Norm Coombs: Welcome to EASI's regular Webcast. We have a very special Webcast today and we hope it will be the first of a regular series. Today we're doing a Webcast about Australia. And it all goes well, we're going to try to have some international Webcasts every month. Two months at the most. And take a look at what's happening in adaptive computing in other countries in general and especially as it relates to education.

Before we get to that, let me say Hi to my man at the controls, Dick. How are you Dick?

Dick Banks: Fine Norm. I'm really thrilled to be a part of the Webcast and I think it's an exciting thing to spread our wings so to speak, and become involved internationally. We've had a number of our students in our workshops from overseas. But I think it gives the opportunity to people around the world to check what's going on as far as accessibility is concerned around the world. So I'm delighted to be here and I'm delighted to have the guests that we have.

Well, you know, we've been building a special relationship with Australia for nearly a year now. One of our students who took just about all of our courses and who is now involved in helping teach several of them. Her name is Denise Wood: and before I let her tell a little bit more about where she teaches, let me tell you that when she's not teaching for EASI or the university, she has a plot of land out in the country and she takes care of endangered animals. Animals that have been sick or hurt and so she's got a whole slew of Possums, Kangaroos and I don't know what else.

So Denise, how are you? Say hello to our audience. Tell us a little bit about where you teach and introduce our guest for us please?

Denise Wood: Thank you Norm. And thank you for that wonderful introduction, and hello to everyone from Australia. And it's my very great privilege to be talking with you, Norm and Dick and our special guest, Bruce Maguire from the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

Just by way of introduction, I work for the University of South Australia, which is a multi-campus university that has campuses distributed around South Australia. My role is as the director of our program, which is a Bachelors of Arts in Multimedia Studies. But in addition to that, I've been playing a very active role in assisting this University to meet it's requirements in terms of accessibility.

Norm Coombs: You know Denise, I always thought USA always meant United States of America. Now I find out it's the University of South Australia.

Denise Wood: That's an interesting acronym. In fact, we abbreviate it as UniSA, but I could see the acronym could work as USA as well. That's an interesting observation. Thanks Norm.

Yes, I've been playing an active role in accessibility and I've been liaising with many organizations that share the same goal I guess in terms of making sure that our IT environments and in particular our online teaching and learning for flexible delivery is accessible for all our students and, indeed, for our staff.

And Bruce Maguire from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, has a particular interest and responsibility in that area as well. I'll leave Bruce to explain a little bit more about the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission. But it is a national statutory government body and I believe it was established in 1986. And it is responsible for the administration of the Racial Discrimination Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and of particular interest to us today, the Disability Discrimination Act of 1992. So, I'll hand it over to Bruce to perhaps give us a little more background on his role in the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

Thank you Bruce.

Bruce Maguire: Thanks Denise, and hello Norm, hello Dick and hello to everyone that is listening to this Webcast wherever you are.

Well Denise, you've done a very good job of summarizing the role of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission . So I'll just provide a little more background, first of all noting that Australia is a Federation, comprising six states and two territories. So we have both state laws and federal laws, or commonwealth laws.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission is a body that was set up by the commonwealth, the federal government, to administer the various pieces of human rights legislation that exist in Australia. And also with the responsibility for the international human rights treaties, to which Australia is a signatory.

Now Denise mentioned the Racial Discrimination Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and of particular relevance for our discussion today, the Disability Discrimination Act, which was passed by the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia in 1992. And under that act it is unlawful for individuals and organizations, companies, government departments, to discriminate against people in certain specific areas on the grounds of disability. Those areas include employment, education, access to premises, the administration of commonwealth laws, programs and in the provision of goods and services.

So the Act is based on this notion of discrimination and unlawful discrimination. And it has a fairly broad definition of disability and a very general concept of discrimination based on the notion of less favorable treatment. And although the legislation was, to some extent, modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act, in other areas it is quite different.

