WRITTEN ON October 22nd, 2004 BY Ruth Loebl, RNIB AND STORED IN Across the Board
Wouldn’t it be better if e-enabled public services were really designed for all? The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), e-Gif, European Directives on procurement and the new Disability Bill mandate accessibility in various aspects of procurement and delivery of public functions and services (and employment), but we are a long way from changing practical attitudes and assumptions.
For example, in an earlier post How about systems we can use and data access standards we can trust?, Philip Virgo writes about “keys the size of pennies, a big joy-stick not a mouse and a great big screen with voice-over confirmation.” He then carries on to write about secure identity verification so that others can act for us.
It makes little sense to provide e-services that significant sectors of the population cannot use independently. Government estimates suggest that there are around two million people in the UK with a sight problem, and fewer than 1 in 100 of them develop their sight problems as children – most people start to lose their sight with age. Around one in five people of working age are considered by the Government and by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) to be “disabled” (although not all of these people will have impairments that inhibit their use of electronic interfaces). Beyond working age, the incidence of disability will increase. We’re talking about a lot of people. More likely than not, it will include every one of us.
I favour a three-step program:
– inclusion of accessibility statements in procurement, within system specifications and Invitations to Tender
– the use of recognised and agreed guidelines and standards in system design, development and testing
– acceptance testing to include objective and repeatable accessibility compliance testing.
This approach seems to be gaining acceptance for websites and services delivered by HTML. Other interfaces are becoming more common, such as kiosks, public access terminals and digital TV. Voting machines are not far away. It is critical to build in accessibility from the start, rather than trying to bolt it on to something that was never designed to take account of the requirements of older or disabled people. That way, when I want to look up my health records while waiting in the GP’s surgery, or renew my bus pass, or apply for my TV licence reduction, I won’t have to ask my grandchildren to do it for me.
4 Responses to “e-Government for all?”
Indeed. We want *everything* based on user need.
Sorry, but I’m afraid we do not (or at least I do not).
I want everything based on a business case.
So I have to consider what happens when there is no business case for 10% of the population. Would I ignore them, cancel the project, or cancel another project to release more money to throw at it.
If I throw more money at it and address 95% of he population, what do I do about the remaining 5%?
And so on.
This route is going nowhere if the aim is to provde e-gov for all.
We need a different approach.
Oops – missed off the final point.
If we want both a viable business case, and e-gov for all (which is what I want, for one)- then we need to disconnect the two of them.
i.e. Let the project sponsor look after managing the business case, and address all the audiences they need to make the case, andtake repsonsibility for achieving the promised benefits.
And treat “access for all” as a different problem.
Firstly, I would like to support Ruth’s proposed approach to improving accessibility.
But while I agree that it will help to move things forward in the right direction, I don’t believe it will move things far enough.
It seems to me that the end result will be much as it is today – that each project decides how much it is prepared to invest in extending accessibility beyond a standard mass audience.
There is clearly a case that poor sight should be one of the considerations. Pushing the envelope that far is a good thing, and more inclusive, but it still falls short of “e-government for all”.
It seems to me that if we are going to get near to that dream, then tuning the current approach is not going to work. No project sponsor is going to be able to make a business case for adapting enough interfaces to the needs of sufficient different groups.
There has already been discussion on the need to base e-government on a clear business case.
Wouldn’t it be better if acessibility decisions could be based on user need, rather than the priorities of project sponsors.