In this episode
Dr Scott Hollier, CEO of Centre for Accessibility Australia.
Dr Scott Hollier discusses the importance of digital accessibility in a world where technology is so important in most of our lives. It at our fingertips also every minute of every day. Do Hollier explains why it needs to be front of mind before we create digital content, not at the end of the process. He shares his lived experience of having a disability, as a person who is legally blind and praises the 2 educators that made a huge difference in his education journey. With technology and Artificial Intelligence improving every day, Dr Hollier also share’s his wishes for the future of accessibility.
About Dr Scott Hollier
Dr Scott Hollier is the CEO and co-founder of the Centre for Accessibility Australia, a not-for-profit that promotes accessibility through advocacy, research, training and support.
He’s passionate about digital content accessibility and has been working towards improving it for people with disabilities, using his own experience, living with a visual impairment, to help educate others.
Dr Hollier holds an Adjunct Senior Lecturer position at Edith Cowan University and is an active participant in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Research Questions Task Force (RQTF).
He is also the Chairperson on the Western Australian’s Disability Services Commission Board.
Transcript
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Welcome you’re listening to Ed Talks WA, my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus and I’m your host for this episode.
When most of us open a web page or document to read on our computer or phone, we simply click and start reading. But for a number of people, it's not always that simple.
Consuming important or even entertaining information can only happen after a few obstacles have been removed.
Digital accessibility is about ensuring online content can be consumed by everyone, including those with disabilities such as visual or auditory impairments.
Accessibility is something a lot of people have heard about, many feel responsible for, but in a lot of cases, it's often a last thought when creating content.
But through education, as well as new and improved technologies, it's something that can be more easily weaved into our processes when we create content, any content.
Dr. Scott Hollier is the co-founder and CEO of the Centre for Accessibility Australia, and he's been working to improve digital accessibility for people with disabilities, using his own experience with visual impairment to help educate others.
Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Dr Scott Hollier
I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So it's a bit of a buzzword now, accessibility.
Event organizers use it to let you know there's a ramp into the venue. Hotels might use it because the shower has a rail in it, and content creators might boast that their content is accessible because people who have a vision impairment can consume their content.
While this is all correct, accessibility is so much more than that. Can you help us define it?
Dr Scott Hollier
Certainly.
So a lot of the work that we do focuses particularly around the digital side of things. So looking at what can we do to have the digital equivalent of that wheelchair ramp in the building. And essentially, to get there, there's two key things that need to happen.
So first, we need to make sure that people with disability have the right tools in their device of choice and the second one is we want to make sure that the content we prepare works really well with those tools.
So when those come together, independence can be achieved and say in the education context, really want to make sure that students are well supported and staff are well supported in providing that accessible content.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And our issues around accessibility have been around for quite a long time, but the focus on accessibility seems relatively new in comparison. Do you think the general population have a good understanding of what accessibility means?
Dr Scott Hollier
I think it's certainly improving.
We don't have to go back too far in history when if you wanted, let's say to use myself as an example, I'm legally blind. And if I wanted a computer to be able to talk to me as someone who is legally blind in the early 2000s or earlier, I'd need to spend a lot of money to buy a computer and I'd need to spend a lot of money to buy assistive technologies that could do that.
I think what's exciting about the modern context is that whether we buy a Windows or Mac computer or an iPhone or an Android phone or a lot of the things we use in the classroom, accessibility features are largely built in. I don't need to go and buy a phone just for someone who's blind. I could just buy a phone off the shelf in a typical retail store and there's a good chance that's going to work well for me. And so, it is relatively new since we've had all these things built into our everyday devices but I think the awareness is really growing in the community and that's really exciting.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And that's something you and the team at Centre for Accessibility Australia does. It's a not-for-profit that promotes accessibility. Tell us, how do you go about that?
Dr Scott Hollier
There's really 3 key things we do as an organisation. and the first is that we do provide a free help desk to give people a hand to be able to incorporate their work processes using accessibility features.
So if people, let's take students for example, if students are trying to use that iPad in the classroom or Windows computer or some other device, then we do have a free help desk to give people a hand to get those features up and running on their device of choice.
So that's a big part of what we do as a charity.
We also look to advocate for the importance of digital access and encourage organisations to make that content accessible.
And then we also have some services around auditing websites and apps to check them for accessibility against an international standard and run training and things along those lines.
Especially in supporting students, we really focus heavily on providing that free support to help people get those things turned on their devices to give them a hand and also support that accessible content creation.
So, yeah, we started our not-for-profit as an initiative in 2018 and then incorporated in 2020 and happily, it's been going well ever since.