And so for example, my understanding is that at least in certain areas, if you want to establish a discrimination complaint under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's first necessary to establish that the area that your concerned about comes under the definition of public accommodation. So, for example, I think that was one of the issues that came up in connection with discrimination the provision of surfers on the Internet. Dick or Norm, you might be able to sort of elaborate or correct me if I'm wrong.

But under the Australian legislation if an organization is providing a good or service, in whatever area that good or service is being provided, then it is automatically covered by the Disability Discrimination Act.

The Human Rights Commission as I said is responsible for administering the Disability Discrimination Act and any of the other pieces of human rights discrimination legislation. However the Commission does not have legal powers to force people to comply. Only the courts have that power. So the Commission is not a policeman. It is a body that I guess is charged fundamentally with promoting the objectives of the act which are to eliminate discrimination as far as possible. And so we work with industry groups, to help them better understand their responsibilities and obligations under the legislation. And also we work with people with disabilities themselves to assist them to understand the legislation and ways in which they can use it to bring about change for them as individuals and for the community generally. I'll leave it there and answer any specific questions that Dick or Norm might have.

Norm Coombs: Two areas that I had questions. One, does it make any specific references to computers, information technology type things? Or does that come under a generic umbrella? And secondly, you did mention education, so I guess it does relate specifically to education.

Bruce Maguire: The act itself doesn't specifically mention computers or information technology. It talks about discrimination in the provision of goods and services and specifically it's a provision of education. So that, as you said, that computers and technology and any other type of delivery of curricula materials or design of courses or you know whatever are also covered by the act.

Denise Wood: Bruce, perhaps if we could give a tangible example of how the Act has been applied in the case of discrimination with Web accessibility. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about the Sydney Olympics case, because that really has set a precedent, hasn't it? Not only for Australia but I think, the world.

Bruce Maguire: Yes, well I guess I perpetrated this particular issue in that before I started working for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, I actually lodged a complaint against the Sydney organizing committee for the Olympic games in 1999. Alleging firstly that they were discriminating against me as a blind person because they would not provide the ticket book for the Sydney 2000 Olympics in Braille. And secondly, that the Website, the Sydney Olympics Website was inaccessible in certain key respects because it didn't follow acceptable principles of universal Web design. And that particular complaint was opposed vigorously by the organizing committee of the Olympic Games, And in retrospect, that is probably one of the reasons that it attracted so much attention. But the end result of that was that there was a very clear decision by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission that, in fact, the Website was discriminatory and since then there have been a number of complaints about inaccessible Websites and the information that's provided on those Websites in accessible formats. For example there have been a number of complaints about inaccessible PDF documents. So that’s some examples of how the Act is used in practice.

There's also other examples of where students with physical disabilities have lodged disability discrimination complaints against schools because of inaccessible classrooms. I guess the, you know, the variety of complaints that can be lodged under our legislation is quite considerable.

Norm Coombs: Well, of course Bruce, everybody disability related on the Internet heard about the Olympic site in Sydney. I haven't met you before but you talk with a very quiet and subdued and rationale tone of voice. I can't imagine you being a rebel rouser. But thank you for blazing the trail.

Bruce Maguire: I suppose if was one of those things that kinda happened. When I first lodged the complaint I didn't anticipate that it would develop in the way that it did. Because it seemed to me to be quite a reasonable request to make the Website accessible. It came as quite a surprise when they fought it so vigorously. And I suppose it became a matter of principle eventually that it be pursued.

Dick Banks: Is there a level of compliance Bruce, that is standard or are you measuring up to anything when the courts so to speak, evaluating whether a site is compliant or not? I mean are you using WAI guidelines or how does that work?

Bruce Maguire: A couple of points. Firstly, in terms of the Disability Discrimination Act. It's primarily compliance based. (inaudible) It does allow for standards to be developed in certain areas. So if an individual finds that they can't access a Website, for whatever reason, they can lodge an individual complaint under the Disability Discrimination Act. And that complaint is handled on an individual basis. So, approach to issues of compliance is on the lines of, we regard the WAI guidelines as providing the international benchmark for Web accessibility.

