Best practice procurement: Accessible standards for technology
Web content can be challenging for those with a disability to navigate and understand. All Victorian Government online services and departments working directly with people with a disability, must ensure internal and external digital content meets certain accessibility standards. For private sector businesses, these standards can also provide a great guide on what to aim for in your communications.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 ensures that people with a disability have the same access to services and information as others in the community. This means that digital content must be accessible to people with auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech and visual impairments. Making this content accessible to people with a disability is critical, and not always straightforward.
Local councils, authorities and other organisations should update their procurement policies and practices when procuring human-facing software applications to include accessibility criteria. Not only will this ensure compliance with standards and make technology easier to use, over the medium to long term, customisation to meet accessibility standards is significantly reduced.
This can be achieved by:
including Web Content Accessibility Guidelines compliance in quotes and contracts;
ensuring accessibility is built in to any technical enhancements or developments;
ensuring new websites and applications are independently tested for compliance and accessibility;
avoiding certain document formats that are difficult to make compliant; and
providing transcripts and closed captions options for audio or visual content.
Making sure content is universally accessible ensures that important government information is available to everyone in the community, regardless of disability, culture or environment.
For any further information about modern approaches to procurement, including accessibility standards, please contact:
Paul Gray
Principal
T: 03 5225 5231
E: pgray@ha.legal
