In recent weeks and months, the Australian Human Rights Commission have updated their series of guidelines regarding best practices for digital accessibility, often aligning with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. But they go further than that. They also focus on making digital content and experiences perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for all users, including those with disabilities. And one of the organisations that was central to giving their feedback and insights on how to make the guidelines as effective as possible, was Intopia, and it's my great pleasure to welcome Andrew Arch from Intopia, their principal digital accessibility consultant, to Talking Vision. Andrew, welcome to Talking Vision. Thank you very much for your time.

In recent weeks and months, the Australian Human Rights Commission have updated their series of guidelines regarding best practices for digital accessibility, often aligning with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. But they go further than that. They also focus on making digital content and experiences perceivable, operable, understandable and robust for all users, including those with disabilities. And one of the organisations that was central to giving their feedback and insights on how to make the guidelines as effective as possible, was Intopia, and it's my great pleasure to welcome Andrew Arch from Intopia, their principal digital accessibility consultant, to Talking Vision. Andrew, welcome to Talking Vision. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you for inviting us.

Thank you for inviting us.

Now firstly, Andrew, let's go to the heart of things and have a bit of a chat about the guidelines themselves. So tell us about the guidelines.

Now firstly, Andrew, let's go to the heart of things and have a bit of a chat about the guidelines themselves. So tell us about the guidelines.

Guidelines have been updated by the Australian Human Rights Commission because it was recognised that the previous version and we were up to version 4.1, I think it was, um, we're ten years, 11 years old now and their title gives that away. They were called, um, access for under the World Wide Web. We don't even call it the World Wide Web anymore, just the web. But digital accessibility has become all pervasive, or digital access has become all pervasive. You know, we've got apps, we've got software, we've got all sorts of social media platforms. Everything you do requires you to have some sort of nearly everything you do requires you to have some sort of digital access these days. And so it was in recognition of that all pervasive requirement for digital access that the commission look at. It's time to update this from just the World Wide Web, um, which is sort of where we got started with digital stuff in many respects, some decades ago to digital is everywhere. That was the driver for putting this update together, and the commission approached us in late 2023. Well, they put it out to tender and we were the people who were selected to do that in late 2023 to develop this update, which was released in April this year. So it took about an 18 month time frame to write those and go through all the consultation processes and review processes.

Guidelines have been updated by the Australian Human Rights Commission because it was recognised that the previous version and we were up to version 4.1, I think it was, um, we're ten years, 11 years old now and their title gives that away. They were called, um, access for under the World Wide Web. We don't even call it the World Wide Web anymore, just the web. But digital accessibility has become all pervasive, or digital access has become all pervasive. You know, we've got apps, we've got software, we've got all sorts of social media platforms. Everything you do requires you to have some sort of nearly everything you do requires you to have some sort of digital access these days. And so it was in recognition of that all pervasive requirement for digital access that the commission look at. It's time to update this from just the World Wide Web, um, which is sort of where we got started with digital stuff in many respects, some decades ago to digital is everywhere. That was the driver for putting this update together, and the commission approached us in late 2023. Well, they put it out to tender and we were the people who were selected to do that in late 2023 to develop this update, which was released in April this year. So it took about an 18 month time frame to write those and go through all the consultation processes and review processes.

Tell us a bit about those processes, Andrew, and specifically your and Netapp's involvement with the composers of the guidelines and with the Commission and your feedback and insights.

Tell us a bit about those processes, Andrew, and specifically your and Netapp's involvement with the composers of the guidelines and with the Commission and your feedback and insights.

