[LINK] Cautionary Tale of Web Accessibility Not Heeded by Victorian Government

[Tom Worthington]

I wrote 16 December 2009:
>... automated test indicates that the CFA home page ... failed the W3C mobileOK Checker test. ...

One of the comments on my blog noted a similar problem with the ACT
Government's emergency web site:

---
"I participated in the ACT Government phone alert trial today. One
element was a text message asking me to access the ESA site for further
information. Unfortunately the ESA site does not degrade
gracefully/have a special layout for mobile browsers so all I could
really see was the side bar of links. Even if I had been able to find
the news item about the emergency warning test, it was in PDF format
which my smartphone does not have a reader for."

From:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/12/cautionary-tales-of-inaccessibility-not.html#7976768232969422864>
---

This morning I was unable to access the ACT Emergency Services web site. 
However, I was able to see the Google cache copy from 17 Dec 2009 
10:04:58 GMT: 
<http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:qIs6QDRmKWgJ:www.esa.act.gov.au/+http://esa.act.gov.au/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au&client=firefox-a>.

An automated (TAW) accessibility test reported zero Priority one, 67 
Priority Two and 13 Priority Three problems with the page. The W3C 
Markup Validation Service reported 42 Errors and 57 warning with this 
page. The page failed the W3C mobileOK Checker test. Obviously some of 
these may be due to the use of a cache copy, but given that the real web 
site is not available, this is a valid test.

I suggest the ACT Government fix their web site, before more lives are 
lost to bushfires in Canberra.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274