Access and equity: blog post inspires blog post!

colourblind
My recent post about my colour blindness, over on my other blog, has inspired Craig Thomler‘s latest post on eGov au.

Craig asks, “Do government communications discriminate against – or for – the visually impaired?” He continues, “Despite the requirement for government in Australia to ensure our websites are accessible, I worry both that we do not do enough, and that we do too much, in this area.”

The Curriculum Directorate colleague (at Ryde State Office of the NSW Department of Education & Training), mentioned in my initial post, did spread the word about my “condition” – with my permission, of course – and I became an unofficial colour evaluation guinea pig for several Units’ web page revamps for the Departmental website while I was there. It was fun, and fascinating.

Mind you, while I was able to help them with specifications to aid my red/green colour blindness, there are other types. Where does all the beta testing end? 😉 I know we tried to address numerous aspects of accessibility for the “Scan” and School Libraries web pages while I was there, and our tweaking of the book rap blogs and wikis have been ongoing. But it seems there’s always so much more you can do to make a site more accessible and equitable.

That web composers are open to suggestions (and complaints) from people trying to use their site, is of paramount importance. For example, as pretty as Flash animations may be, to use only such a visual on the front page of a site can mean that people using old browsers or computers can’t even progress to the page with contact details to lodge a complaint! (I’ve been there before!)

Thanks for the link to my blog post, Craig!