A couple of us in Intopia had been working on a pro-bono version of this for a couple of years prior, primarily, um, put together by a group of people, um, being run by Greg Allchin from Service New South Wales. Some of you listeners may know of Greg Olsen, and in fact, he'll be an interesting person for you to get on board in terms of all the work he's done inside the New South Wales government to drive digital accessibility there. Be worth a chat at some stage if you get that opportunity. But the commission had said we haven't got a formal process here. We need to create a formal process for updating the note rather than this piecemeal. Yes, it might get done. Process. So we we had a draft that we'd been participating in, um, to work with when the commission decided it needed to go to market to formalise the whole process. And Intopia was engaged to write the document, basically. So we had a starting point with that material that Greg Allchin had put together. But we also worked with the commission to say, okay, what did they want to see in it and how should it be structured? So we were in fact, we ended up drafting some of the earlier legal stuff as well, but that went through a lot of internal review and rewriting inside the commission, and we took responsibility to write the more technical side, the more standard side, the more how should organizations do this? So that process, um, took, uh, as I said, 18 months overall. And so, you know, one of the things that we did was we set up some advisory groups to two different advisory groups, one looking at the technology side and one looking at the impact on the user. So we had a some representative user representatives, people who relied on technology and having it accessible, as well as some organizations, um, you know, that represented people with disability. So we had people who sort of do the technical stuff and people who rely on on the outcome of that. Um, as two different technical advisory, two different advisory groups. The commission was also inputting into the process, particularly, as I said, on the legal side, but they were relying on us and the advisory groups to sort of write the what should be included, when should it be considered? We also went out for a public comment at one point and got quite some quite good feedback on that. Interestingly, some of the comment that came back in the public feedback was tell us exactly what to do. Well, these are guidelines and we can't tell everybody exactly what to do. They need to make that decision by themselves. But you know that that was one of the bits of feedback that was interesting but not surprising to get. We went through probably 6 or 7 drafts overall throughout that process and some restructuring, as we worked out better ways to present a better order to present it. The commission had quite a bit of input into that, and so we ended up breaking it up into three different chapters. You know, one that's more looking at the legal stuff, one that was looking at the more broadly how to and then one that final chapter that was looking at, okay, what are the standards um, from Standards Australia, from government, from industry and other things that people should be looking at to adhere to the idea of breaking it up into those three sections was that we hope as a modular set of guidance, it can be updated more frequently. And, you know, that's that's the problem with the law. Now, the law doesn't mention because it's 1992, pre-digital pre-web, unless you happen to be working in CSIRO or in university at the time, it's very hard to update the law. It's much easier to update guidance under the law. So the Commission is hopeful that it'll be able to keep this more up to date. The way that we structured this set of guidelines versus the way that the previous notes about the World Wide Web accessibility had been written, that's sort of the process that we went through.

A couple of us in Intopia had been working on a pro-bono version of this for a couple of years prior, primarily, um, put together by a group of people, um, being run by Greg Allchin from Service New South Wales. Some of you listeners may know of Greg Olsen, and in fact, he'll be an interesting person for you to get on board in terms of all the work he's done inside the New South Wales government to drive digital accessibility there. Be worth a chat at some stage if you get that opportunity. But the commission had said we haven't got a formal process here. We need to create a formal process for updating the note rather than this piecemeal. Yes, it might get done. Process. So we we had a draft that we'd been participating in, um, to work with when the commission decided it needed to go to market to formalise the whole process. And Intopia was engaged to write the document, basically. So we had a starting point with that material that Greg Allchin had put together. But we also worked with the commission to say, okay, what did they want to see in it and how should it be structured? So we were in fact, we ended up drafting some of the earlier legal stuff as well, but that went through a lot of internal review and rewriting inside the commission, and we took responsibility to write the more technical side, the more standard side, the more how should organizations do this? So that process, um, took, uh, as I said, 18 months overall. And so, you know, one of the things that we did was we set up some advisory groups to two different advisory groups, one looking at the technology side and one looking at the impact on the user. So we had a some representative user representatives, people who relied on technology and having it accessible, as well as some organizations, um, you know, that represented people with disability. So we had people who sort of do the technical stuff and people who rely on on the outcome of that. Um, as two different technical advisory, two different advisory groups. The commission was also inputting into the process, particularly, as I said, on the legal side, but they were relying on us and the advisory groups to sort of write the what should be included, when should it be considered? We also went out for a public comment at one point and got quite some quite good feedback on that. Interestingly, some of the comment that came back in the public feedback was tell us exactly what to do. Well, these are guidelines and we can't tell everybody exactly what to do. They need to make that decision by themselves. But you know that that was one of the bits of feedback that was interesting but not surprising to get. We went through probably 6 or 7 drafts overall throughout that process and some restructuring, as we worked out better ways to present a better order to present it. The commission had quite a bit of input into that, and so we ended up breaking it up into three different chapters. You know, one that's more looking at the legal stuff, one that was looking at the more broadly how to and then one that final chapter that was looking at, okay, what are the standards um, from Standards Australia, from government, from industry and other things that people should be looking at to adhere to the idea of breaking it up into those three sections was that we hope as a modular set of guidance, it can be updated more frequently. And, you know, that's that's the problem with the law. Now, the law doesn't mention because it's 1992, pre-digital pre-web, unless you happen to be working in CSIRO or in university at the time, it's very hard to update the law. It's much easier to update guidance under the law. So the Commission is hopeful that it'll be able to keep this more up to date. The way that we structured this set of guidelines versus the way that the previous notes about the World Wide Web accessibility had been written, that's sort of the process that we went through.

