[LINK] RFI: Govt Policy re Correspondence Format

Tom Worthington tom.worthington at tomw.net.au
Wed Aug 8 08:47:13 AEST 2012


On 07/08/12 09:17, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 08:41 AM 7/08/2012, Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>> If the entrance to a building has to be accessible by wheelchair, then
>> stairs are effectively banned.
>
> No they aren't. Having a ramp does not preclude also having stairs.
> It is quite common to have both, at least in Victoria ...

Yes, old buildings tend to be retrofitted with a ramp, but this does not 
look neat and takes up space. Architects prefer to design new buildings 
with the entrance at grade, so no stairs or ramp is required.

> I believe the issue of a separate entrance was to not relegate people
> with disabilities to entrances through dark back alleys ...

The intention of the guidelines is partly so that those with a 
disability do not feel they are second class citizens. This issue came 
up in the SOCOG web accessibility case, with the Human Rights & Equal 
Opportunities Commission finding that SOCOG had caused: "... 
considerable feelings of hurt, humiliation and rejection ..." by not 
providing accessible web pages: http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/socog-case-study

> Back to correspondence, Roger's observation has more to do with
> common courtesy.  ...

There may be a misguided sense of courtesy, in that the agencies might 
think that an email doesn't look official enough.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
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Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/



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