The Resource Kit: ‘Disability Discrimination Act: Guidelines on Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services’

Rosemary Kayess: I am Rosemary Kayess, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, with the Australian Human Rights Commission. And I’d like to start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners on the lands on which we are all meeting today, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I am speaking to you from Bidjigal land of – the land of the Bidjigal people of the Eora Nation.

I now have another technical difficulty with PowerPoint please.

Sarah Pulis: No worries, Rosemary. I might just jump in very briefly. I was very sorry to interrupt you. I just want to do a few housekeeping matters before we pass over to you, Rosemary.

So I would also like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians on the land on which we are meeting today. And we do pay our respects to Elders past, present, and emerging and also extend those respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us today.

If you do know the Country that you are on today, I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on its history, and the deep cultural connection that First Nations peoples have with the land.

Since we are sadly a little late, we are obviously celebrating the launch of the Disability Discrimination Act Guidelines on Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services. This will be…

Rosemary: Deb… sorry.

Sarah: That’s OK. This is a landmark today for digital accessibility. As we see some updated guidance around making things inclusive and accessible for people with disability within the digital space. I will hand over to Rosemary in just a sec, but we also have as the Disability Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Human Rights Commission, we also though have Neil Jarvis on the line today who is the Strategy and Policy Lead for Intopia.

A few housekeeping matters. Time permitting, and we might need to see how we go towards the end, we will have some time for Q&A. You will be able to send through any questions you have, either through the Q&A feature, or also by raising your hand during the Q&A time at which time I will be able to activate your audio so that you can ask your question verbally.

We do have our captioners here today from Ai – Media. And also our sign language interpreters Kate and Fiona from Deaf Connect. We are using Zoom’s sign language interpretation feature which means that the sign language interpreters should be available to you in a separate window. The webinar – a recording of today’s webinar will also be available after the event.

And without further ado, I will pass over to Rosemary to continue talking about the Guidelines.

Rosemary: Thank you very much, Sarah. And I do apologise, everybody. This is what you get for coming in late. You don’t know what’s going on.

Sarah, are you OK to move my slides forward for me, please? And, as I noted earlier, I am speaking to you from the lands of the Bidjigal people of the Eora Nation. And I pay my respects to all Aboriginal people joining us today.

So, you may have noticed that the Prime Minister has called an election for the 3rd May, which means we are currently in what they call ‘Caretaker mode’. Unfortunately, this does not mean a 5 week holiday for me or the Commission, but it does mean that to maintain our independence, we cannot be seen to be contributing to the election debate.

So what that means is I won’t be able to comment on the policies of either the Government or the Opposition, or any of the other political parties contesting the election, and there may be limits on what I can say in response to questions.

So, what we’re here to talk about Guidelines for the digital age. And we’re all part of the digital age, a time of rapid technological advancement and change. This has the ability and potential to break the social isolation and exclusion faced by people with disability. However, without accessibility and universal design, it can have the inverse effect of entrenching inequality and discrimination.

Technology has become an essential element of how we live, work and, interact. Technology is central to our communication, our economy, education, healthcare, and social dynamics, and as such facilitates our enjoyment of fundamental human rights.

However, we don’t all enjoy access to technology on an equal basis with others.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the CRPD, reaffirms people with disability as subjects of human rights, and embeds impairment as part of human diversity.

The Preamble to the Convention makes it clear that everyone is entitled to all of the human rights and fundamental freedoms contained in the International Bill of Human Rights, which is the combination of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The CRPD recognises impairment should not be the basis for limiting or denying human rights. The purpose of the CRPD is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all people with disability. People with disability have a right to the benefits of technology on an equal basis with others.

The fulfilment of this right requires that technology be accessible, affordable, and adhere to the principles of universal design to facilitate the realisation of all other CRPD rights, such as the right to live independently and be included in the community, the right to freedom of expression and opinion and access to information, and the right to employment, education and health, and equality before the law.

The legal standard of non – discrimination is an inherent element in all rights in the CRPD, and it prohibits discrimination on the basis of impairment.

The standard of non – discrimination applies to all technology, not only assistive technology, or technology to enhance the lives of people with disability. It is a requirement for all technology to be inclusive and responsive to the needs of people with disability, so that everyone can enjoy the benefits of technology.

What this means in the Australian context is that the Disability Discrimination Act prohibits and seeks to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability in all areas of public life. This covers areas of public life that have a digital component, for example, online learning, hybrid working conditions, and accessing essential services such as government services including emergency information, banking, and online shopping.

I have had the pleasure of working with Intopia in the first year of my term as Commissioner, on updating the Commission’s Guidelines on digital accessibility. In line with contemporary digital environments and practices, the updated Guidelines encompass digital accessibility across a wide range of platforms beyond websites and web-based content.

The Commission has prepared the Guidelines in the exercise of its function under section 67(1)K of the Disability Discrimination Act. They are an update of the Commission’s World Wide Web Access: Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Note version 4.1, which were released in 2014. They build upon the previous versions of the Commission’s Advisory Note to reflect changes in technology, its role within society, as well as national and international standards, and policies that define how technology provides equal access for people with disability.

Their function is to provide guidance to duty holders in understanding their obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act.

They are not time – bound and relate to current liabilities of duty holders to eliminate discrimination on the grounds of disability in the delivery of digital goods and services.

The Guidelines themselves are not legally binding, and should be read in conjunction with the whole of the Disability Discrimination Act, as well as states and territory anti – discrimination laws. Their advantage is that, unlike legislation, they can be responsive to rapidly changing technology.

The key audience for the Guidelines is people in organisations who have obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act not to discriminate against people because of disability when providing digital goods and services, such as creators of digital goods and services, designers, developers, publishers and educators. Compliance professionals, generalists and specialists such as those working in Data Privacy, Corporate Affairs, Information Security, and Human Resources. Organisation leaders such as Boards and Directors, principals and managers, and procurement professionals.

These Guidelines are also critical for people with disability and their representative organisations, disability peak bodies, and advocates. These Guidelines will assist them with understanding and exercising their right to non – discrimination in the digital world.

I would like to thank the early project panel contributing authors, the expert advisory group members, and the individuals and organisations that participated by making submissions to the public consultation. I would also like to pass on my sincere thanks to Intopia. They have been a joy to work with through this process. Thank you very much.

Sarah: Thank you very much, Rosemary. And also for those kind words. It’s now my pleasure to introduce Neil Jarvis. Neil Jarvis is the Strategy and Policy Lead of Intopia, and along with Andrew Arch has been instrumental in working with the Commission on the new Guidelines.

Neil, over to you.

Neil Jarvis: Many thanks. And thank you to Rosemary for her words and her kind words, and it has also been a pleasure to work alongside you and your team, Rosemary, over the last year or so.