Fair enough. And Andrew, what's been the biggest advantages from enterprise point of view that have come out of the new iteration of the guidelines? What's been the most pleasing aspect?

Fair enough. And Andrew, what's been the biggest advantages from enterprise point of view that have come out of the new iteration of the guidelines? What's been the most pleasing aspect?

I think the way that we've called it out, because a lot of people talk about the web content accessibility guidelines, which are sort of the international standard that we all start with and say, yeah, but that only applies to online services to our websites and our web services. I think the big thing here is that through this, the commissioner has called out that you know, this applies not just to anything online, with a browser interface, but to digital books, learning materials, emails, games, mobile applications, even. You know, we call that things like, you know, two factor authentication, that type of issue. Um, virtual reality, you know, extended reality, augmented reality, as we call it, digital wallets, anything that touches digital and has a digital interface of some sort to it through a screen is in scope of the DDA and calling that out so that people can't say, oh, the Web Content Accessibility guidelines are just about web. Yep. Okay. We don't need to worry about them for this. So, you know, we're also getting, you know, organizations saying, you know, we also need to look at the stuff we've got internally in our organization to support our staff, like the HR system, the payroll system, and so on. So that's that's some of the changes that we see being a big win across the board.

I think the way that we've called it out, because a lot of people talk about the web content accessibility guidelines, which are sort of the international standard that we all start with and say, yeah, but that only applies to online services to our websites and our web services. I think the big thing here is that through this, the commissioner has called out that you know, this applies not just to anything online, with a browser interface, but to digital books, learning materials, emails, games, mobile applications, even. You know, we call that things like, you know, two factor authentication, that type of issue. Um, virtual reality, you know, extended reality, augmented reality, as we call it, digital wallets, anything that touches digital and has a digital interface of some sort to it through a screen is in scope of the DDA and calling that out so that people can't say, oh, the Web Content Accessibility guidelines are just about web. Yep. Okay. We don't need to worry about them for this. So, you know, we're also getting, you know, organizations saying, you know, we also need to look at the stuff we've got internally in our organization to support our staff, like the HR system, the payroll system, and so on. So that's that's some of the changes that we see being a big win across the board.

Andrew, I'd love to focus on a bit of a blindness and low vision aspect. In particular. I want to talk about the advances in things like jaws, things like zoom text, things like Nvda, all those sort of magnification screen readers, and also guidelines around alt text and image descriptions. What's been the big things from that side of thing that people can look forward to reading about more in the guidelines, given the advances in 11 years with all those sort of little bits and pieces.

Andrew, I'd love to focus on a bit of a blindness and low vision aspect. In particular. I want to talk about the advances in things like jaws, things like zoom text, things like Nvda, all those sort of magnification screen readers, and also guidelines around alt text and image descriptions. What's been the big things from that side of thing that people can look forward to reading about more in the guidelines, given the advances in 11 years with all those sort of little bits and pieces.

