Introduction

Hi all

As a new member to the group, it has been suggested that I introduce myself, so here goes.

I am a Ph.D student and sessional lecturer for the School of Computer and Security Science at Edith Cowan University, here in sunny Perth, Western Australia.  My  research topic involves website accessibility in Australia, particularly as it relates to the new National Transition Strategy (NTS) recently adopted by the Australian Government for all government websites.  The NTS is a staged transition plan that will see (hopefully) all government websites transition to compliance with WCAG 2.0 Level A by December 2012 and AA by December 2014.  While federal government websites must use the NTS, other levels of government may choose their own strategy or use the NTS to reach WCAG 2.0 A by the same time and are encouraged to achieve AA. All other websites in Australia fall under the Australian Human Rights Guidelines (Disability Discrimination Act) which says they must get to WCAG 2.0 AA by 2013.  (whew! what amouthful)

So, my interests at the moment are in how to accurately assess a website against WCAG 2.0, how to determine the best tools and how to communicate this best to the website owners.  I have been assessing various automated tools and comparing the results, which is a really frustrating task.  Its not just comparing apples and organges, it is throwing bananas into the mix!  I will be auditing 100 websites regularly over 2.5 years and monitoring their progress (or lack thereof).  I use a hybrid approach to assessing websites with a combination of automated tools, manual evaluation and user evaluation as well as W3C html/css validation.

I hope that gives you a bit of an understanding both of what is happening in Australia and what I'm up to.  I am really looking forward to my involvement with this Working Group.  I know that at first I will be doing far more learning than contributing, but I hope I can do some of that as well.  Thanks for having me.

Regards

Vivienne L. Conway

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Received on Friday, 10 June 2011 13:17:27 UTC