So as Rosemary has outlined, the Commission was keen, and needed to update the Advisory Note that was published in 2014. It was version 4.1 of the World Wide Web Advisory Note. And it needed to do this for a number of reasons. One, 11 years is a long time in the world of technology. But also it needed to expand the coverage of the note so that it was covering more than just the World Wide Web, I think it was called back then. As we all know now, so much that goes on in the digital landscape does so in a variety of ways, and not just on websites. It was also wanting to recognise the importance of recommendations that were made in its Human Rights and Technology report that was published in 2021. And it was important that the Advisory Note would be able to assist people who wanted to try and implement those recommendations.

So, the Commission underwent an open RFP process, which was one that enabled us at Intopia to show an interest, and also then to work with the Commission to appreciate that our values and their values were aligned. And we were asked to help in the process of updating the Note, which then became Guidelines.

And I can speak as one of those involved in this process from start to finish, it has been a pleasure and we are so honoured to have been asked to do the work.

So before I go into the process of the Guidelines update and also what is in them, it might be helpful for those of you who don’t know who Intopia is, just to say a few very brief words about us. We are a social enterprise. Our aim is to create an inclusive digital world. We have the largest team of digital accessibility experts that are working in the southern hemisphere.

As a social enterprise, Intopia’s purpose is to give back to the community – that’s what we are very much all about. We are a certified B Corp and Pledge 1% member organisation, and that means that we give back, in our case, 20% of our profits to social impact causes and initiatives. Mostly in the disability community. Since we started in 2016, we’ve donated $700,000 to that effect. So, working with the Commission on this update to the Guidelines, was very much in our wheelhouse – it was something that struck a chord with us.

So the process for updating – and it’s been a process that has taken us just over a year, but one which has been thorough and has involved as many people as possible.

We supported the Commission to produce the Guidelines in a number of ways. We helped to create the advisory groups, which Rosemary mentioned, and supported the works of those groups throughout the project. There were 2 of them in the end, a technical group which drew from experts in the digital accessibility and ICT sector, a user group, the 2nd group, which drew from disability organisations, and potential disabled people and users themselves, as well as people who were going to be using the Guidelines to provide accessible goods and services.

Both groups met periodically throughout the project to give us feedback on updates that were happening, as well as to help us with wording, and with structure, and all those sorts of things.

The group members also were very active between meetings supporting us on specific questions and specific activities. So it wasn’t just a question of turning up to a few meetings.

In terms of the materials that we used in the update process, well, one of the key requirements was to expand the advice that had been given in the 2014 Note, as was said before. So we needed to cover all aspects of technology, and that would include things like mobile devices, point of sale kiosks and payment machines, and any good or service, really, that was provided in a digital manner. And nowadays that’s most of them, one way or another.

They also needed to reflect the updates and even introduction of new technical standards, guidelines and policies that help people to live up to those requirements.

We took what we could from the 2014 edition and applied it, because you don’t want to reinvent the wheel where you don’t need to. We also incorporated new ideas that were put forward by a team led by our friend and colleague Greg Alchin in 2022. They were the first draft in many ways of what became these Guidelines. And we looked at current trends and what might be happening in the near future, with respect to accessibility and technology. We drew on the recommendations in the Human Rights and Technology report published by the Commission in 2021, in particular recommendations 3 and 16 on the use of AI, particularly by government in the process of decision – making. Also recommendation 19 on the regulation of biometric technologies. Also recommendations 25 and 26 on compliance with – by government and industry with digital accessibility guidelines and standards.

And finally, recommendation 32 on accessible information about goods and services themselves. All of those recommendations, if they were to be implemented by the people they were aimed at, would require updated information about how to do that, and advise on how to do that.

So, having pulled together our materials and our people, we spent the next few months drafting and redrafting what would become these Guidelines. We tested our content with the Commission and with the advisory groups. As well as that, the Commission went out to the public for a consultation process, which lasted for a month.

As a result of that and all the other that comments we’d received, further drafts were put together, incorporating feedback and comments from all of that process. All of our drafts were reviewed by internal teams within the Human Rights Commission, so that they adhered to the legal requirements that the Guidelines would have, and that they were written with the Commission’s voice.

So, what do the Guidelines actually cover? The Guidelines are divided into 3 chapters. The 1st gives an overview of who and what digital products and services are covered by the Disability Discrimination Act, and how the Act fits into the regulatory context of disability in Australia. There is advice on good practice and keeping up with the law. Topics covered include an overview of the law, what it covers and who it applies to, what is meant by digital goods and services, advice on meeting the requirements of the law, and delivering equal access.

Good practice, including universal design, and also some comments on the fast-changing technology and the implications of those changes of people with disability.

The 2nd chapter goes into more detail about those techniques for achieving equal access when providing goods and services in a digital form. Topics in this chapter include a discussion about the business benefits, implementing a strategic approach to providing equal access, the importance of seeking expert advice from people with disability themselves, incorporating digital accessibility into the product development cycle – right from the start, not as an afterthought, and incorporating digital accessibility into the procurement process when organisations are going out for new equipment, new software, etc.

Digital accessibility and risk management was also covered in this chapter.

The 3rd chapter provides a handy reference for the various standards and guidelines which underpin this edition of the Guidelines. Topics here included the web content accessibility guidelines, authoring and plain language guidelines, standards covering product and service design, including hardware, software and content management, Australian Government standards and policies both at Commonwealth and State level, and industry standards produced by the private sector, business groups, to assist their member organisations to provide services accessibly.

There are also references which provide further reading and suggestions that people can go and learn more from.

So, how will the Guidelines benefit you? And how can they help meet legal obligations?

The Guidelines enable you to convert knowing you need to meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act into knowing how to go about it. They will help you to understand the real world meanings by which you can meet your legal obligations.

They explain and give links to more detailed information about the techniques and practices, standards, and other guidelines. So they don’t just tell you what they are, they explain them and then link further to – so that you can go and read more about them at your leisure.

At Intopia we talk with organisations every day about – who are keen to raise their game when it comes to digital accessibility. In strategy and policy terms we talk about raising digital accessibility maturity. We are often told that we know we need to do it. We know we need to do it for business reasons, for social responsibility reasons as well. But we just don’t know where to start, and then, when we have started, how to sustain our effort. These Guidelines will help to get from knowing what to knowing how. Intopia is honoured to have been part of this journey. Thank you very much.

Sarah: Thank you very much for that, Neil. We are now moving into our Q&A time. Just as a reminder, you can use the Q&A feature within Zoom, which should be located on your Zoom toolbar, to submit a question. And thank you to everyone who has submitted already a question. We will certainly get through as many as we can, and also respond to those that we can’t.

In addition to the written Q&A feature, if you would prefer to verbalise, to speak your question, please feel free to raise your hand using the Zoom features, and I will be able to see that on screen. I will then actually be able to give you access to your microphone so that you can ask your question verbally.

I now have the inenviable task of choosing from these great questions. And thank you to everyone who has submitted these. I might start – in no particular order, I might actually start with Emma Bennison’s question. So Emma has asked, “I recall that the Human Rights and Technology report published in 2021 included a section on audio description and captioning. Do the Guidelines cover access to TV and live events?”.

