Accessibility Update for the Australian Govt — Update

[Gruden]

Last Wednesday saw Gruden and Sitecore co-host an Accessibility Update seminar at the National Library in Canberra (previously). The event was well-attended with representatives from web teams from a range of government agencies.

We opened with an update from Jacqui van Teulingen, Director of Web Policy at AGIMO, with an overview of the current status of the National Transition Strategy (slides — PDF format, 324kb). The team have recently completed a survey of agencies to assess compliance status and needs for transition; we look forward to the release of their report.

Peter Howard, Digital Strategist at Gruden, followed with a case study on AusTender’s transition process (transcript).

This was followed by Mark Stanton, Technical Director at Gruden, with a talk on achieving Sustainable Accessibility (transcript).

Finally, Greg Baxter, Product Evangelist at Sitecore, presented a demonstration of the Sitecore CMS’s ability to include accessibility rules within the authoring workflow (slides — PPT format, 4.3MB).

The seminar closed with a Q&A session with the panel, which included discussions about the NTS; about how accessibility can be built into authorship, balancing tools and workflows with education; and about challenges facing agencies with respect to complex sites and document libraries.

Thanks to all who attended. Should anyone wish to discuss their own particular challenges further, the teams at Gruden and at Sitecore would be happy to take your call.



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