Policy and compliance

Australia: state policies relating to accessibility
Compiled by Andrew Arch, a list of Australian state legislation and policies on accessibility.
Australian Web Accessibility Policies and Guidelines
Compiled by the Accessible Information Solutions, Vision Australia.
AVCC Guidelines on Information Access for Students with Disabilities (PDF, 193 KB, 8 pages)
Released in November 2004.
Keys to access: accessibility conformance in VET (PDF, 532 KB, 160 pages)
In this research, we aimed to investigate what VET training providers have achieved in terms of accessibility conformance; to reveal and understand the obstacles that may be blocking conformance and suggest strategies that will speed conformance.
How accessible are Australian university web sites?
This paper reports on a 2003 study of the accessibility of Australian university web sites. A selection of key pages from all 45 Australian tertiary education web sites were analysed to assess their compliance with basic accessibility standards, as required by Australian anti-discrimination legislation. The results--98 percent of sites failed to comply--suggest that Australian university web sites are likely to present significant barriers to access for people with disabilities. Web accessibility is poorly understood by university web publishers, and procedures are not in place to ensure that university web sites provide equitable access to important online resources.
University website accessibility revisited
This paper presents the findings from a second audit completed in early 2007. Using a similar methodology we aimed to see if there had been any improvement in university website accessibility. We found that overall, accessibility has slightly worsened. 100 per cent of sites and 92 per cent of pages failed to meet the basic standards. The biggest problem is still the failure to provide equivalent text alternatives for content presented in non-text formats. This is a relatively easy issue to resolve, but has proved intractable.
University web accessibility policies: a bridge not quite far enough
Most university web accessibility policies fall short of achieving their purpose. The websites of these universities often fail to meet minimum web accessibility standards. Part of the problem lies with the policies themselves. Many of them fail to delineate a specific technical standard, fail to indicate whether compliance with the policy is required, fail to indicate a timeline or deadline for compliance, fail to define a system for evaluating or monitoring compliance, and fail to enumerate any consequences for failure to comply.