We have 14 staff, 10 of which have lived experience of disability and it's been a great privilege to be a part of that journey.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And it must be really great for you and the team to have organisations come to you going, how can we be better? What can we do to make things easier for everyone?
Dr Scott Hollier
It is. I think there's a lot of organisations that do recognise that and look, people come to the accessibility journey from many different paths. But I think it has been exciting when we do get that phone call or email from people saying, ‘I really want to support people with disability, I want to make sure the content we have is accessible, what do we do now?’ And to be able to then have that open door conversation really means a lot, and both professionally and personally, it's wonderful that these conversations keep happening.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And this is way more than a job for you. A focus on accessibility helps you in your day-to-day life.
You mentioned earlier you are legally blind but haven't always been. Can you share a bit of your story with us?
Dr Scott Hollier
Yes, certainly. So I was diagnosed when I was 5 with the eye condition Retinitis Pigmentosa, and my parents, now retired, were primary school teachers. And when I was first diagnosed, the prognosis was quite bleak and that was in the early 1980s., and there wasn't a lot of knowledge about what would happen with the condition. But my parents, believing in the importance of education, were hugely supportive and I went through mainstream schooling. And as I've got older, my sight has deteriorated. But I've been really fortunate to have great support along the way and there were 2 educators in particular that made a huge difference in my journey.
When I was in Year 9, my science teacher noticed that when there was a big magnifier put over, I think it was a biology class, we were doing some sort of dissection, I think, by memory. But there was this magnifier with a really bright light and the teacher noticed at the time that my handwriting improved because I could actually see the blue lines on the page when under this giant magnifier. And this just led him to go, ‘oh, I wonder what other things I can do to help this vision impaired kid in my class’.
And he actually opened a wealth of services just through his own investigation at a time when technology was really early in its adoption at this point, the late 1980s. And he gave me a huge help just because he saw a need and connected my parents to a range of services.
And then after I finished high school, I went to uni and studied computer science. And again, I discovered that there were a number of accessibility challenges and also I discovered that calculus definitely wasn't my strong point in that course, and the course coordinator at the end of my first semester got in touch and said, ‘look, we've noticed that you've run into a few challenges with maths and also some accessibility. How about we look at what we can do to restructure this course to make it work for you and get the support you need?’ And again, if it wasn't for the intervention of those 2 educators, my life would be completely different. And I'm always incredibly grateful for the power of education. Thanks to that, later in life I was able to go on to further studies, postgraduate studies, really embrace the passion of how to make content accessible. And education has really been the key.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Sometimes it really just takes that one person to go, ‘oh, there's someone here who needs a bit of extra support. I can provide that or find someone to connect to a family and help them out.’
Dr Scott Hollier
Absolutely. And that was absolutely the situation for me and I'm just, yeah, will always be grateful for those people who just, you know, saw a need there and stepped in to help.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So how important is the teacher's role or a teacher's role when it comes to accessibility?
Dr Scott Hollier
The teacher's role is incredibly important. And I think what's really exciting when we have a look at the technology that is available is that there are some really practical things that can be done to lend a hand.
So, for example, if a teacher is creating some resources for the classroom, most of us use products like Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint, tools like that and sometimes we might use PDFs with Adobe Acrobat. And in each of these tools, there is actually a check accessibility feature.
So if you're using Word or PowerPoint or other Microsoft products in the review tab, we're quite familiar with the spell check, but just a few icons along, there's a check accessibility button.
Now it's not perfect, it won't find everything, but it does notice if there are images that might need some alternative text description and how to put that in. It'll comment a bit about some colour contrast issues, maybe it'll identify some heading structure that needs to be fixed up. And even if we just look at this as a starting point, if every teacher just ran that check accessibility and followed its advice, that one thing would make a huge difference to supporting students with disability in the classroom. And so it's terrific that we do have some of these tools and these tools are getting better all the time.
So, if there's one practical tip that I can provide, run that check with accessibility.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Do you have any advice or tips for teachers who might have a bit of a hunch that a student in their class might have needs around accessibility?
Dr Scott Hollier
It's a great question.
I think a really key thing is to just make sure that there's lots of communication with the student as to, you know, what their needs are. And as I said, there's lots of things you can just immediately turn on in an everyday device.
So whether it is just a typical Windows 11 laptop or a Mac or iPad, it might be an Android device, even TV boxes usually have accessibility features in them now. So I think often it's a case of, you know, try turning on some of these things. And if they do start to be of benefit to a student, then it is worth deep diving a bit more to see, okay, what other specialist support can be pulled in to help that student.
