[LINK] Making governance and education accessible to remote indigenous communities via the web

[Tom Worthington]

I will be speaking at the 4th Annual Web Content 
Management for Government "Harnessing the power 
of new technologies to build citizen-centric 
websites and encourage online activities", 17-18 
September 2007  in Canberra 
<http://www.marcusevans.com/events/CFEventinfo.asp?EventID=1261>. 
My talk is on 17 September 11:10 am:

Making websites accessible and functional for a diverse community:

· Communicating and engaging diverse cultural 
audiences in Australia and worldwide
· Providing sufficient and accurate information 
for people who with limited English
· Using the information and digital technologies 
to support users with special requirements
· Integrating web content to wireless and mobile devices
· Testing the accessibility of websites to different citizen segments

When I was approached to speak at the conference, 
the suggested outline I was provided with 
included "aboriginal audiences". I changed this 
to "diverse cultural audiences", as I thought 
explicitly mentioning indigenous issues would be 
too controversial for government staff. However, 
the recent declaration of an emergency by the 
Prime Minister in response to a report on 
Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual 
Abuse will require responses from many government agencies.

Governments can provide access to information and 
services via the Internet in an accessible format 
to help address the needs of remote indigenous 
communities. This could allow the communities to 
govern themselves, with central oversight. Mutual 
obligation arrangements could be implemented in a 
more efficient and less intrusive way than by 
having temporary outside government staff rotated 
through the community 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/06/internet-to-empower-indigenous.html>.

New remote housing could have reliable digital 
communications built in 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/07/modules-for-indigenous-housing.html>. 
New schools could have computers and 
telecommunications built in for flexible 
learning, using the same techniques which MIT 
developed for teaching university physics, 
combined with the technologies in the Indian 
Simputer for use in villages and the $100 laptop 
for education of children in the third 
world 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/07/flexible-learning-modules-for.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml