave to join the OGP, along with nations such as New Zealand, Australia was hardly an early adopter of this agenda. Our efforts to join started three years after the organisation was founded and at a time when many OGP members were already working on their second set of open government commitments.

Joining the OGP may not be like joining the UN's Security Council or another highly influential international body. Its aims are very specific.

However Australia is an obvious nation to be a member, as a liberal democracy with strong FOI provisions and well recognised for our past work in the Government 2.0 field, it would seem a natural fit.

Despite this, and many attempts by various journalists and civic organisations to discover how Australia's OGP membership efforts were progressing, there's been almost total silence from the Australian Government on the topic over the last six months.

There's even now an FOI request underway to discover what steps the Australian Government has been taking in regards the OGP.

The requirements for OGP membership include developing an action plan containing concrete and measurable commitments undertaken by the participating government to drive innovative reforms in the areas of transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement.

This plan must be designed through a multi-stakeholder, open, and participatory process.

These types of processes take months, not weeks. In fact nations have taken up to a year to develop their OGP action plans.

In fact there's a great post online about the 12-month process the UK ran to develop its 2013-15 plan, Story of the UK National Action Plan 2013-15.

Australia has not yet begun the process of consulting and, given the membership intake is in April 2014, I don't see there is sufficient time for even an abbreviated process.

Even if the Australian Government began public consultation this week, the UK recommends allowing at least three months for this process - plus additional time for refining the feedback, detailed consultations with the civic sector and for actually writing and approving the plan.

The only nation thus far to withdrawn from its commitment to join the OGP has been Russia, which decided it was not able or willing to meet the requirements of membership.

Will Australia join Russia, becoming the second nation to withdraw?

Or will it simply delay membership - one year, two years or more?

Perhaps we'll find out with a government announcement in the next month regarding its OGP commitment.

Or perhaps all we can expect is ongoing silence.

Either way, it is disappointing to see the Australian Government fail to live up to the high standards of openness and transparency that our politicians espouse as a core requirement for our national democracy.

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Are you prepared for Australia's new privacy law?

Today Australia's new Privacy law comes into force, affecting Australian Government agencies, businesses with a turnover of more than $3 million or trading in personal information and all private health service providers.

As the first major change in Australian privacy law in 25 years, there's been numerous changes and updates to reflect the major changes in society over this period.

Since the last Privacy Act was introduced in the late 1980s we've seen the digitalisation of most records, the introduction of the world wide web, the rise of Web 2.0, the spread of mobile devices and the greatest increase in public expression by Australians in history.

The notion of privacy has also changed. I've always considered privacy as a transaction rather than an absolute - people trade aspects of their privacy in return for services, benefits or convenience. This has become far more widespread as an approach as organisations increasingly use personal information to shape peoples' experience of products and services, particularly online.

Generationally we've seen very different views of privacy take hold. Younger people are far more willing to share information that their elders consider 'private' and have new concerns around information that their elders share without a thought.

The new Privacy law (Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012) contains a number of stronger provisions on organisations to protect and communicate how they protect the privacy of individuals, as well as more ability for individuals to ask organisations what they know about them.

It also does a great deal to revalue personal privacy. Whereas Telstra was recently fined about $10,000 for accidentally releasing private information on about 12,000 people - valuing their privacy at 0.83c each, under the new law the penalties may be much higher - up to around $1.7 million.

If you're unfamiliar with the new privacy law, you're probably in the majority.

There's been little promotion of the change and limited information available for the public or organisations to test their current privacy approach.

There is a media release on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's (OAIC) site and the OAIC has done what it can - without a significant budget - to get the word out to those affected by the changes.

Unfortunately the changes haven't been promoted by any Ministers or the Prime Minister - the law was changed under the last government and the ownership may not be there.

However regardless of the promotion or not of the new law, it is now in effect. Every Australian has new rights and many organisations have new obligations they must meet in collecting, holding, sharing and protecting the private information of Australians.

To learn more about the new Australian Privacy law, visit the OAIC's guidance on the reforms at the following pages:

• Privacy law reform
• Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in full
• APP guidlines
• The new privacy law: Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012

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