Prepared by the Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) National Policy and Development Council (NPDC) working group on Information Access.
This version: Approved by NPDC: May 31, 2005
This document provides a set of guidelines that can be used by blind and vision-impaired people in order to effectively advocate for access and increased accessibility to information and services on the World Wide Web (WWW). This is a set of guidelines only. They represent what the NPDC recommends as a reasonable approach to advocacy, with what we believe to be most effective in getting desired results.
These guidelines can be used effectively by any blind or vision-impaired person regardless of their level of knowledge and experience with computers or the Internet. These guidelines are designed to assist you as a user of web services. These guidelines have a specific scope for web sites that fall under Australian jurisdiction. However, we recognise that the approach and principles are applicable for advocacy on sites outside Australia.
These guidelines are designed as a tool that can be used by itself, or in conjunction with lodging a complaint under the Disability Discrimination Act (1992). Note that as an individual, you have the right to lodge a DDA complaint at any time, either apart from, in conjunction with or following any or all of these guidelines.
While the NPDC does not suggest that these guidelines must be followed in any particular order, or that an individual must follow all or any of them, we do recommend our set of guidelines as a tool that, if used in the manner outlined in this document, should provide you with a strong position from which to build success, either by helping you resolve the issues directly, supporting your potential DDA complaint, or working in conjunction with the course of a DDA complaint or any other form of advocacy or action you wish to undertake.
If you are having difficulties browsing a site or web pages on the Internet, try to identify exactly what it is you cannot do. This can be understood in very simple terms such as "I hear gibberish when tabbing between graphical links, so I cannot tell what the links are for," or "I cannot find a way to navigate to the screens for paying my bills."
If possible, try to identify as much specific detail on your problem as you can, as this will assist your progress. If you are an experienced web user, or have some knowledge in web technologies, you may be able to determine the problems in some detail.
If you know of other similar web sites or web services that are accessible or that have worked for you in the past, visit those sites to confirm that you are still able to work with them. This allows you to confirm that your system is functioning properly and that you can browse similar content when it is accessible.
This step also gives you information on the kinds of interactions that are possible and that do work, so you can compare this with the interactions on the site you are having problems with. It also allows you to develop an idea of the degree to which other similar web services and similar content is able to be designed in an accessible way, which will in turn assist you with any negotiations you may have with the provider of the web service, (see steps 5 through 7).
As some issues of access are directly related to the combination of software and hardware that you are using, it is handy to have this information at your fingertips when consulting blindness agencies or experienced blind web users. In fact, questions about your screen reader or magnifier version and browser version are often the first questions asked of you by others who are working to assist you.
If you are having problems accessing a web site, there may be important issues related to your Operating System, Browser or assistive technology. Check what operating system you are using, including version and service pack (for example, Windows XP Professional, Service Pack 2). If you are using a screen reader, (for example, JAWS from Freedom Scientific or Window-Eyes from GW Micro), some of the issues around access can be linked to the compatibility of the screen reader version and the version of the browser (that is, Internet Explorer) you are using. Also check your graphics and sound cards and drivers as these can have some effect on the problems you are having.
If you do not know how to gather this information, you can ask the blindness agencies or other experienced blind web users to help you do this as part of the assistance you request through step 4 below.
Now that you have an idea of your problems and what you cannot do on the given web site in simple terms, and hopefully you have information about your Operating System and other technologies, you can approach Australian blindness service agencies, or you can approach other blind friends who are experienced using the web to ask them about your problems. There are a number of email mailing lists you can join (for example, VIP-l and JAWS and Window-Eyes specific lists) where you can ask a community of users to assist you. To join VIP-l, send an e-mail to majordomo@softspeak.com.au with the phrase "Subscribe vip-l" in the body of the email (without the quotes).
When asking for assistance, describe your problems (from step 1) and try to give an indication of what you may have already tried to do to resolve your problems. It is worth mentioning that you have tried other similar sites (step 2) and that you have identified your operating system, browser and assistive technologies, (step 3). Include all of this information in the email for assistance, or have this information handy when speaking to people on the phone.
