[LINK] Fwd: [aliaACTive] www.aph.gov.au - we want your feedback

[Tom Worthington]

At 08:29 AM 22/04/2009, Antony Barry wrote:
> > From: "Missingham, Roxanne (DPS)"  ... 21 April 2009 5:56:19 PM
> > The website for Parliament of Australia ­ www.aph.gov.au is about
> > to be redesigned. ... online survey  ...

I suggest making the Parliamentary web site 
accessible to the disabled and also consider making it mobile friendly.

I ran an automated accessibility test using TAW 
<http://www.tawdis.net> on the front page. It 
failed with 1 Priority One, 35 Priority Two, and one Priority Three problems.

Ironically, the Priority One failure was the lack 
of alternate text on the link to the online 
survey. As far as I can see (or can't see to be 
more precise) the word "survey" does not appear 
anywhere on the text of the page. That makes the 
survey inaccessible to people with limited 
eyesight and may place the Parliament in breech 
of the Disability Discrimination Act for unlawful discrimination.

Making the site mobile friendly is not as 
important (and not a legal requirement) but would 
be useful. Apart from the increasing number of 
smart phones being used, this would provide 
better access to the school students who are 
being issued netbooks with small screens. Also 
this is a way to keep some of the excesses of web designers under control.

The parliament home page scores 60/100 on 
the  W3C mobileOK 
Checker 
<http://validator.w3.org/mobile/check?docAddr=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aph.gov.au%2F&async=true&view=cat>. 
This is not too bad, but could be improved.



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/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University