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Canada: Ontario Preparing to Meet IT Accessibility Deadline |
| Source: |
itworldcanada.com |
| Source Date: |
Thursday, March 08, 2012 |
| Focus: |
ICT for MDGs
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| Country: |
Canada |
| Created: |
Mar 12, 2012 |
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At a recent seminar, public servants were told that making the province's electronic material accessible to the disabled is more than an obligation. Since the invention of the personal computer people have marveled at the way information technology can open the world, especially when linked to the Internet.
But for people with physical disabilities, IT can be a tease, for if you can’t work a keyboard or see a screen, what good is it?
That’s why a number of governments around the world are working at making IT accessible for their citizens, either through legislation or guidelines.
One of them is Ontario, which last week held a one-day town hall for public servants in IT-related jobs like Web developers to help them meet an important deadline at the end of this year.
Under the Accessibility for Ontarians Disability Act (AODA), bureaucrats have until then to make provincial electronic information and communications services compliant with version 2.0 of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).It’s more than a legal obligation, says Shamira Madhany, (pictured) Ontario’s chief diversity and accessibility officer, who spoke at last week’s session. Bureaucrats themselves have a stake in this, she said.
“I asked them, ‘Who here is not going to get old, who is not going to wear glasses, not going to get arthritis?’”
An estimated 15 per cent of Ontarians have disabilities that impair their ability to get online forms, read information or register for services online, she said. Some 11 per cent of provincial public servants say they fit into that category.
“Although we have legislation that tells us we have to comply with the act, we want to go way beyond just checking off boxes that we’ve complied. We want to ensure that because we have a unique role as an employer, policy maker and service provider, we go beyond our obligations and really change people’s behavior so they’re thinking accessibility at the onset of anything they do.”
For example, PDFs are a usual way public servants make documents available online because they preserve original type and graphics. But they’re almost invisible to an electronic reader used by a person with visual impairment, particularly if the document has merely been scanned from print into PDF.
The solution, Madhany said, is to create a document first in a world processor with a tool for checking accessibility compliance. That usually means formatting the document using heading and styles that an electronic reader can read, and avoiding colour as much as possible.
If a PDF can’t be made compliant, perhaps an accessible summary will do.
The province has a number of ways to help public servants, including a centre of excellence for accessibility, with software and best practices. There’s also a wiki for posting questions and asking for help, and a series of online videos. For those in parts of the province that don’t have enough bandwidth to watch the videos, they can borrow DVD versions.
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Canada: Ontario Preparing to Meet IT Accessibility Deadline At a recent seminar public servants were told that making the province's electronic material accessible to the disabled is more than an obligation Since the invention of the personal computer people have marveled at the way information technology can open the world especially when linked to the Internet
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