And I will open that up to either you Rosemary, or Neil, to answer that.

Neil: Yeah, I’m happy to take that. They cover the technical and digital aspects of that. So, the – as I remember, and I confess, I haven’t read the report for a while now, not since we started working on this, but my recollection is that some of those recommendations were to do with the number of hours of audio description by broadcasters, and that sort of thing.

The Guidelines don’t address that, but they do address the fact that it is required. And also that whenever a – any kind of digital content is being communicated, it needs to be done in an accessible way. And it doesn’t matter whether that means by providing an accessible website or an accessible app. It also would be, in some instances, an accessible broadcast, or performance, I guess.

Sarah: Thank you very much, Neil.

The next question is from Amanda Ralph. “Several countries and regions around the world, particularly Europe, are introducing updated legislation that requires organisations and industry compliance with digital accessibility. Regarding the Disability Discrimination Act as guidance, while it provides a framework for inclusive digital products, do you think as guidance not enforcement, it will be effective in driving the delivery and adoption of inclusive and accessible digital products and services?”. I may pass that one to you, Rosemary.

Rosemary: Regulatory frameworks are always an unknown, legislation can be stronger, but it is also the regulatory powers that you put into legislation that makes it more effective.

In many ways, the timing of these Guidelines is interesting because apart from the election that’s just been called, the Government has indicated that they will be moving on the Disability Discrimination Act reform that was proposed and recommended by the Disability Royal Commission. So it will be interesting to see when that reform process starts, what regulatory frameworks are in place within the DDA, which may give mechanisms such as the Guidelines greater power, well it has the potential to give the Guidelines greater enforceability.

So, it is nearly a ‘wait and see’ kind of situation about what might happen with DDA reform. And as I said, it depends on how the regulatory framework for legislation is constructed to ensure that there is strong enforceability – so you can have regulation that is not as effective as other forms of regulation. So we just need to see how it plays out. And it’s also about – they generally talk about clarity being the greatest driver for duty holders. So if the Guidelines give the clarity that a duty holder requires, then you tend to see compliance.

Sarah: Thank you very much. We have a raised hand from Kathryn. Kathryn, you should now be able to use your audio button to unmute and to share your question.

We might come back to Kathryn in a sec. We have a question from a Matt Hawkins. And I will note, for anyone who posted the question of when are the Guidelines out, where can we get access, we will definitely have that information at the end of the webinar, and also the Commission, and also Intopia will be sharing that via our social media channels after this event.

But Matt’s question is, “are there any thoughts about an education campaign in regards to getting the Guidelines out there into the broader community which includes suppliers, procurement, technology departments, and also how can we help to do that?

Rosemary: Dissemination of these assistive mechanisms for ensuring compliance with the DDA is something that we, as the Commission, will automatically take on board to try and disseminate the Guidelines as broadly as possible – as I was saying, I mean getting clarity to duty holders is one of the big mechanisms for driving compliance, and they need to know what’s the content of the Guidelines. So getting them out there will definitely be an important task.

And how can people help, is to make sure that those sectors in industries, and people that you know that work in this space have access to the Guidelines, know about the Guidelines, and that’s the same for rights holders, so people with disability and disability organisations, the more they are aware of what standards of accessibility they should be able to access, they can direct people, or service providers of goods and services, to the Guidelines if they aren’t quite meeting standards.

Sarah: Thank you very much, Rosemary. At the end of this presentation, Intopia has also put together a Resource Kit with a number of resources, first of all, linking out to the Commission’s resources, the Guidelines themselves, and also the upcoming media release that will be released after this webinar.

We also have a number of supporting resources as well, that might help individuals actually share the Guidelines with their organisation, and also talking more about these in different forums to increase that awareness as well.

Question from Darren Britten, “where can organisations start their digital accessibility journey, and do you have any advice on how they can balance the pace of innovation in digital services, particularly with the rise of gen AI, with the legal obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act?” I will open that up to either of you, whoever would like to jump in on that one.

Neil: I guess one of the things that we would recommend is that they seek advice from organisations in the field. Obviously we’re one of them, and I am not here to do a sales job.

But obviously to start the journey, you need to talk to someone who can help you. I think in many ways the Guidelines do provide a good start in terms of telling you what you need to know about. And if that doesn’t add up to you, because you just haven’t yet embarked on that journey, then seeking advice from either others in your field who have, and/or talking to organisations like Intopia, then I think that is probably helpful because you can get guidance that will judge where you are at in the digital technology continuum. And because no one can become perfectly accessible overnight, it does take time, and if done well, it needs to be done in a planned and strategic manner.

So taking advice on that is always a good thing. But Darren is also spot on that this is a fast-changing environment. The onset of AI, not just AI but AI is one of the big ones, is absolutely having an impact on people’s knowledge and understanding, and again, that’s why you need to look around and take advice from those who can help.

We do live in a time where that information is readily available. Start with the Guidelines.

Sarah: Thank you very much, Neil. We have a hand up from Greg. Greg, you should be able to unmute yourself now.

Greg Alchin: Thank you Sarah, can you hear me OK?

Sarah: We can.

Greg: Lovely. And look congratulations folks on the great work. I’m really, really excited, I am doing a happy dance here in Orange. Just to build upon that last answer, I was going to say we’ve got 2 wonderful Australian standards. AS17161, which has just been released, called ‘Design for All’. So it looks how we bake inclusive design in. And then of course, 301549, which looks at accessibility requirements.

So building upon the great work that’s in the Guidelines, look at these Australian standards which are in fact exact copies of European standards, so it helps build you. But yes building on what you’ve said, Neil, yeah, getting that maturity model done, getting your assessment done, and helping to get all that other stuff done is great as well. But thank you guys, I am so excited about today.

Sarah: Thanks, Greg. We’re just about out of time, but I will choose one more question from Meg Dalling. “Many organisations have access and inclusion plans which may also be registered with the Commission. Would these be a mechanism for reviewing how organisations meet the Guidelines?”

Rosemary: The question raises an interesting point, and I suppose it is what I was trying to get to when I spoke, was that the Guidelines aren’t themselves, the standard people that have to meet, that is still contained within the DDA.

What the Guidelines do is give you guidance on the parameters of the requirements of the DDA. So in terms of a complaint, everything will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. But essentially, you would need to look at your Disability Action Plan against the Guidelines to make sure that what you’ve got in your Disability Action Plan, in terms of your digital goods or services, contain the elements that the Guidelines indicate are important to ensure accessibility.

Sarah: Fantastic, thank you. So, that brings us to the end of our Q&A time. I note we have a lot of questions still open to be answered. So what we will do is we will review those questions and put together some responses to those.

So, what to do next? We are so excited, and I can feel the excitement from the questions and the interaction on this webinar around these Guidelines, so of course we would encourage you to read the Guidelines. The QR code and also short link that is on the screen, which I will read out in a sec, will go to Intopia’s Resource Kit which will link off to, as I mentioned, both the Guidelines, also other resources that the Commission is publishing such as the media release. And then also some assistance resources, so infographics and the like, that might help you in your discussions.