What we say to companies or organization is that they should aim to achieve the greatest compliance that they can and that the kind of compliance, the less chance that their site will be inaccessible to any particular individual. However we also say that just because a Website might have single, double A, or even triple A compliance, it doesn't mean that every person with a disability is going to be able to access their Website. And so therefore doesn't mean that there will no chance of a complaint being lodged. So our approach, in general, is to recommend that people do what they can do to attain the highest level of compliance if they can. But we are about seeking improvements, you know, seeking change. We recognize that it might take time for a Website for example, to move from total non-compliance to triple A compliance. And so we wouldn't be saying that you know (inaudible)

Dick Banks: Do you find the judiciary there seems to be favorable towards access issue and how that's turning out.

Bruce Maguire: Difficult to make general statements about that. I think, in general, in general terms I could say yes, although it does depend a little bit on the particular case and on the particular judge who happens to be hearing it.

A lot of the complaints that are lodged under our legislation get conciliated before they reach the level of the judiciary. The Commission has a conciliation role to play. And we try, you know, as much as we can, to conciliate complaints between the parties rather than having the matter decided by the court. But when a complaint, does proceed to the judicial level, one issue that is taken into account in it's defense, that is specifically provided for in the act a defense against a complaint of discrimination is the notion of unjustifiable hardship. And so for example, an information provider might say that for them to make their Website accessible or provide information in Braille, or whatever it happens to be, may pose an unjustifiable hardship. Or I think using the language of US Section 508, undue burden on them. And, courts, take that into account. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be any hardship at all. But when a hardship becomes unjustifiable I think, is a matter for interpretation. And certainly in areas such as access to information there isn't a lot of case law on the area so the law or the case law is still very much evolving.

Denise Wood: Bruce, one of the concerns, I think, facing most higher education institutions around Australia is that many of their Websites have sort of grown ad hoc over a long period of time. And often there are several servers located on machines and individual offices so, you know, there is no centralized way of necessarily monitoring what's coming under the domain of that particular university. How would an organization, I mean I assume from the comments you've made that organizations are required to retrofit the existing Website if they’re non-compliant. How would the Commission regard a situation where, you know, an organization just simply was not aware of the extent of non-compliance because of these Web server hidden and tucked away.

Bruce Maguire: Well, yeah, firstly, the Disability Discrimination Act doesn't just apply to new Websites. Anymore than it applies just to new shops of offices or whatever. However there are obviously issues involved in sort of retrofitting Websites, retrofitting buildings and converting all your existing documents from an inaccessible format into an accessible format. However, we recognize that there are other issues that organizations have you know for example, one project we've been involved with the last couple of years is working with the banking or financial industry to develop best practice standards for making electronic banking services accessible. Including access to automatic teller machines.

Now there's thousands of automatic teller machines spread throughout the country. Virtually none of them are accessible. And making those machines accessible is something that can only happen over time.

In the specific case of university Websites, yeah, universities are fairly disorganized or de-centralized organizations and in some ways, I think there's a sense in which the nature of academic culture actually promote this and so for example, a number of academics would not take kindly to being told that there page has to comply with a certain standards because they say it limits there academic freedom. Although a number of lecturers, instead of using the university servers, setup their own homepage on another external server. It might be because it is more cost effective or because they happen to have some relationship with that external service provider or for a whole host of reasons. And so the university whilst it might have a Web administration or Web administrator, may be completely unaware of the extent of Web pages that exist within various departments and faculty of the university. (inaudible) we tend to call our universities also include what are known or or called colleges in the US.

So, we recognize that while in an ideal world all pages on a university Website would comply with the policies that exist at the highest level in the university, which may well say, that the university’s Website shall comply with WAI guidelines, however in fact, it doesn't. It doesn't work like that and whenever it doesn't then universities run the risk of individuals lodging a complaint.

Dick Banks: Does the Commission recommend any way of checking. For instance I know that if I wanted to comply I might ask the Commission if there were any standards that I make be directed to. Do you recommend they use Bobby or any of the Web accessibility checkers that are prevalent on the Web now? How do you advise people who asked the question?