A lot of that software has come a long way, and some of it's starting to use AI now, artificial intelligence built into it, which is an advantage but also a disadvantage. The other flip side of that is the way that some organizations are using plug ins to try and solve their accessibility problems that rely on artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence in that respect isn't mature enough, but from the assistive technology side of it, one of the things that we're seeing and that we've emphasized in this new guidance, is that it's not just about getting it technically right. It also has to work for users. So making sure that people or encouraging strongly encouraging people to undertake usability testing with people with with disability who are using assistive technologies. I mean, some of the organizations that we in Ethiopia talk to say, yeah, yeah, we test our stuff with Nvda, but they know what they can see on the screen so they know what is happening and should come out. Whereas if you get somebody who relies on Nvidia, for instance, to run through as a new user, if you like, then that experiences can be quite different from the tech person checking it. And they wrote it, and they know exactly what's inside it and what to expect from, you know, how the screens will put together, how the text was written, how the services are meant to be interacted with. They've got that inside knowledge. That means that they're not testing it, even though they might be running a screen reader over it. They're not testing it to the extent that means that it's usable by somebody. They're just testing that. Yeah, I'm getting the right sort of output here from what I expect, which is very, very different from doing usability testing. So one of the things that the guidelines are saying also is you've got to consider accessibility from the start of a tech project, and you've got to make sure that after you've got it technically correct, you've tested it, that it's actually usable, and then you've got to make sure that all your maintenance considers accessibility as well, because we've always seen, you know, over time, you know, little tweaks happen, pages get rewritten, an image gets changed, and the alt text is not updated, for instance. Um, you know, it still talks about on the florist site, the roses for Valentine's Day, whereas they've changed it over to chrysanthemums for Mums Day, but didn't change the the alt text saying, you know, red roses versus white chrysanthemums, that type of thing we're talking now about in these guidelines about the whole entire length of the project from conception to maintenance or even retirement. So that's from the assistive tech perspective. That becomes important that those considerations are considered early, not just the technical risk considerations, but then those, um, assistive tech are tested not just by somebody who knows what the product should do, but by people who are going to rely on using that assistive tech to interact with that organization.

A lot of that software has come a long way, and some of it's starting to use AI now, artificial intelligence built into it, which is an advantage but also a disadvantage. The other flip side of that is the way that some organizations are using plug ins to try and solve their accessibility problems that rely on artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence in that respect isn't mature enough, but from the assistive technology side of it, one of the things that we're seeing and that we've emphasized in this new guidance, is that it's not just about getting it technically right. It also has to work for users. So making sure that people or encouraging strongly encouraging people to undertake usability testing with people with with disability who are using assistive technologies. I mean, some of the organizations that we in Ethiopia talk to say, yeah, yeah, we test our stuff with Nvda, but they know what they can see on the screen so they know what is happening and should come out. Whereas if you get somebody who relies on Nvidia, for instance, to run through as a new user, if you like, then that experiences can be quite different from the tech person checking it. And they wrote it, and they know exactly what's inside it and what to expect from, you know, how the screens will put together, how the text was written, how the services are meant to be interacted with. They've got that inside knowledge. That means that they're not testing it, even though they might be running a screen reader over it. They're not testing it to the extent that means that it's usable by somebody. They're just testing that. Yeah, I'm getting the right sort of output here from what I expect, which is very, very different from doing usability testing. So one of the things that the guidelines are saying also is you've got to consider accessibility from the start of a tech project, and you've got to make sure that after you've got it technically correct, you've tested it, that it's actually usable, and then you've got to make sure that all your maintenance considers accessibility as well, because we've always seen, you know, over time, you know, little tweaks happen, pages get rewritten, an image gets changed, and the alt text is not updated, for instance. Um, you know, it still talks about on the florist site, the roses for Valentine's Day, whereas they've changed it over to chrysanthemums for Mums Day, but didn't change the the alt text saying, you know, red roses versus white chrysanthemums, that type of thing we're talking now about in these guidelines about the whole entire length of the project from conception to maintenance or even retirement. So that's from the assistive tech perspective. That becomes important that those considerations are considered early, not just the technical risk considerations, but then those, um, assistive tech are tested not just by somebody who knows what the product should do, but by people who are going to rely on using that assistive tech to interact with that organization.

I'd love to touch back on that discussion you're having before, about the increased modularity and the increased flexibility of these new guidelines in terms of being more receptive and being able to react in quicker time to advances in digital access, in assistive technology and technology more broadly, really. So from your perspective, what's the biggest things for people to be aware of? Organizations in charge of things like these guidelines to be aware of in upcoming months and years relating to these areas of accessibility?

I'd love to touch back on that discussion you're having before, about the increased modularity and the increased flexibility of these new guidelines in terms of being more receptive and being able to react in quicker time to advances in digital access, in assistive technology and technology more broadly, really. So from your perspective, what's the biggest things for people to be aware of? Organizations in charge of things like these guidelines to be aware of in upcoming months and years relating to these areas of accessibility?