We would love, of course, for you to also share the Guidelines both with your colleagues, and with your organisations. As well as more broadly, within your communities.

We know that after reading the Guidelines and having a chance to consume them, you may have further questions. So in a few weeks’ time, on Tuesday 6th May, we will actually have another session that is an hour long. Starting at 11 AM, going for an hour, where we are actually going to have Neil, Andrew who also worked on the Guidelines from Intopia, and also Sophia from the Australian Human Rights Commission, who will be there to answer your questions.

So feel free to register and join us for that event. The information will be available on that resource link, and also being shared via our social channels. That’s a great time for you to maybe have a chance to absorb the Guidelines, and also to then bring your questions.

I would like to thank everyone for joining us today, and in particular, to Rosemary and the

Commission, and also Neil, Andrew, and the rest of the Intopia team who together have been working on this, and also then working on today’s launch and future activities.

Thank you all very much for joining us. We hope to connect with you soon. On screen, I do have some ways you can connect with both the Commission and Intopia. You can find us both on LinkedIn. You can also find the Commission at humanrights.gov.au as their website, and you can find Intopia at intopia.digital for our website, and also email us at hello@intopia.digital Thank you all very much for attending.

Sarah Pulis: Hello everyone. Welcome to today’s session. We will just wait one minute as everyone moves in from the waiting room and then we will get started. Wonderful. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar, where we’re hosting a Q&A session on ‘Understanding the Disability Discrimination Act: Guidelines on Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services’. My name is Sarah Pulis, I am one of the Co-founders and Director at Intopia. I’m delighted to be your host for the session. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are meeting today.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and also extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us today. If you know the Country you are on, I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on its history and the deep cultural connection First Nations people have with this land.

So a bit over a month ago, the Australian Human Rights Commission launched the Guidelines on Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services. The Guidelines provide updated guidance on how to deliver technology that is inclusive and accessible to the 21.5% of Australians with a disability, and also meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act.

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to read through the Guidelines and bring your curly questions to us today. Or maybe the easy ones, we would also like a few of those too. We did want to announce, that there is a HTML version of the Guidelines available, which is in addition to the Word and PDF versions that was uploaded earlier in the month. The Commission thanks everyone for their patience in this matter. It is my delight to introduce our panellists today.

First of all, we have Sophia Rinaldis, who is Director of Disability Rights at the Australian Human Rights Commission. We also have Neil Jarvis, who you would have seen online if you tuned into the launch. Neil is our Strategy and Policy Lead at Intopia. He is joined today by Andrew Arch, our Principal Accessibility Specialist at Intopia. Both Andrew and Neil supported the Commission to produce these Guidelines.

So we’ve already had a significant number of questions submitted as you registered. We are also going to be taking written questions via the Q&A feature in Zoom, and also taking verbal questions as well if you prefer. So if you do want to submit a written question, you can select the Q&A button on your Zoom webinar controls and enter your question. If you do wish to ask a question verbally, you can raise your hand through the reactions button on your Zoom webinar controls. That will notify me you want to ask a question verbally, and I will give you the ability to turn on your audio and then to ask the question. I will call on you by name.

Considering how many questions we’ve already had through registrations, we are aware that we might not get to everyone’s question. For those who did submit a question that may have been related to the Disability Discrimination Act more generally, rather than about the Guidelines or digital accessibility, we would encourage you to contact the Commission directly in relation to questions such as these.

We’re going to be selecting questions that we feel are of interest to as a broad audience as possible and will also follow up with any written answers to the questions that we do not get to. We’d like to thank Ai – Media who is providing live captioning today, and also to our Auslan interpreters, Sue and Rebecca from Deaf Connect. We will have a recording of this webinar available on our YouTube channel after the webinar.

Now I would like to very briefly turn over to Neil, who’s just going to give us a short overview of the Guidelines, and then we’ll get it directly into the Q&A. Over to you, Neil.

Neil Jarvis: Thank you Sarah. Good afternoon everybody, as it is for me. And good morning to the rest of you. So we just wanted to take five minutes, and it will just be that, to give you a brief reminder of where we are, how we got here, and also set the scene for the questions that may come up.

We wanted to tell you the Commission, the Australian Human Rights Commission has actually been providing guidance on digital accessibility for quite some time. We think the late 1990s was the first one we were able to find, which was guidance on how to meet web accessibility with respect to the Disability Discrimination Act. Those Guidelines were updated several times over the next few years, most recently in 2014. The key requirement for the new Guidelines was to expand the advice, to go way beyond accessibility of websites, they needed to cover all aspects of technology, because let’s face it, most technology nowadays is not just about websites. It includes mobile devices, point of sale kiosks and payment machines, they include social media platforms and a lot, lot more. The Guidelines needed to be brought up to date to reflect that.

We took into account what still applied from the 2014 edition and we worked out how to incorporate that into the new Guidelines. We built on the work done by the team led by our friend and colleague, Greg Alchin in 2022, which started this process of updating the Guidelines, and then we looked at current trends and things that might be coming down the line with respect to accessibility and technology. Lastly, we drew on recommendations that were in the Human Rights Commission’s 2021 report that was published around human rights and technology, we felt that any new guidelines needed to reflect the thinking in those recommendations.

So what do the Guidelines actually cover? Well, they are divided into three chapters. The first gives an overview of who and what digital products and services are covered by the Disability Discrimination Act, and how the Disability Discrimination Act fits into the regulatory context of disability in Australia. There is advice on good practice and keeping up with the law. Topics in this chapter include an overview of the law, what it covers and who it applies to. What is meant by digital goods and services, advice on meeting requirements of the law and delivering equal access. Good practice including universal design and some thoughts on the fast changing technology implications for people with disability. The second chapter of the Guidelines goes into more detail about those techniques for achieving equal access when providing digital goods and services. Topics in this chapter include a discussion about the business benefits of accessibility.

Implementing a strategic approach to providing equal access, the importance of seeking expert advice and incorporating digital accessibility into the product development cycle, as well as the procurement process. Digital accessibility and risk management is the last major topic in this chapter.

The third chapter, and final one, provides a handy reference for the various standards and guidelines which underpin this edition of the Guidelines. Topics in this chapter include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as well as authoring tools and plain language guidelines that are available. Standards covering products and services and the design of those including hardware, software, content management and others.

Australian Government standards and policies both at Commonwealth and state level, and at industry standards produced by the private sector for business groups to help them produce goods and services in an equal way. The Guidelines will benefit you, and everyone on this call, and everyone working in Australia, by enabling you to convert the fact that you know you need to meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act, into knowing how to do it, it’s wanting to know what to do, the next thing to know is how to do it. It will help you to understand real-world means by which you can keep your legal obligations and meet them at the same time, as well as doing the right thing by people with disability.

