Web accessibility helps build a digitally inclusive society
13 - 11 - 2002

As part of its continuous efforts in building a digitally inclusive society, the Government has been promoting the awareness of making Internet web sites accessible to all groups of people in the community including those with disabilities.

The Information Technology Services Department, in conjunction with the Internet Professionals Association, today (November 13) organised a seminar for managers and webmasters from the private sector to promote their awareness on enhancing web accessibility.

Participants of the seminar came from industries who often deal with people with disabilities in their daily work, such as banking, telecommunications, public utilities, transport and the mass media.

In the seminar, they were introduced the usability and accessibility considerations in web site implementation, and the underlying design concepts and techniques to make web sites accessible to people with disabilities, in particular the visually impaired.

Speaking at the seminar today, the Director of Information Technology Services, Mr Alan Wong Chi-kong, said that enhancing web accessibility would not only help people with disabilities to use the Internet web sites, but also help increase the general usability of web sites.

"This will therefore attract more visitors and bring more business opportunities to companies," he said.

Mr Wong noted that adding text descriptions besides graphics, improving the colour contrast, providing consistent and logical navigation and clear and well-presented content could help improve the accessibility and usability of web sites.

"We have been dedicating efforts to enhancing the accessibility of government web sites," said Mr Wong.

"By the end of this year, all government web sites will be enhanced to comply with the web accessibility guidelines in order to provide easy access to people with disabilities.

"We are now working with some voluntary organisations to assess the accessibility of government web sites and to look for areas where further improvement is required.

"In June this year, we revised the 'Guidelines on Dissemination of Information through Government Homepages' which was prepared in 1999 and its contents on the design of barrier-free web sites was also enhanced," said Mr Wong.

To facilitate people with visual disabilities to surf Internet web sites, the Government has installed support tools including Braille display devices, screen reader and screen enlarging software in personal computers located at eight Community Cyber Points serving people with disabilities and at the Super Cyber Centre for public use.

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