[LINK] Fwd: vip-l: Do Not Call Register failing blind

[Jan Whitaker]

>The Australian
>Saturday, May 05, 2007
>
>Do Not Call Register failing blind
>
>By Simon Canning, Marketing writer
>
>HUNDREDS of thousands of blind and vision-impaired people have been unable
>to sign on to the Government's new Do Not Call register as questions
>continue to arise about the decision to rush the system into action.
>
>Call centre operators yesterday continued their criticism of the move,
>saying the system could cost up to 30,000 jobs.
>
>Human rights and disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes said
>the failure of the Do Not Call website to allow vision-impaired people to
>list their numbers was in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act.
>
>Communications Minister Helen Coonan launched the register on Thursday, but
>minutes after its unveiling, the computerised system had gone into meltdown,
>unable to cope with thousands of people wanting to block phone marketers.
>
>Mr Innes said the website for the federal Government's $33million register
>contained features designed to stop fraudulent registrations. These required
>people to copy a series of letters and numbers that had been altered to make
>them impossible for hacking programs to read. But these could not be
>accessed by the blind.
>
>"We would expect that any Commonwealth Government website would comply with
>access requirements," Mr Innes said. "It's been the law for several years."
>
>The Do Not Call registration system was expected to handle 700,000 <--******
>registrations an hour, but 36 hours after its launch had processed only
>250,000.
>
>
>http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21674764-2702,00.html




Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/

'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, 
there is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
_ __________________ _