Government strives to improve government web sites
05 - 01 - 2001

The Government is committed to improving its web sites in order to make them more easily accessible by people with disabilities.

It was stated by the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Lau Kam-hung, today (January 5) when officiating at the opening ceremony of a seminar on enhancing web accessibility.

The seminar was organised by the Information Technology Services Department (ITSD) for practising or amateur webmasters, web page designers and interested people.

Mr Lau informed the seminar that five government departments - the ITSD, Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau (ITBB), Health and Welfare Bureau, Information Services Department and Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) - had taken the lead in revamping their web sites since early last year to facilitate people with disabilities to access their web sites, and in setting examples for other government departments.

"The Government has issued guidelines to all departments on how to improve the accessibility of their web sites," said Mr Lau.

"It is also the target of the Government to revamp at least half of all government web sites by the end of this year, and the remainder by the end of next year," he said.

In revamping their web sites, the five government departments worked closely with the Hong Kong Blind Union (the Union) to enable the revamping work to be more comprehensive and acceptable to the users.

Some of the web sites considered to be not Bobby-approved in a survey recently conducted by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), which include the web sites of the HAB, the ITBB, the Government Information Centre and the ITSD, have in fact been found to be acceptable by the Union.

Bobby is an automated software tool to check the on-line accessibility for Internet web users.

In the survey, the text-only versions of some of the tested web sites, which are included specifically to meet the needs of the visually impaired, have not been tested.

To enable government departments to better revamp their web sites, an inter-departmental working group chaired by the HAB has agreed with the EOC on the mechanism to be adopted in future, taking into account the views of the EOC and non-government organisations representing people with disabilities.

As part of its continuous efforts to promote web accessibility, the Government has also uploaded information on tips for improving accessibility of web pages onto the "Digital 21" Information Technology Strategy web site (http://www.digital21.gov.hk/eng/knowledge/access_main.html).

The seminar organised by the ITSD today is another move to promote the awareness of enhancing the accessibility of Internet web pages to the information technology industry and the general public.

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