Flash and eLearning in Australia: Accessibility Questions

 
Dec 02, 2003
Australia has some new extensions to its Disability Discrimination Act that will affect online learning and computer training. The Australian Federal government, after seven years of consultation with Australia's states, is set to act unilaterally next year with regulations enforcing training accessibility for disabled people. This will probably force companies to re-engineer elearning systems and curriculum, and modification of face-to-face software courses.

This article is a thought-provoking discussion of the state of accessibility in Australia, and of Flash and its role in the elearning field. Bob Regan, Macromedia's senior product manager for accessibility, paints a golden picture of the new options available for disabled people with the accessibility features in Flash. In counterpoint, I found this comment by Andrew Arch, of Australia's National Information and Library Service, to be especially noteworthy:

"A lot of e-learning is delivered with Macromedia products such as Flash," Arch says. "Until recently, people using these have had very scant appreciation of people with disabilities. In the last two releases, Macromedia has made significant steps forward. But it only helps if developers are cognisant of the needs of people with disabilities. It's the same with PDF. There are accessibility features but people don't know how to use them."

Impediment No Barrier (Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, December 8, 2003)


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