Speaker's information
Dónal Rice is the ICT Accessibility Coordinator with the Public Services Accessibility Initiative at the National Disability Authority. He provides advice to public sector organisations on how to make their websites and ICT services more accessible for peolple with disabilities. He has responsibility for the NDA IT Accessibility Guidelines, http://accessit.nda.ie. These guidelines cover accessibility in 4 main ICT areas, namely the web, applicatiion software, telecomms and public access terminals.
Information sur l'auteur
Dónal RICE est Coordinateur de l'Initiative Accessibilité des Services Publics de la NDA (National Disability Authority - Autorité Nationale Pour les Handicaps). Il conseille les organismes publics en ce qui concerne l'accessibilité de leurs sites Web et leurs services électroniques de communication et d'information aux personnes handicapées. Il est responsables des recommandations de NDA en ce qui concerne les technologies de l'information (http://accessit.nda.ie). Ces recommandations couvrent 4 domaines principaux : le Web, les logiciels, les télécommunications et les bornes publiques d'information.
Short paper
National Disability AuthorityThe Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities and the recommendations contained in its report "A Strategy for Equality" in 1996 marked a watershed in the development of Irish disability policy. The importance of establishing a rights-based approach was acknowledged formally. This shift has been reflected in Government commitment to mainstreaming programmes and services for people with disabilities and in the establishment of the National Disability Authority (NDA) in June 2000. The NDA has adopted a rights-based approach in working with Government, the public and other stakeholders to ensure that there is ongoing improvement in services and everyday life for people with disabilities.
Mission
NDA's mission is to promote and help secure the rights of people with disabilities, influence and shape public policy and legislation and work to ensure that services to people with disabilities are of the highest standards and quality.
Approach
The NDA advocates that people with a disability have a right to equality of opportunity and equality of participation. The NDA seeks disability, health and education legislation that supports the individual through needs assessment, service co-ordination and access to advocacy while containing measures to level the playing pitch such as mainstreaming, disability/equality training for a wide range of public and private service providers and mandatory accessibility criteria. Provisions for enforcement are crucial. All service providers have a social and moral obligation to provide access for people with disabilities. NDA advocates that service providers responsibilities are clearly defined and adequate resources are made available to enable them meet these responsibilities.
The NDA advocates that people with a disability have a right to equality of opportunity and equality of participation. The NDA seeks disability, health and education legislation that supports the individual through needs assessment, service co-ordination and access to advocacy while containing measures to level the playing pitch such as mainstreaming, disability/equality training for a wide range of public and private service providers and mandatory accessibility criteria. Provisions for enforcement are crucial. All service providers have a social and moral obligation to provide access for people with disabilities. NDA advocates that service providers responsibilities are clearly defined and adequate resources are made available to enable them meet these responsibilities.
The Equality Act 2004 amended both the Employment Equality Act and Equal Status Act. Essentially it was the transposition of EU directives into Irish Law and under the Employment Equality Act shifted the "reasonable accommodation" clause to "undue hardship". So for example the large multi-national company would now have different conditions for accommodating the needs of people with disabilities than say the local corner shop.
The Irish Government launched the National Disability Strategy on 21st September 2004. The legislative component of this strategy, the Disabilities Bill 2004 establishes a statutory basis for public service providers to provide access to public buildings, services and information. There is little reference specifically to ICT and no direct reference to web accessibility in the Bill. Nevertheless the Section 26, subsection 2 states "Where a public body communicates in electronic form with one or more persons, the head of the body shall ensure, that as far as practicable, that the contents of the communication are accessible to persons with a visual impairment to whom adaptive technology is available".
The NDA in partnership with the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is developing the Excellence through Accessibility Awards process that aims to objectively examine and encourage the accessibility of services provided by Government Departments and Agencies to people with disabilities. A set of 14 guidelines have been developed that will take account of three critical areas that are common to all organisations: Access to Quality Customer Services; Access to the Build Environment; Access to services delivered via Information and Communication Technology.
An assessment tool based on these guidelines is also being developed and applicant organisations will have an assessment carried out by experienced and trained assessors. This assessment will gather evidence of accessibility from observation, documentation and interview. The ICT component of the guidelines cover three areas: the provision of information in accessible formats; the accessibility of the organisation's public access terminals; the accessibility of the organisations website's and other content delivered in HTML
NDA launched the NDA IT Accessibility Guidelines v1.1,http://accessit.nda.ie in 2002. Through these guidelines NDA hope to motivate developed and managers of ICT projects to adopt on inclusive design process for the development of their products. The guidelines aim to cover the widest range of ICT products possible and as such include websites, software applications, public access terminals and telecommunication devices. The website guidelines are closely based on the WAI WCAG 1.0.
The guidelines have been utilised by a number of developers in the two years since their publication.
A recent accessibility report on public sector websites by Ennis Information Age Services found that of the sites audited 41% had poor quality alts (WCAG 1.0 Priority 1), 48% had either average or poor page titles (WCAG Priority 2), 58% provided little scaling (WCAG Priority 2), 81 % had invalid HTML (WCAG Priority 2). In a web survey of public sector webmasters carried out by the NDA in 2003, the primary reason cited for not including accessibility as a criterion in tenders and not conducting web accessibility audits during the design stage was lack of awareness. But also, Web developers incorporating accessibility into a site design or redevelopment often tend to interpret accessibility guidelines literally without much understanding or consideration of why they say what they do. This happens, not though a lack of technical capacity, but rather through a lack of understanding of how people with disabilities use the web. For example, the excessive use of verbose alt attributes for presentational images can render a page almost unreadable for a screen-reader user.
