E-Access Bulletin Live

Some 52% of Danish government websites are not fully accessible to citizens with disabilities, new research has revealed, in the latest blow for hopes of Europe-wide accessibility improvements.

Conducted on behalf of the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, a survey by Sensus – a Danish consulting company specialising in accessibility, IT and disability – assessed 226 government websites against international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)
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Many of the barriers that currently hinder access to electronic book reading platforms by people with disabilities are easily correctable by altering the implementation of existing technologies, according to a new report.

The best practice guide on e-book accessibility was produced for the publishing industry by the Publishers Licensing Society and JISC TechDis, the disability and technology advisory agency for the education sector. Findings in the guide – which form part of a lengthier full report on the research – are based on the results of accessibility testing of e-book platforms carried out in 2009 by disability charity the Shaw Trust.
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Levels of home internet access in the UK are directly linked to a wide range of traditional indicators of social exclusion including disability, a digital inclusion seminar at City University, London heard this month.

Ellen Helsper, lecturer in media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, told the seminar that among the disabled population, 59% do not have home access, compared with just 29% of the general population.
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Personalisation of website accessibility, including customising tools and offering different versions of sites to suit individual needs, should be considered for some specialist websites such as social networking platforms, according to the latest draft of a British standard on web accessibility.

The second draft of BS 8878 ‘Web accessibility – Code of practice’, developed by a sub-committee of the British Standards Institution (BSI), IST/45, suggests that educational establishments, social networking sites, e-learning websites and other sites requiring a member login have an opportunity to provide users with personalisation facilities and “an individualised approach to dealing with their accessibility needs”.
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A guide to the accessibility benefits and obstacles of major electronic book formats, including technical formats, e-book readers and reader software, has been published by the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).

E-book readers covered by the document (
www.rnib.org.uk/livingwithsightloss/readingwriting/ebooks ) include dedicated e-book readers; e-book reading software; and e-book readers for mobile phones.
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The Obama administration is undertaking two major exercises to help people with disabilities apply for government jobs, delegates heard at last month’s California State University Northridge (CSUN) Technologies and Persons with Disabilities Conference.

Employment was the central topic at CSUN, the largest assistive technology event in the world, this year celebrating its 25th anniversary. Less than a third of blind people of working age in the US have a job, delegates heard.
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A campaigning peer has ensured that the new Equality Act, an update of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), includes a commitment to online accessibility, by successfully moving an amendment as the law passed through the House of Lords.

Lord Low of Dalston, vice president and former chairman of the Royal National Institute of Blind People and himself blind, moved a change of wording to the Act to state that when providing information, organisations’ processes should “include steps for ensuring that… the information is provided in an accessible format.”
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The European Union looks set to backtrack on proposed legislation that would have required accessibility to disabled people of all manufactured consumer goods, from digital televisions to washing machines, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

A Brussels meeting this week is expected to confirm changes to the draft Equal Treatment Directive (ETD), first proposed by the European Commission in 2008 to ban discrimination in access to goods and services, as set out in its full title: Proposal for a Council Directive on implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation
( bit.ly/9IFqXc ).
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A new online knowledge centre for organisations working in the field of technology and social good is to be launched in June by the charity Nominet Trust, E-Access Bulletin has learned.

The trust (
bit.ly/aXFbxD ),
the UK’s largest charitable fund for social IT projects, was set up with £8 million from the UK’s internet domain name registry Nominet to fund UK-based and international internet-related initiatives in the sectors of education, research and development, safety and inclusion meeting the needs of the young, the elderly, the disabled and sick, the disadvantaged, and other vulnerable groups.
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UK local authority websites are “much more accessible now than they’ve ever been”, according to one specialist who worked on the recent ‘Better Connected 2010’ review of every local authority website in the UK conducted by the Society of IT Management (Socitm) (
bit.ly/dltkU5 ).

Bim Egan, senior web access consultant at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), told E-Access Bulletin the difference between council websites’ accessibility this year compared with 2009 is “astonishing”. “A much bigger proportion of [councils] are getting the message and are putting processes in place to make their websites a lot more accessible”, she said.
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