Bruce Maguire: We certainly recommend that the people use Web validation tools such as Bobby and the various plugins that exist now for a number of the Web authoring tools. However, we're also careful to emphasize that the use of software validation doesn't substitute for human usability testing and human expertise. So we would encourage Web designers to involve users with disabilities as part of their testing. Because we don't see accessibility as being totally separate from usability. So we encourage Web designers, particularly those with a little more, the larger Web pages, you know, the Websites such as universities to integrate disability into their overall regime of usability testing. And so therefore to involve humans in the actual testing process.

Denise Wood: Bruce of course WAI not only has the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it also provides guidelines for user agents and also for the authoring tools themselves. And given many organizations and certainly universities do develop in-house authoring systems does the Commission monitor how those are developed or again, does it get back to individual complaints? So it makes better sense for an organization to ensure it's authoring environment is going to create compliant pages to minimize the risk of a complaint being lodged.

Bruce Maguire: That's essentially correct. The policy unit of the Commission where I work, the disability rights unit, has three and a half staff members. And so there are substantial limits to what we can do in the way of kind of a routine monitoring. So what we try to do is to work proactively with various sectors and various industry groups and to help them at a sector level, an industry level, develop policies and standards and codes of practice.

Our involvement, our direct involvement with the higher education sector, is fairly recent in that earlier this year we organized a national forum, a one day forum to bring all of the universities around Australia together to talk about the increasing problems that students with print disabilities are facing in getting access to course material. Including online course materials. And out of that forum is developing a process for bringing the sector together to develop policies and procedures. So I think in the months, probably years, ahead we will have more involvement with the higher education sector directly. And so I think out of that involvement will come initiatives to look at for example, developing guidelines for authoring tools. But it's not so that's sort of the short answer in getting back to the first part of your question is that we don't engage in routine sort of monitoring. We prefer to work with industry groups and I guess get those industry groups to the point where they can do their own monitoring and policy work.

Denise Wood: Bruce, do you have a sense of the response from Australian higher education institutions? As you know we have planned another Webcast in which, and we have had good response, we've got about fourteen or fifteen representatives from higher education institutions around Australia, so hopefully that's indicative of the interest. Do you have a sense of how other institutions are responding?

Bruce Maguire: I think that there's a varied response. I think perhaps in general, a general point, we could say that universities don't like negative publicity. And they don't like having to go to court to defend a legal action. However, the way in which those kind of general principles are applied varies a lot from institution to institution. So some institutions are much more proactive than others in terms of developing ways of providing course materials to students with print disabilities, for example.

Integrating the provision of services for students with disabilities into the mainstream service provision structure or, on the one hand, leading or leading disability as part of a specialized access and equity unit on the other hand. To take a specific for instance, one university for example, the library of that university if they upgrade their catalog system, or if they develop an electronic reserve system don't give much if any thought of how that's going to impact students with disabilities because they think if there disabilities, the disability unit will look after that. Other universities say well the library exists for students, so therefore library systems have to take account of the needs of students with disabilities. And universities who take that point of view are more likely to understand the importance of universal design principles. So that systems that accommodate the needs of students with disabilities are more likely to be useable for everybody.

So I think there is that there is a very varied response within an overall philosophy that says well universities exist for all sections of the community and so ideologically at any rate, universities have a responsibility to be inclusive.

Norm Coombs: Well,we're glad to see that the universities are taking it seriously. As you know EASI teaches some online courses. But what's happening in American universities is probably now more than half of the classroom courses have some material on the Web and maybe conduct part of the class on the Web. So that it's no longer strictly speaking a distance learning activity.

Denise, is that kind of merger happening in Australia too?

Denise Wood: Yes, that's right Norm. I think in general the trend around Australia has been to use the term flexible teaching and learning or flexible delivery to show that there is a convergence, if you like, of external delivery. And the point that convergence really is the online technology. We see no reason for disadvantaging internal students by not providing them with the same access to online teaching and learning materials which we know are a very powerful medium for education.