They explain and give links to more detailed information about the techniques and practices, standards and other guidelines that we refer to. These Guidelines are not designed to give you all the answers. They’re designed to enable you to know how to find out what those answers are. Thanks Sarah. I’ll hand back to you, but hat covers the main aspects of what the Guidelines are for.

Andrew Arch: You are muted, Sarah.

Sarah: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I forgot the mute button. The bingo card you can tick off, you know host forgot the mute button. Let me try that again. Thank you very much Neil. (Laughs) Sophia, I wanted to start with you. We had a few questions that kind of touched on that relationship between the Guidelines and also the Disability Discrimination Act, and how they work in partnership. Would you be able to explain sort of what that relationship is between the Guidelines and the Act, but also how people are held accountable to I guess anti-discrimination?

Sophia Rinaldis: Thanks Sarah, and thank you everyone for joining today. The Guidelines, and Neil kind of went over this in his presentation and overview, they provide guidance on best practice or good practice in the area of digital accessibility. So, the Disability Discrimination Act sets the broad legal standard of non-discrimination on the basis of disability in all areas of public life, so public life covers education employment, accessing goods and services, accessing public buildings, et cetera. And the Guidelines kind of deep dive into the provision of digital goods and services and outlines non-legally binding, I think that is probably one of the key points to be made here, non-legally binding guidance as to how duty holders under the Disability Discrimination Act can enable access to equal goods and services. So it’s translating what that broad legal standard of equal access, non-discrimination looks like in practice.

So it sets out practice standards like universal design, for example, that could assist in achieving the objectives of the Act. I will just repeat that they are non-legally binding, but in following the Guidelines and in using them, like Neil said to find the answers as to what good practice looks like, that should assist in providing equal access to digital goods and services.

To your question, Sarah, around enforceability mechanisms, I guess our position is that the Disability Discrimination Act is quite lacking in that area. There is a complaints process through the Australian Human Rights Commission, so if a person has experienced alleged discrimination on the basis of disability, they can lodge a complaint with the Commission. But we’ve made many calls for reform for stronger enforcement and compliance mechanisms to be introduced into the Act and I am sure we will get questions about that later on, so we can talk to them in more detail.

Sarah: Fantastic, thank you so much Sophia. For anyone who has just joined, I am going to recap where you can ask questions. So first of all, we have questions that were submitted through the registration form. You can also submit questions through the Q&A feature which you can find on the Zoom toolbar. Or if you prefer to ask your question verbally, please raise your hand and I will call on you to ask your question verbally.

So, we’re going to start off with a question, and this question was “what challenges do you anticipate with the implementation?”, Sophia, I might start with you on that one. What are the new challenges or challenges that you anticipate organisations may have with implementing or maybe improving the accessibility of their digital products and services?

Sophia: Thanks Sarah. I think that’s a really good question, and you know one of the reasons that the Commission partnered with Intopia on the development of these Guidelines is there are aspects to digital accessibility that are very technical and that require technical subject matter expertise and technical capabilities, and that’s not something that all duty holders or organisations will necessarily have in-house. And so that’s the gap that the Guidelines are trying to fill, to up skill organisations on how they could provide digital accessibility. So that is definitely one of the challenges that we know organisations face. And then of course, like anything, the resourcing required. Again, I think that the Guidelines do a good job of outlining how accessibility can be achieved by minimising, you know, human resourcing and financial resourcing required.

So I think those are the two main challenges, and hopefully the Guidelines help to address some of those.

Sarah: Fantastic. Andrew, Neil, what would your thoughts around the greatest challenges people might face?

Andrew: I made your mistake, Sarah. I have unmuted now. I think one of the challenges is that lots of people tend to leave the consideration of accessibility until afterwards, when they are reminded they were supposed to do it, that it is a requirement in so many situations now and as Neil said, it is such a broad range of digital across-the-board.

By thinking about it much earlier and getting that mindset of thinking about it right at the start of a project when you are actually creating the concept for a project, I think that is one of the challenges that an organisation face rather than treating it as a technical problem at the end of the process. Changing that mindset is a challenge for a lot of people.

Neil: I think also one of the biggest challenges that we also hear about is where do I go to find out what I need to do? What I need to do is always a bit of a interesting question. But where do I go to find out more essentially, is what they are asking.

And the Guidelines, as we said earlier, they give a really good general explanation of what their responsibilities are as duty holders. If you need to get into the weeds of the technology, which essentially some will, then the Guidelines give you easily locatable links to go and find that extra information. so I think that is a challenge that the Guidelines try to address. The other one is just keeping up. Standards around technology generally, and certainly around accessibility, are changing, they are always changing. Because the technology is changing and the capability of the technology is changing. So knowing that you are keeping up-to-date with those standards is also a challenge. And again, I think the Guidelines help by giving you a heads up of where you can go to make sure that you are up-to-date with the latest standards, and indeed, local and national policy. So that you know where you are.

So I think that‘s probably for me one of the biggest challenges that we hear about generally is how do I know that I am still up-to-date?

Sarah: Fantastic, thank you so much. Our next question is specifically when – to do with security versus accessibility, let’s call it. The question or comment was “how do you know when to push back versus except an answer that does not work — software does not work well in this department compared to other departments because it’s not compatible with our security settings”.

Do you want to go first, Neil on that?

Neil: So I think that is another issue that we hear a lot in the work that Andrew and I do. We meet this regularly, where people say that they have had pushback from the cyber security teams, they have had pushback from others as well. We would always say that accessibility is one of those things that no-one’s denying the importance of cyber security, I think we have seen enough examples in recent times as to why that’s important, and no-one denies the importance of other key aspects of data management, like data integrity. But also things like privacy and things like that. They are all important.

But hey, so is accessibility. So is the ability for people to actually use the thing that you want them to use. So we argue that accessibility should be considered at the same level as cyber security, privacy and all the others. I know that is going to cause a bit of a discussion and a debate within organisations, but until people start to taking accessibility seriously, they are always going to find a reason why it has to take second place.

So, and the last thing I would say is that if something is inaccessible, it’ss going to be insecure as well. There are going to be shortcuts that people take in order to make sure that they can at least have a workaround to access a system that they can’t otherwise do. And that might well, and that workaround might well introduce insecurities in its own right.

Andrew: Just to add that, if we put the 21.4% I think it is, of Australians who are acknowledged as having a disability, if you think about it from a business perspective as well, thatts greater than the population of Melbourne or greater than the population of Sydney.That’s a lot of people, that you are potentially excluding as part of your audience whether you are in business, whether you’re in government or whether you’re in not-for-profit, that is a large part of Australia that you are saying one of these capital cities is no longer part of our target audience. Think about it from that perspective. As Neil said, yes security is paramount, but that is a hell of a lot of people that you are saying not relevant to us.

