As the rest of the world struggles to get over the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia has managed to escape the worst of it. However, there is another major hurdle on the horizon – the vaccine rollout. While it seems that every country has had their fair share of struggle in this department, Australia’s rollout shut out its most vulnerable, the disabled community, specifically, the vision-impaired.

How has the Government failed to accommodate the vision-impaired community?

The inability of people in authority to understand the scope of disability as well as full accessibility has culminated in a number of issues. At the end of March, blind and low-vision Australians were unintentionally left out of the vaccination process because the Government’s clinic finder and eligibility checker website did not meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG); this is according to Vision Australia, Australia’s largest provider of low-vision services.

The website’s purpose is to check a person’s eligibility for the vaccine and subsequently, link them with a health clinic participating in the rollout. However, large portions of the site have significant accessibility issues including the following:

• Poor colour contrast ratios 

• • • This can distort a vision-impaired person’s ability to receive the information visually.

• Excessive use of alt text

• • • This presents difficulty for people who use screen readers as too much description can make the content confusing.

• Incompatibility with screen reading software

• • People who rely on screen reading software to receive information cannot access portions of the site.

These issues don’t only affect the obvious (accessibility), but it also harms the independence of the disabled people in Australia, a community that has already been hit hard during the pandemic. With these problems, a loss of both information and access is also at stake, interfering with a person’s ability to lead their own life.

Apart from being unfair to a section of Australia’s population, it also breaches Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 which requires organisations to provide equal access to people with disabilities (inclusive of websites and other digital platforms).

The Government’s response

While it seems that accessibility with the clinic finder and eligibility checker website was an after-thought rather than a priority in its development, the Government has amended these issues. Furthermore, they will now engage an external agency (the Government was using the WCAG compliance test previously) that will conduct a  broader audit across the website. Additionally, they will also seek input from Vision Australia to improve the website accordingly. While it is commendable that the necessary improvements and updates are being hastily made, this should not have happened in the first place. Accessibility for the disabled community is a priority, not an update to be made after launching.

It is understandable that government websites have glitches, especially those that were hastily developed for public health safety (e.g. the  COVIDSafe app). The Government knew for months that there would eventually be a need to develop websites that supported the national vaccine rollout. With ample time, limitless resources and a knowledgeable base of consultants like Vision Australia, a clinic finder and eligibility checker website should not isolate people with special needs in Australia.

Within your own business, regardless of the industry, accessibility consultancy is just as important. Contact our Access Link Consulting team for more information on making your business’ physical property accessible.