Australia tends not to develop too many standards for accessibility through standards Australia. What we tend to do, because we're a small player internationally is adopt some of the international standards. And so one of the standards that we adopted back in 2016 for the first time was something called Accessibility requirements for ICT Products and Services. So that's a standard that has gone through various iterations under Standards Australia through adoption. And we've updated that adoption half a dozen times, probably maybe five times since we first adopted it, because the Europeans have updated their version. So by having that in a separate chapter in this document means that we can refer to the latest versions of this which are going to stand up, make things more accessible, because rather than relying on something that might have been hardwired, if you like, into the guidelines, hopefully, you know, those chapters that are about best practice can be updated more frequently as practice changes and expectations change. But then the chapters that refer to both government standards and international standards that we've adopted, that should be the underpinning for what people meet, as a minimum, will also be updated on a regular basis so that we can make sure that those can be kept current rather than referring to wcaG two, for instance, which has gone through wcaG 2.1 and a wcaG 2.2 over the last ten years as well. And, you know, the note wasn't kept up to date because of the way it was written. So that modularity, we hope, will enable the Commission to keep this current.

Australia tends not to develop too many standards for accessibility through standards Australia. What we tend to do, because we're a small player internationally is adopt some of the international standards. And so one of the standards that we adopted back in 2016 for the first time was something called Accessibility requirements for ICT Products and Services. So that's a standard that has gone through various iterations under Standards Australia through adoption. And we've updated that adoption half a dozen times, probably maybe five times since we first adopted it, because the Europeans have updated their version. So by having that in a separate chapter in this document means that we can refer to the latest versions of this which are going to stand up, make things more accessible, because rather than relying on something that might have been hardwired, if you like, into the guidelines, hopefully, you know, those chapters that are about best practice can be updated more frequently as practice changes and expectations change. But then the chapters that refer to both government standards and international standards that we've adopted, that should be the underpinning for what people meet, as a minimum, will also be updated on a regular basis so that we can make sure that those can be kept current rather than referring to wcaG two, for instance, which has gone through wcaG 2.1 and a wcaG 2.2 over the last ten years as well. And, you know, the note wasn't kept up to date because of the way it was written. So that modularity, we hope, will enable the Commission to keep this current.

Now, finally, Andrew, what's the best way for people to find out more about the guidelines or have a look through some other resources that are available for people through intopia around digital accessibility.

Now, finally, Andrew, what's the best way for people to find out more about the guidelines or have a look through some other resources that are available for people through intopia around digital accessibility.

So in conjunction with the Commission, we put together a page of resources, and that page of resources would allow people to go and actually listen to Rosemary, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, talking about the guidelines on the day that they were released. We ran a webinar. We then ran a webinar about a month later asking people to come and ask some questions, because we didn't have the time in the first webinar to do that. So both of those are recorded and are available from our resources page at intopia. That's probably the best starting point, and it points to the commissioner's press release, as well as to the guidelines as well as to some other resources. So that's probably the best place to go and have a look. But if you go straight to the Human Rights Commission's homepage and go to disability rights, you'll find the guidelines themselves there. And they've been published in HTML, in word and in PDF in an accessible well as accessible as PDF can be and accessible PDF. So depending on whether people want to download and have a print copy, or they want to read them online and how they want to do that, there's three different formats there for people to read.

So in conjunction with the Commission, we put together a page of resources, and that page of resources would allow people to go and actually listen to Rosemary, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, talking about the guidelines on the day that they were released. We ran a webinar. We then ran a webinar about a month later asking people to come and ask some questions, because we didn't have the time in the first webinar to do that. So both of those are recorded and are available from our resources page at intopia. That's probably the best starting point, and it points to the commissioner's press release, as well as to the guidelines as well as to some other resources. So that's probably the best place to go and have a look. But if you go straight to the Human Rights Commission's homepage and go to disability rights, you'll find the guidelines themselves there. And they've been published in HTML, in word and in PDF in an accessible well as accessible as PDF can be and accessible PDF. So depending on whether people want to download and have a print copy, or they want to read them online and how they want to do that, there's three different formats there for people to read.

Perfect. Well, I've been speaking today with Andrew Arch, principal digital accessibility consultant at Intopia, about the guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services. Andrew, thank you very much for your time today. It's been great to catch up with you and have a chat about the guidelines.

Perfect. Well, I've been speaking today with Andrew Arch, principal digital accessibility consultant at Intopia, about the guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services. Andrew, thank you very much for your time today. It's been great to catch up with you and have a chat about the guidelines.

Great, and hopefully we can do something similar in the future.

Great, and hopefully we can do something similar in the future.