At the weekend I applied to register DRNZ as a company. I had sighted help fortunately for me, as the website was only partially accessible using a screen reader, even once I learned it’s particular foibles. This lead me to think about the Government Web Standards on accessibility, which were established by the State Services Commission way back when …

After my weekend experience and several others I have had lately with government and other websites, I can’t help but wonder: has no one thought through the practical implications of continuous software updates on accessibility? A department might audit accessibility when a website refresh occurs, but how often do they review the site for accessibility? This really needs to be done whenever there is a major website update or rebuild and whenever new versions of both mainstream and adaptive software and various computing platforms are launched. So this means they need to be constantly reviewed.

How can this issue be resolved? Certainly not by guessing about what needs to happen. But by ensuring disabled people are part of the design and maintenance of websites and advice is sought from appropriate disabled people with the knowledge, skills and experience to support accessibility. Average disabled users also need to be consulted, since this is most of us!

Pam MacNeill

Here is some news of a couple of worthwhile surveys relevant to disability responsiveness:

It’s not too late to take the simple and accessible DRNZ survey of just nine questions. We want to find out what people think about the need for greater levels of disability responsiveness in all sectors of Aotearoa New Zealand. We’re still collecting responses and welcome your input at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L7QDD9S

We will be collating all responses to the survey in a couple of weeks and will feature the findings in the December issue of Newsworthy.

DRNZ recently facilitated a series of ten forums for Workbridge throughout New Zealand. The purpose of the forums was to engage with disabled people about the barriers they face to employment and how Workbridge can help reduce these. Workbridge also asked the community how they want services delivered in future.

A survey which features the questions workshopped at the forums, is available at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LBM6GHT

The survey is open until 16 December so why not log on and check it out. We promise it will only take 5 minutes of your time, unless of course you wish to provide additional feedback.