Of course, as mentioned above, if you have difficulties with identifying the versions of your operating system, browser and assistive technology, you can request for assistance on how to do this.
You may need to iterate over this step of requesting assistance a number of times, as you may need to try a number of strategies that could solve your problems, but could also prompt some further questions or issues that require further assistance.
Through this process of consultation, you may even be offered some IT training courses at the blindness agencies. Consider these courses as an opportunity to enhance your web skills and to give you the confidence in knowing how to determine if problems encountered with web sites are due to the inaccessible web site rather than any difficulties particular to your own situation.
You should also use this opportunity to undertake wider research on the web to find useful blindness and web accessibility resources, as these resources will be useful to you with your advocacy in steps 5 through 8, as well as for the future.
Once you have completed steps 1 through 4, you should have a reasonable idea of the issues and problems you have with accessing the web site that are really due to the design of the web site itself. It is important to have some idea of this when you approach the organisation responsible for delivering the site because it shows that you have already made reasonable attempts to access the site and that the issues you are bringing to this discussion are issues directly related to the site itself. Importantly, because you have moved through steps 1 to 4, you can demonstrate with evidence what is truly wrong with the site.
Try to determine the responsible parties for the delivery of the web service, (for example, the company or organisation delivering the site). There may be available methods to make general enquiries by phone or email. Use these avenues of communication being sure to document every point of contact you have with the organisation in terms of the person that you corresponded with, the date and time of contact and the outcomes or promises made resulting from that contact. Many organisations using call centres may have a mechanism whereby you can obtain a “receipt” or “reference” number for the conversation you have had. Keep a record of these numbers and the names of the people you spoke with as this provides a trail of evidence that you can use to demonstrate your attempts to contact the organisation to resolve your issues with them.
Some sites are developed by a web development company, but delivered as services from another organisation. If the organisation responsible for delivering the site provides you with a way of contacting these external developers, consider using these avenues of communication, but remember that the responsible organisation cannot pass off responsibility by suggesting that the inaccessibility of the site is the responsibility of the external developers. The organisation delivering the web site and services is completely responsible when it comes to the accessibility of it’s sites to it’s customers, and the external developers are only under contract to deliver to that organisation.
So your focus should be on making contact with the appropriate decision makers in the company delivering the service and the developers themselves. Therefore, do not be too discouraged if your first attempt of contact was with a call centre phone operator who did not know how to answer your queries. Just keep track of all your correspondence and ask questions to those people who can answer them with a view to finally making contact with the people you need to talk to.
When approaching the organisation, explain your problem by describing what you cannot do, (step 1), in a clear, step-by-step approach. Try to show how you cannot achieve a particular goal or task on the web site. Also try to describe what needs to work and what might be done to solve the problem if you are able to present this information. Some of this information may be available to you because of your work through steps 1 to 4 prior to contacting the organisation. Through your work in step 2, you may also be able to demonstrate that other similar web services are available and that they are accessible, which means the organisation must understand that it is possible to design the given type of service or content in an accessible way.
If you happen to be in contact with an organisation based outside Australia, it is important to note that even when a web service is hosted outside Australia, if it is being used to provide services or information to Australians, then that component does fall under the scope of Australian jurisdiction. So the organisation cannot, under these circumstances, use excuses regarding being outside Australian jurisdiction. There are a range of people who can assist you with these issues, for example BCA’s Individual Advocacy Officer or legal assistance from the HREOC).
Some very; large organisations have many business units or areas that take responsibility for different aspects of products or customer service. Often, when corresponding with an organisation, you may find that you are passed from one person to another. While this process can assist you in getting to the right person, it is important to not allow the process to serve merely as a mechanism by which your issues get buried in a circular process resulting in no progress for you.