Sophia: If I can just add from a DDA perspective, and you know this is when a law like the DDA becomes a tool for advocacy for greater access. So there is is, as I mentioned, the legal standards of equal access to goods and services. That is not to say that it can only be provided through one specific program, but there has to be one of the outcomes. But a department or an organisation is working towards. And they can work, for the writer of the question, and you can work with them to explore that looks like, but it is on the duty holders to look at what are the options available? What are the things that are being weighed up? What are the considerations that are being weighed up? And the standard within the DDA is that an adjustment must be provided unless you reach that threshold of unjustifiable hardship, and the Guidelines explain what makes a unjustifiable hardship, and that is to be assessed within each of the circumstances. So I would say to use the DDA and use the Guidelines as an advocacy tool to help you in those conversations and remind duty holders that they’ve got obligations to seek to achieve equal access.

Sarah: Fantastic, thanks Sophia. Just a note around sign language interpretation, so we know we have a few issues with the setup which we believe we have resolved. You should still be able to or at least access sign language interpretation, through the interpretation button and select Auslan. We thank you for your patience, we obviously did not get this quite right at the start and hope that it has been resolved. Thank you for everyone who was sending her messages letting us know things weren’t quite working.

Excuse me. On to our next question. So, this one is actually about a question from an individual. “I am a Deaf person and I have found myself having to navigate automated calls and instructions the right person on the other side to resolve the issue. It is always a challenge to listen to the instructions and press the correct numbers and this process can take several attempts. Call centres that are used by many businesses use chat bots in the absence of an email address to resolve issues.”

So the questions in relation to this are “do the accessibility guidelines, or the Guidelines, newly published, apply to phone calls and automated messages? And can instructions be displayed as live captions on the screen to assist hearing-impaired users?”. Sophia I might direct that one at you.

Sophia: The short answer I think would be yes, the Guidelines apply. As does the Disability Discrimination Act. And then in terms of the technical detail, I might throw to my Intopia colleagues if that’s OK?

Neil: I think probably important to say that this is, I think Sophia is quite right to look at this in the context of what the law requires, which is an equal service. So, a service that does not discriminate against the individual trying to consume the service, if you like, so that’s the issue. The technical solution is kind of secondary to that because the most important thing is what is the service provider going to do to ensure that someone in that consumer’s position can access their services? What is their way of doing that?

If they can’t do through a technical way, what is their alternative?

Andrew: Just picking up on the mention of chat bots, Intopia’s experience is that chat bots in systems that we are testing are very often problematic, people tend to just take a chat bot off the shelf and plug it into their system, the rest of their system may be accessible but the chat bot component often hasn’t had that requirement when people are out there sourcing a chat bot to go into their retail or service environment. So we do find that often, that’s not to say that you can’t make them accessible, there are some very highly accessible chat bots out there, but it is a perennial problem that we seem to encounter.

Sarah: Fantastic, thanks so much Andrew. I’m going to go to another Q&A question that have been submitted. This one actually mentions that the Guidelines around universal design for learning weight included in chapter 3 in the standards and guidelines feature. But I wanted to broaden this out a bit to , and I might pass to you Andrew, I know there was a bit of a decision process in what went in, but also the fact that we are referencing versions in the existing guidelines. Can you talk us through a little bit about how we went about including different guidelines within chapter 3?

Andrew: By and large, we were looking for local standard guidelines, because they are immediately applicable in Australia. So, we know there are lots of international guidelines, but they haven’t necessarily been adopted here as standards, either through Standards Australia or through other government policies or industry policies. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are one instance, where an international guidelines that we do not have an Australian version of, but they have been widely adopted since the late 90s, early 2000s through government policies and through various industry policies. We have taken them into account. But there are numerous other international guidelines that we decided to exclude just on the basis of we didn’t want to write a thesis on guidelines that might or might not be applicable. So we were fairly selective there.

That said, if anybody does have a guideline that they feel should have been included, and we’ve had a couple of emails around this already on things that are international guidance, whether they are ISO standard or coming from somewhere else, you know please contact the Commission with a suggestion to update. I might pass to you, Sophia, about what the Commission might be considering along those lines.

Sophia: Yes, thank you. We are definitely open to receiving any advice or considerations. And you know with a document like this, especially the last two chapters it is linking to a number of other resources and standards, and so we will endeavour to keep it up-to-date and review it fairly regularly to make sure that we are linking to the most up-to-date resource. But if you become aware that a link is bringing you to the wrong place, please let us know. We would be really happy to be prompted through that channel.

Sarah: Fantastic. Thank you so much. We’ve actually got a few questions that have been submitted, and also came through registration, I’m going to combine them into one. First of all raising awareness of the new Guidelines, and also of digital accessibility more broadly. There was a comment around people don’t necessarily hang out on the Commission website and what have you, you know how did they know about this, how do we sort of build this awareness of the new Guidelines. Obviously the Disability Discrimination Act has been around a long time, but we are hoping these new Guidelines will drive a renewed interest, and change, maybe starting with you, Sophia, does the Commission have any sort of thoughts around ways to spread the word essentially about this and increase that awareness?

Sophia: Yes definitely. You know this is the second webinar and I see there is great attendance with 188 participants. This is the first dissemination exercise, and we really encourage everyone in the room here to take the Guidelines and run with it, and disseminate them within your circles and with your stakeholders. Digital accessibility, accessibility more broadly within DDA and also within the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and it’s always topical, because we live in a world like we’re online all of the time. Well I am online all of the time, I wish I was a little less. I won’t speak for others, but you know we live a very digital life, like we’re always connected. It is something that is spoken a lot fairly often, and there are a lot of discussions as well around AI now and that’s infiltrated political discussions as well.

So we’ll keep trying to disseminate the Guidelines through various speaking engagements and representations that we have with our stakeholder groups. But we’re also a very small team, so we rely on some of the people in the room as well to spread the word.

Andrew: Just adding to that

Sarah: Yep Andrew

Andrew: We’ve already been approached by a few organisations who would like us to come and do what I’ll call a lunch and learn, a brief overview to their teams. So that’s been pleasing to see that, including an approach from the higher education sector to do a much broader session. The other thing that some of you might do if you are thinking, lots of organisations have internal newsletters, staff newsletters of one sort or another. Maybe you could write a few paragraphs and get it published, just leave that as a suggestion.

Sarah: Fantastic. Thanks Andrew. And yes, Intopia has definitely got plans, and as Sophia has said, we are going through webinar launch, Q&A, the we are definitely working both with individual organisations to increase the awareness and answer questions around the Guidelines, and we’ll also be slowly putting out different things that we think might raise that awareness of the Guidelines, or actually you know help people, you know, internally raise awareness within their organisations as well.

Sophia, I’d say the next one is definitely for you. So, might it be theoretically possible to convert these Guidelines into a standard under the Disability Discrimination Act, similar to say the current transport and aviation standards, is that something that is a possibility in the future?

