[Sigia-l] Web Accessibility on Government Websites outside US

[Adrian Howard]

On Tuesday, July 16, 2002, at 08:28  am, Ronald Tan wrote:

> I am currently working on the need for Government websites in Singapore 
> to
> factor in Web Accessibility. Would appreciate any info on the following:
>
> 1.    Is there a need to justify the necessity since the disabled 
> community
> is
>        relatively small?

Three points for consideration:

1)  It's a misnomer that the disabled community is a small one.
     Depending on how you define disability you're looking at between
     10-20% of the population. Not all of those disabilities affect access
     to websites, but it's definitely not a trivial percentage.

2)  It doesn't *matter* how small that group is if they're one of the
     groups your site has to reach.

     For example, the over sixties (*not* a small online group) tend to
     have a more visual, physical and cognitive disabilities. That's
     just a fact of getting old. Even if you ignore the ethical issues
     (which, of course, you should not!) I *bet* that the elderly are an
     important user group for your government sites.

3)  Producing an "accessible" site does not just help the "disabled".
     In my experience producing a more accessible site improves all round
     user satisfaction.

This all depends on your definition of "disabled" and "accessible" of
course... which is one of those discussions that can run and run. So
I'll ignore it :-)

> 2.    Is there another means of implemeting Web Accessible websites 
> without
>        developing a speperate version from the graphic savvy versions?

Yes. This is completely possible to have a single site that looks good
and is accessible to all.

In fact it's not even particularly difficult, as long as you take
accessibility issues into account at an early stage in the development
process --- unless you're off in the land of interactive games, or
have a lot of audio/video that you need to subtitle.

For information based sites you shouldn't have any problems.

> 3.    Who are the other countries who mandates government websites to be
>        Web Accessible?

Off the top of my head:

-  UK government sites should comply with the IAG Guidelines for UK
    Government websites, which include accessibility rules (this is an
    organizational requirement rather than a legal constraint). The UK
    Disabiiity Discrimination Act can also be read as requiring
    "service" websites to be accessible. See
  <http://www.e-
envoy.gov.uk/publications/guidelines/webguidelines/handbook/content/04.htm>
  <http://www.e-
envoy.gov.uk/publications/guidelines/webguidelines/handbook/management/104.
htm>.

-  Section 508 is a legal accessibility requirement for US federal
    sites. See <http://www.section508.gov/>.

There are probably more.

> 4.    To what extent is possibly implemented?

I would start of by taking a look at the W3C's Web Accessibility
Initiative <http://www.w3.org/WAI/>. This has lots of useful
information and pointers to related sites.

One of the first things you should look at are the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines, which should give you a lot of what you're
looking for. See <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/> and
<http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS/>.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Adrian
--
Adrian Howard  <adrianh at quietstars.com>
phone: 01929 550720  fax: 0870 131 3033  www.quietstars.com