If this is happening, you might point out that while you understand an organisation to have many business units and different areas of responsibility, your issues as a customer are important to the company’s customer service commitments. The way that an organisation chooses to do business internally is up to them, but this is not so relevant to a customer who is trying to access the web services, and in many cases paying money to do so. This may mean you have to move up the organisational hierarchy somewhat to make contact with a high-level person, and in this instance you would be perfectly justified in doing so.
It is also worth doing some research on the company in question to see if they have any known commitments to accessibility, accessibility standards or action plans, or any Disability Service groups within the company. Knowing about any such commitments is useful as it can provide you with a way to develop profile for your issues within the organisation. If the organisation does have these accessibility commitments, then there are known reasons why they ought to do their best to assist you.
Try to provide resources which would help the web developer to solve the problems, For example, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the W3C is at http://www.w3.org/WAI, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (version 1.0) can be found in the resources section of the WAI site.
Also be clear to point out the cost-benefit of doing accessibility. Some of this information may be apparent to you because of your initial progress with steps 1 through 4, but it is worth trying to gather some resources such as URLs, businesses that provide web accessibility consultancy, and information about accessibility, even though you might not know a lot about this yourself.
It is worth informing the organisation of the benefits to the organisation of ensuring that web services are accessible. One of these benefits is that the market of customers can increase to include people with Disabilities. According to the ABS (2003), approximately 20% of people in Australia have a disability, and a proportion of these are blind and/or vision-impaired. We can suggest that a reasonably significant potential market exists from this population of people, and that providing accessible sites provides access to these potential customers.
Also, providing accessible web services can provide a competitive advantage for obtaining and retaining these customers, who are likely to be quite loyal to a company that provides accessible web services in an environment where some organisations are not doing accessibility this in an adequate way. For more information on the cost-benefit analysis of web accessibility, refer to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Education and Outreach working group’s activities from the WAI web site mentioned in step 6 above.
If there seems to be some resistance to progress on the issues for you after some time, you can also begin to point out the risk under the Disability Discrimination Act (1992) of not providing accessible services. If you need to know more about the DDA, contact the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). The Australian HREOC is at http://www.hreoc.gov.au. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) can be found on the HREOC web site.
It is worth noting a precedent case in Australia regarding the web accessibility of the Sydney 2000 Olympics site where the case of Mr McGuire versus SOCOG resulted in awards to Mr McGuire because the SOCOG web site was found to be inaccessible. Refer to the HREOC for more information.
As discussed in Step 6 above, organisational activities and product-by-product responsibilities may be separated from each other, and different working groups or business units in a large organisation may have boundaries of responsibilities, but the risks to the organisation of not delivering accessible sites do not have these same boundaries. The whole organisation and it’s customer service reputation, market share and customer base may be adversely effected if the company does not make progress towards accessibility.
As also discussed in step 6 above, knowing if the organisation has disability action plans and known commitments to accessibility can be of significant assistance to your advocacy.
Given that you have made the conciliatory approach as described in Steps 5 through 7 on the basis of your work through Steps 1 to 4, and you have done this for a reasonable time and with reasonable persistence, being sure to record all of your interactions with the organisations in question. If you find that the results are not satisfactory and that you have not made progress due to the lack of cooperation and reasonable attempts to solve the problems on the part of the organisation delivering the web service, you have the option of lodging a complaint to the HREOC under the DDA. Consult with the HREOC and/or BCA’s legal officer for assistance with lodging these complaints.
If you have undertaken an approach such as our suggested Steps 1 through 7, you should have all the information and evidence required for a successful DDA complaint. One of the important contributing factors to the success of these complaints is the degree to which you can demonstrate that the problems you are having stemmed from the web service in question and that you have made reasonable attempts to solve the problems locally with the organisation in question. The other important factor is to provide evidence of this in the form of dates and times when you have contacted the organisation, the discussion you had, the results of that discussion and a demonstration of what happened when you followed the discussion up with further contact.
Thus, our approach strengthens your advocacy and the likelihood of positive outcomes, with or without the need to take formal action under the DDA.
Copyright (C) 2000-2005, BCA NPDC. Last Modified: May-31-2005.