Sophia: It is a possibility, it is doable. So definitely within the realm of what can be done. Obviously that is a decision for Government to make. And so relies on fairly intense systemic advocacy, and civil society as well as the Commission making the case for the standards to be translated into I guess a legal standard under the DDA, or the Guidelines, sorry to be translated into a legal standard under the DDA. What we know, and it’s only a few days after the election, we know there is a return Labor government coming into power. In its first term, the Government committed to a review of the Disability Discrimination Act. We are hoping a return government means that will occur within the next few months. And there will be public consultation on what should be — what amendments should be made to the Disability Discrimination Act. I would encourage everyone here to engage and submit to that consultation once it opens and to make the case for a standard.

Without getting into the detail, I am glad to go into it if it is of interest to everyone in the room, please put some questions in a chat and we can talk about it in more detail. I think translating the Guidelines into a standard under the DDA would be one piece of the puzzle and you’d want some other amendments, such as positive duty, greater enforcement powers granted to the Commission that altogether would provide a more robust legal framework, and some stronger obligations on duty holders to comply with the standards if they were to exist.

I hope that wasn’t too nebulous or talking in codes, but I go into it in more detail if that is is of interest.

Sarah: No, I think about is great and fantastic. And I love the way you highlighted there are multiple pieces to this, you know that if we are looking for a Holy Grail of what this would look like and all work together, maybe moving the Guidelines into a standard would be one piece but there are other pieces that probably would need to fall into place for it to be a stronger legislation.

Sophia: Exactly. And there’s the opening now. It is not often that we get an opportunity for law reform. It is only maybe once every few decades that it’s actually on the cards. And we think there is really a strong chance because it was announced pre-election and the conditions with the return government. I’d say the time is right to be making those kinds of recommendations to the Government to consider.

Sarah: Fantastic. Thanks Sophia. So let’s get a little bit more into a particular space around customer versus employee experience. So,we had a question that said that “traditionally we have seen organisations focus more on the customer facing say digital products and services”. I would say that is definitely in line with what Intopia has seen as well. But the comment was that as HCM and finance systems are moving into SaaS products, so software as a service based product, are we seeing a trend of accessibility improvements that actually impact employee systems for businesses? I might throw to Neil or Andrew.

Andrew: I might jump in. First of all, from an employee perspective, COVID and working from home highlighted the issue to many, many organisations. Prior to that, you were able to go down the corridor and ask somebody in IT, ask your neighbour, “How does this work?” Working from home, you are isolated and don’t have the instant answer. So I think a lot of branches and departments in organisations found that we have to do something a bit more than what we have done in the past.

Coming back to the SaaS software and service aspect of that, the advantage of moving from an installed bit of software inside your organisation to software as a service, is that I think it is much easier for organisations who are providing that type of software to say that we can do very easy incremental updates, rather than relying on having a big update annually or something like that. And then you’ve got the delay of the organisation saying, “Yes, does it still meet our requirements? Is it still secure?”, and all the rest of it, rolling it out. The advantage of SaaS is incremental updates can happen on a much more regular basis. We are finding some of the organisations we are working with, and Sarah you might want to comment on this, are actually doing lots of incremental updates as we are finding things and making recommendations to them.

Neil: I think probably also worth saying that yes I think it makes the opportunity for that trend to exist. The question was asking about the trends, for example. And I think the opportunity that Andrew has drawn attention to is exactly true. I think it really does give an opportunity for systems to be more accessible because of the way that they are deployed. They still have to be accessible though, so like anything else, HTML or any other software, or web code or whatever it happens to be, if that is not accessible, then the output won’t be accessible. So really important to stress yes the opportunity is there and I think we will see it and I think we are seeing it. But we’re also seeing examples where it’s still pretty awful. And if you put awful in, you’ll get awful out.

Sarah: I might point out you’ve got direct experience of that as well, don’t you?

Neil: Ohh, yeah. (Laughs)

Sarah: As a person day to day who probably has to deal with this.

Neil: Yeah, I will give an example if you would like, but I will not name names, as much as I would love to. The names don’t really matter because it was outside of Australia. But I won’t name them anyway. It was a government department in in another country, which during COVID had a requirement that people coming back into the country, once we were able to travel again, had to fill out a declaration and a form that said you weren’t ill and you’d been tested and you could prove you had been tested, and all sorts of things. You will all remember those if you did travel at the time. Every government did it, this particular government did it in such a way that, even though it had guidelines and standards that it was supposed to adhere to, specifically passed by that very government, the form was unusable and inaccessible for anybody using a screen reader, to the point that you literally, there’s nothing you could do. It was beyond workarounds.

That is not entirely unusual. But this happened in a place that should have known better, and it happened in an environment that was mission critical. Because if you didn’t fill that form out, you weren’t getting on the plane to come home. That was very much an example, there are go to sleep go to sleep many, many more.

Sarah: Thank you, Neil. And Sophia.

Sophia: Oh I was going to come back to the customer versus employee question and just to remind people that the DDA covers employment as an area of public life, as much as it does access to goods and services. So, employers under the Disability Discrimination Act have an obligation towards their employee to not discriminate. So, both settings are covered, and you know, given equal weight I guess under the law.

Sarah: Fantastic. And I think what we’ve actually seen, just picking up on that side of you know sort of SaaS products, and the experience that Intopia has had. First of all, Federal Government is required to meet EN 301 549 when procuring any digital products or services. So, that’s definitely meant that organisations who are providing software into federal government have had to tighten up on their accessibility and that certainly been in place for a number of years.

Second of all, we have definitely seen more large corporates also including it in their procurement. The work, for instance that Andrew and Neil did with ADCET which was in the university sector, the tertiary sector, advising on that, you know, has contributed to that as well.

But the third, and this is outside of Australia, the European Accessibility Act is coming into force on the 30th of June, and that has really put again an international focus on companies that are selling, sort of software as a service like this, and often that is into the employee space. We know we’re working with organisations who are needing to look at those obligations under the European Accessibility Act. And that will again have flow on impacts for Australians as well because as Andrew mentioned, when these companies start to roll out these updates, they do get rolled out to every single organisation and individual that are using these. So, I think there are a lot of different levers that are being pulled to improve that employee experience and we can definitely do more.

Andrew: Just on that, we may be a small player internationally in terms of our purchase power, but every is squeak that an organisation gets adds up to a very noisy environment for them to pay some attention to, building on the fact that Sarah just mentioned, there is a big international push across Europe now in particular and to some extent in the US, if we can add our voices to that, from the organisation that you work for, with some feedback to the organisation, the company you have purchased your internal or external software platforms from, it just adds to the noise that they have to start paying attention to.

Sarah: Fantastic, thank you. So, a general question was actually, “Do we have, or do you have any examples.of.” and I might substitute organisations with organisations that are maybe successfully implementing the Guidelines. So don’t necessarily have to collide individual organisations, but what are some of the great things that you’ve seen seen in organisations that would be maybe ahead of the curve in terms of the Guidelines?

Neil, Andrew, I think that would be your area, just to poke you (laughter).

Neil: Never know who to go first.

