[LINK] ACT Open Government Web Page Failed Web Tests

[Tom Worthington]

The ACT Government invited citizens to test their new Open Government 
website: http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/open_government

The home page failed an automated web accessibility test (TAW W3C Web 
Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 1.0), with four Priority 1 and two 
priority 2 problems: http://www.tawdis.net/ingles.html

One of the Linkers contacted me and point out I was using the old 
version of WCAG. So I re-ran the test with the newer WCAG 2.0. The 
automated TAW test reported 13 Problems in 4 success criteria:

* Perceivable 3
* Operable 9
* Understandable 0
* Robust 1

The page also failed a W3C Markup Validation Service test, with 11 
errors: 
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmd.act.gov.au%2Fopen_government&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

The page scored 0 out of 100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker, with 2 
critical, 3 severe1 medium and 5 low failures: 
http://validator.w3.org/mobile/check?task=2011102601041023.mobile1&docAddr=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cmd.act.gov.au%2Fopen_government

I suggest the ACT Government needs to improve the quality of its web 
pages. These errors make it less likely that the page will work well for 
a wide range of devices and people.

The ACT Government is required to comply with the requirements of the 
Disability Discrimination Act 1992. Failing to provide access to 
services on-line for those with a disability is unlawful: 
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/standards/www_3/www_3.html

ps: I posted a comment on this to the ACT Government's Time To Talk 
discussion forum (my comments is "... awaiting approval"): 
http://timetotalk.act.gov.au/discussions/view/?discussion=52


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards 
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/