Norm Coombs: I don't know if Dick remembers. This must be six to ten years ago. He and I played around with trying to do some online learning on general computing things for mainstream people. We called our fledgling company, now long dead, Flex Learn.

Dick Banks: Yes and I remember it well Norm. It was ahead of its time but I think even here, in our local college. All freshman students now receive a laptop and at least 30 to 40 percent of even in-house education has a Web component. And I really think that's going to be the norm. I think it may take a while but probably not as long as we think before that becomes a regular part of education period and goodness knows it's probably even going to work it's way on down into K-12 education as well.

Bruce Maguire: Thanks Dick. It's interesting that you mentioned K-12 systems. One of the issues that's issues that's of interest here, is the fact that in many cases, blind or visually impaired students arrive at universities if you've gone through the k-12 system, very poorly equipped in terms of technology hardware, but also in terms of the skills to use technology. So, for example, I arrive at a university and I don't know how to use a screen reader. I don't know how to use email. Don't know how to browse a library catalog. And the dilemma that poses for universities. They don't normally teach those kinds of things to other students. And sometimes material is inaccessible to particular students, not because on any inherent inaccessibility of the material, but simply because they don't have the required skills in order to use their screen reader for example.

Norm Coombs: Well probably a month from when we broadcast this, we'll be having either then or not to long after that, another Australian Webcast dealing with more specifically with education. Denise has been working on it. Denise, do you want to give a little preview of that and then make sure that you hit the major things that you wanted to cover today with Bruce?

Denise Wood: Yes, sure Norm. As I mentioned earlier in this Webcast, we've had excellent response from the universities really around Australia. So we, and a range of different representatives, so you know we've got some who are disability liaison officers. We've got others who are academics. We've got Webmasters. We've got people concerned with setting policies. So it should be an interesting mix of people all sharing one common goal. I think the general response has been one of commitment to ensuring that all online materials are accessible.

I just wonder leading on from that. There has been a lot of focus, particularly around Australian universities, on online teaching and learning but perhaps not as much on some of the other IT related ways of providing educational material. You touched on that Bruce earlier in talking about the print disabilities.

Presumably the same principles would apply whether materials were being delivered on a CD or by interactive kiosks or for any of those kinds of technologies.

Bruce Maguire: That's right. I suppose partly because of the way our legislation is framed it doesn't distinguish between different technologies. So if a student with a disability is being treated less favorably then, in the way it is being prevented and if, for example, it's being presented on a CD, that they're not able to access if it's being presented in a .PDF file they are not able to access, then they can lodge a complaint. They can acknowledge discrimination. So certainly it's not just in online delivery. It's right across the board.

Denise Wood: Yes, and this probably leads into what will come up in the next Webcast, is that issue of .PDF files, because it's one that I think everyone is grappling with. You mentioned that different universities are responding in different ways in terms of how they handle E-reserve and I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind elaborating on what some of the issues are in relation to the way they in which E-reserves have been set up using PDF format.

Bruce Maguire: Well, I'll begin with a general statement which is that in our view PDF is an inaccessible format despite the fact that Adobe has done considerable work. And despite the fact that some individuals can access some PDF files in some circumstances. Having said that though, it is a fairly complex area. We're getting an increasing number of inquiries from organizations not just educational institutions, who are grappling with this issue of how they make information available to customers and clients.

You know one of the things that some of the universities are doing now is providing this, you know, electronic reserve material where they will scan journal articles and book chapters and make them available in image only PDF that is, they don't apply optical character recognition to the scanned books or articles, so that students can download and print the PDF files.

Now there are general issues about the accessibility of those documents. I mean for example, if one of those PDF files happens to be a mathematics text on advanced Calculus, then whether the student attempts to scan that themselves or the library scans it and gives them an electronic non PDF version or whether they get a PDF version is probably going to make little difference in terms of the way accessibility of that material.

On the other hand, if you take a history text, then or another type of text that is essentially text based, that is non-graphical then scanning and optical character recognizing documents certainly can provide access.