(Laughter)

So, I think probably the first thing to say is that the Guidelines are a collection of good practices. And so really important that people don’t get the idea that the aim is to implement the Guidelines per se. I mean yes, that’s what we ultimately want, but as you say there in the question I think, there is lots and lots of things that people can do to make progress down that road of implementing the various guidelines throughout this document. I think that is really important. We work a lot with organisations, Andrew and I do work with organisations particularly around their what we would call maturity. And how well are they making accessibility business as usual? Because that’s ultimately what it’s about.

It’s about making the very act of creating an accessible product, something that they don’t do as an add-on, they don’t do at the end, when it is going to be more expensive and therefore harder to do, they do it as part of the entire development process, going right back to the very beginning when they are even — I hate the word but I will use it, ideating. That’s the one time you’ll ever hear me say that, so make the most.

So I think that’s — and we do see great examples of designers who are empowered and up skilled to ensure that they can provide an accessible solution that then go forward to the developers & so forth, so that’s good. But I think also a general understanding that things like universal access benefits everybody, it is not just something which is for this bunch of people in the corner, admittedly it is a large bunch of people in the corner. Andrew mentioned the population bigger than Melbourne in Australia, that’s a big corner, right? But it’s actually — there is no development that benefited disabled people that ever caused a problem for non-disabled people.

Everyone benefits from good access. Including the people that provide it, by the way. Not just benefited by the customer or by the employee. Also the service provider benefits from good access, from higher sales, and better public reputation and that sort of thing. So yeah, if you go through all the different things that are covered in the Guidelines, we see lots of good examples but often they are isolated.

One organisation will do particularly well in one area but not so well in another. The aim is to make that aggregate improvement greater.

Andrew: Just two examples of where that curb cut effect comes into digital, there’s lots and lots of evidence now that many, many more people than people who are Deaf or hard of hearing turn captions on when they’re watching something on a screen. And the other one is dark mode, the number of people using dark mode is far beyond people with low vision.

Sarah: Fantastic, thank you. So a bit of a practical question. “How do organisations go about prioritising accessibility improvements when resources are limited?” The example is, you know, “is it better to focus on critical services first? Or maybe take a whole of website approach from the start?” I might start with you, Andrew. Then I will pass over to Sophia from the Commission’s perspective.

Andrew: That’s a really good question. The prioritisation question comes up fairly variably regularly in the discussions that we all have with Intopia, possibly within the Commission. Yes, looking at your critical services, what are the services that are most important that you are putting out there? That’s certainly a very good place to start.

But while you’re doing that, and you’re looking at the different aspects of that and how does somebody get there, what’s their journey to get to that critical service? You need to not just look at the service in isolation but you need to look at that service in the context of the whole user experience and pick up those different pathways. Because some people come in through search, some people might land directly on it, some people might follow a link that is from some other — another organisation, say if you’re a government agency.

So think about all those different pathways, not just the isolated service in the centre there that people – that you’re deciding is critical. Because there is critical information around that, and critical things further outside that, that may be important. So that’s a very good thing to think about.

The other aspect is from a criticality point of view. What is the most important service, what is the most popular service? That mighn’t be your most critical, but it might be the one you’re — the people who are coming to your organisation digitally are looking at the most frequently. Neil mentioned the one of travel, it probably wasn’t the most necessarily the highly used service by that government agency, except at that point in time, but it was a very critical one you know from their perspective.

So weighing up the different aspects of what — how to prioritise this, start with the things that are popular or from your delivery perspective, most critical. That’s probably a good place to start.

Neil: Yeah, think about the impact the service has on people, and whether that impact is — impact of it not being accessible as well, whether that would be high-risk, low-risk, as well as high quantity, low quantity.

Andrew: The other aspect there is don’t wait til it’s perfect. Incremental improvements are going to benefit somebody along the way. So don’t just put it — you know, say oh it’s going to take us 12 months to make this perfectly accessible. Put the updates out there on a regular basis because every little update will help somebody, every little accessibility improvement will help somebody better access that service.

Sarah: Sophia, did you have anything to add?

Sophia: I guess what I would add, is those are all really good suggestions and I like Neil what you said about also assessing the risk of not being accessible and the cost and the impact of that. We often think about what happens if you don’t do something and assessing that as much as if you are going to do it.

From the DDA perspective, accessibility is related to measures that can be taken that will meet the needs of a group. Ideally of all and if not, of most people. There’s also provisions with the Disability Discrimination Act to look at reasonable adjustments, so adjustments that respond to a person’s or a smaller group’s individual needs, so in that prioritisation exercise, where something can’t necessarily be made accessible to all, making clear that there are other adjustments that can be made and that there is another pathway that people can interact with the service where they can request adjustments so that they can utilise that service on equal footing with others.

Sarah: Fantastic. And we’re approaching our last question because we only have a few minutes, “What do you see as a future trends, or even things that are not covered in the Guidelines”, that was another question that came through. Future trends or things that are not covered in the Guidelines that you would have liked to cover, what do you think those things are the people should be watching out for or staying on top of?

Andrew: We did pick up a few trends, and some of that came out of the Human Rights and Technology report. Some of the things that have been happening that are really recently, like the predominance of AI in just about everything. And I was bemoaning earlier wondering why my system has been slowing down over the last few months, and noted that every program I opened, just about these days, offers the AI assist inside it and I figure that is using up a lot of processing power with everything that I run.

So I think AI is a big one. And there’s a lot of people out there saying AI is going to solve the accessibility problem. We know that is far from the truth. AI may assist but it’s not going to solve your accessibility issues and you might like to elaborate on that one in particular.

Neil: I totally agree, I think AI is one of those generational, groundbreaking events really, when it comes to accessibility to access to information. We got in the 90s with access to the World Wide Web. I genuinely believe that AI is in that category.

However, it is not the solution as Andrew says. It is a tool to be used for a wider solution. There are as many risks with AI to people with disability as there are advantages and benefits. The sensible approach is to get that balance right and manage it properly.

The other thing Andrew — that we talked about in the Guidelines, very briefly, we would have liked to go into it in more detail, but the space didn‘t really permit, was with the whole issue of biometrics. And how that’s going to be — it is really quite big nowadays, you can’t unlock your iPhone without looking at it or using a fingerprint or whatever. That’s I think just the very beginning. In the future, there will be a lot more things that you will have to use, facial ID, or fingerprints, or other biometrics to access. And I think that has quite major far-reaching implications for people with a disability.

Sarah: Thank you very much. Well, we are right on the hour so I would like to thank everybody for attending and in particular to Sophia, Neil, and Andrew for sharing their wisdom and their experience with the Guidelines. Thank you to AI Media, and also Deaf Connect, for providing the captions and sign language interpretation.

As noted, we will have a recording of this session available on Intopia’s YouTube channel. As well, we will follow up with any questions that we didn’t get to. I know there are some we didn’t get to and like, with the webinar — launch webinar, we’ll provide some written answers. Thank you all very much, have a fantastic day.