I found out last week that Google had recently integrated YouTube with Google’s speech-text technology, allowing videos displayed on YouTube to have their captions and transcripts automatically generated. In addition, these captions and transcripts can then be translated, via Google’s text translation system, and displayed on the video in any supported language. The transcript can…
Jack Pickard has written an excellent post regarding How should the UK public sector adopt WCAG 2.0? which touches on many of the themes required for adoption in Australia. If you were thinking about shifting your Australian government site to a WCAG 2.0 level of accessibility, this is welcome contribution to the discussion. Sometimes I…
Some things are better communicated by song than words, for example the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0 (WCAG2). If you’re struggling to get your department to understand the importance and detail of the WCAG 2.0 standard, why not send them this video. Note that WCAG 2.0 has not, to my knowledge, been endorsed yet…
I’ve posted previously about whether it is time for government departments still using the nine-year old Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade to a more modern web browser. This topic has become a matter of political interest in the UK, raised in a question to British Parliamentary Ministers last week and reported in an article…
Does your organisation keep an eye on current browser standards and adoption rates? If not it’s worth surveying the market a few times each year to ensure that your web standards continue to align with market trends. Below is a quick whip around the market, looking at the main browsers in use today. Internet ExplorerMicrosoft…
The complexity of screens and the registration and sign-in processes for some Australian egovernment (online) services disturbs me. In the commercial world I lived by a simple rule of thumb, on average each hurdle I erected between a customer and their goal reduced the overall number of customers who reached their goal by 30%. To…
I’ve previously applauded the efforts of the Human Rights Commissioner to draw attention to government websites who provide inaccessible content via WebWatch. Even where an agency’s overall site may be designed according to accessibility guidelines, when certain key information is presented only in PDF format, this information can be inaccessible. However I’ve also been a…
Jakob Nielsen, often considered one of the world’s leading thinkers on usability, has discussed the mobile web in his latest Alertbox monthly update, equalling the state of mobile websites today as similar to the state of the desktop internet in 1998. I tend to agree that for many organisations this is the case, with Nielsen’s…
While I’ve not yet seen an official statement confirming whether Australian government will support the second version of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), there has been a report released by UsabilityOne reviewing 12 Federal Government websites against the guidelines. The Accessibility Industry Report found a number of issues across the sites that…
WebAim is currently conducting a survey looking at the usage of screen readers and the personal experiences of their users. If you’re a user of a screen reader, or are interested in accessibility for vision-impaired people and use of screen readers (as all government web and intranet managers should be), the survey is available from…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
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