But one of the things that we've observed is things like when a library is scanning a journal article, they will do it in such a way that on some pages you get the last few words of the opposite page. So, for example, you're scanning page 5, which is a right hand page the way they position it on the glass of the scanner or photo copier, or however they scan it, is such that you also get the last few words of each line page 4. So, if you take the PDF file that results from that and run it through an optical character recognition program, the results will be extremely garbled. And that's not because of a fault in the PDF file, as much as it is because of a fault in how the material was scanned.

So the issue of.. So it's not simply about PDF, it's about PDF produced according to inappropriate procedures. And so I think that perhaps we get an extra level of complexity. And I think it's one that universities are only just starting to grapple with. And it goes back to a comment I made earlier about some universities take the view that well, if it's disability, then it's the disability unit. Whereas other universities take the view, well, if we're going to have procedures, then we need to make sure they're designed in such a way that they facilitate access, rather than restricting access. And a university, for example, that doesn't have a procedure or a policy which is when you're scanning an article to be put onto e-reserve, make sure that you only get complete lines of text or one page at a time.

We're certainly aware of cases where students have been unable to access material at all, simply because of inappropriate production procedures on the part of the university.

Denise Wood: I think probably one final point, Bruce, have you got any sense of the affect level of students, particularly in the higher education sector at the moment. I mean sometimes we hear talk that the momentum increasing probably because of awareness raising, that they are preparing to take action against non-compliance. One would hope that it never gets to that point of escalation. But do you have any sense of what the current feeling is amongst the student population?

Bruce Maguire: There is certainly an increasing number of both formal and informal complaints being brought against universities by students who are blind or visually impaired, or who have other types of print disabilities.

There is... When we were doing the work preparing for our forum on tertiary materials that I mentioned earlier. One of the things that came through very, very strongly was the enormous physical, mental and emotional stress that many students who are blind or visually impaired, are working under at universities. Many of those students don't lodge complaints because they're just so stressed generally and the idea of being involved in what is ultimately an adversarial process is just something that they wouldn't be able to contemplate.

Denise Wood: Well, I'd like to thank you so much Bruce, for joining us today and sharing your knowledge and understanding of the Australian situation with regard to accessibility with Norm and with Dick. As I've mentioned before, we will be having another Webcast involving participants from institutions around Australia and we're very fortunate that Bruce has agreed to join us on that occasion as well.

But I wonder Bruce whether you could share the information about how to contact you, for example, your e-mail address etc.

Bruce Maguire: Thanks Denise. Before I do that let me thank for allowing me to participate today. It has certainly been a very invaluable experience from my perspective and we're always keen to share ideas and learn from the experiences and perspectives of others and I'm very happy to receive e-mails from people who have comments or suggestions or just want to correspond about issues.

My e-mail address is brucemaguire@humanrights.gov.au and the Human Rights Website is http://www.humanrights.gov.au .

So I thank you again Denise. I've certainly found it a very valuable experience.

Dick Banks: Bruce, it was delightful listening to you. You were extremely informative. I found myself glued to the earpiece here listening to what you had to say. You're definitely a committed individual and I want to thank Denise for getting you to come on with us. And I think this is a great prelude to the second Webcast and we'll put your e-mail address on the Webcast and I'll definitely send you the URL to the Webcast and you can put it up on your site and let all of Australia and the rest of the world know.

Norm Coombs: Yeah, we'll put it up in a couple of weeks, depending when we get the transcription done and what else is happening. And Bruce, you still don't sound like a rebel rouser to me.

Bruce Maguire: OH, I'll have to work on changing that Norm.

Dick Banks: Yeah, you have to have that adversarial thing. No, you are a delightful individual. You carry yourself well and Denise, again, good to hear from you again. I hadn't heard from you in a while. Hope you're enjoying your new position and it was great being able to talk to both of you.

Denise Wood: Thanks Dick. Great to talk to you and Norm again And wonderful to be able to share your knowledge and experience, Bruce.

Thanks all.

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