E-Access Bulletin Live

By Tristan Parker

“The more this gets talked about, the better”, says one interviewee in a new report on access to communications, broadcasting and IT by older people and people with disabilities.

It sounds simple enough, but it’s a key point: tackling barriers to accessibility is not an insurmountable task, but the starting points are realising the issues, airing them, and discussing them: all sadly still quite rare in modern organisations.
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Public sector procurement should be used to improve equality for people with disabilities, including the development of more accessible IT systems, according to a government bill passing through Parliament.

The Equality Bill
( services.parliament.uk/bills/2008-09/equality.html
), introduced to the Commons on 24 April and currently undergoing its committee stages, aims to reform and harmonise equality law. Notes accompanying the bill say: “With an annual expenditure of around £175 billion every year on goods and services, the public sector has an important opportunity to use its purchasing power to promote equality where possible.”
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Accessibility is to become a key priority for the British Interactive Media Association (BIMA –
www.bima.co.uk),
the body representing the interactive and digital content sector, incoming chair Justin Cooke has told E-Access Bulletin.

Cooke is managing director of web design agency Fortune Cookie, which has a track record of creating accessible websites for clients such as Legal and General. He has been elected chair of BIMA for three years, heading an executive board that also includes senior representatives of leading ad agencies, national newspaper websites, digital agencies and recruitment and skills firms.
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Communications, technology and broadcasting companies are currently carrying out “very little research” into the accessibility requirements of consumers and the needs of disabled people, a new report has found.

The report, based on interviews with 20 companies, was prepared by i2 media research for the Advisory Committee on Older and Disabled People (ACOD), a sub-group of the communications industry regulator Ofcom.
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