But there's nothing to be lost given that there are a lot of great features built into everyday devices to say, ‘okay, well, what happens if we zoom in the screen a bit or what happens if we turn on the captions?’ For example, if someone might be having difficulties hearing, you know, we have lots of great accessibility features and it's a very easy process to turn them on.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
How has the technology available changed to support people's need compared to when you were just starting to look at it and needed it?
Dr Scott Hollier
Well, to give context, when my Year 9 teacher did pick up that vision impairment and tried to find services, the first things that I started using after that was I was given an electronic typewriter, which I would take to my classes. My books were photocopied into A3 and I had a backpack that was basically for mountain climbers, literally and that's what I needed to carry that typewriter around.
And as time's gone on, that technology has evolved immensely. And when I did start university, although I was doing a computer science degree, my electronic typewriter turned into a laptop by that point. But in 1993, when I started my studies, even though it was computer science, I was the only person in my class that took notes with a computer. Everyone else was still handwriting. And fast forward to today, my daughter is at university and she says that it would be surprising if someone didn't use some sort of electronic device.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
It's almost the complete opposite.
Dr Scott Hollier
That's it. And that really is a testament to what's changed, that I guess taking notes was unusual and new at that time. And the battery life of that original laptop could be counted in a very few minutes and it had to be plugged in, now we have devices that last all day. So, and they're light and portable and, you know, it's improved immensely.
But critically, we have, you know, almost all the devices that would be in my daughter's lecture theatre used by students are also really accessible. And so it's great to see that I was mentioning that two sides of the coin at the start. That first one, do people have the right tools on their device of choice, is almost addressed now. I mean, there are still some quirks, there's still some specialist software that is needed for some disability groups, but we're very close now to that first part of the equation being addressed.
So we really turn our attention to content now and what can we do to make these things better.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Yeah, there's so much that's already built into the devices straight off the shelf as they're released. How exciting is that for you and the team at the Centre for Accessibility Australia?
Dr Scott Hollier
It's incredibly exciting.
It's exciting both in terms of our ability to provide support, having that free help desk service and giving people a hand when they do need to get these devices up and running. But also in our ability to do work, you know, with a majority of our staff having lived experience with disability, highly skilled staff that really embrace the importance of digital access and really want to give back in their work.
We practice what we preach, we both promote the importance of these technologies, but also use them in our daily work.
The way I use my computer, for example, as CEO is I have a combination of the zoom feature turned on in Windows 11, which is just simply the case of holding down the Windows key and pressing the plus key a few times and the screen will zoom in.
I also turn on the high contrast colour scheme, so I have light text on the dark background. And also when my eyes get tired, I turn on the screen reader and it then reads things out to me.
There's a built-in one called Narrator, but probably most people would download a free screen reader called NVDA, which is a bit more polished. But the fact that I do have all, you know, there's 3 different assistive technologies going on there and I haven't had to go out and buy anything I just turn them on.
So I can do my work thanks to those tools and we can support other people in embracing all the great activities they want to do through also using those tools. So that's evolved into a really positive place.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So what about kids? Accessibility doesn't just help adults, are there tools and initiatives out there with kids in mind?
Dr Scott Hollier
I think the great thing about accessibility to support kids is that, you know, all the devices again, have great built-in tools, but also apps. You know, there's a bucket load of different apps that are great.
As someone who's vision impaired, an app that I use, which I see kids using all the time, that have a vision impairment, is one called Seeing AI, which is an app by Microsoft, it's a free app and it's available on both iPhone and Android. And the Seeing AI app is a bit like a Swiss army knife of accessibility features.
So, for example, you can hold it over a document and it'll read out the text from that document, it takes a photo and reads that document to you. But it even becomes a great party trick where it has the ability to, you can hold up the app to someone and it will tell you what they look like and how old they are.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Fantastic.
Dr Scott Hollier
And, you know, depending on how old you feel, it's interesting to see how close the app gets, whether it's accurate or not. But the fact that you can do that is really powerful and we're seeing now with AI that a lot of these features and the ability to understand a lot more about the world around us, if we might not be able to see it that well or maybe not be able to hear it that well or maybe have some mobility challenges, we're starting to see improvements with AI that's bringing a lot of that information in.
So I think in terms of fun things for kids and also educational benefits, it’s yeah, we're just at the cusp of seeing how all these tools will benefit us, but I think there's a lot to look forward to.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about artificial intelligence. AI has gone a bit nuts over the last couple of years.
Dr Scott Hollier
It certainly has.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Is it ignoring accessibility or is it helping the cause?
Dr Scott Hollier
Yes and no.
So I think it's a really interesting question because it lands in a few different places in terms of being a net positive, but also some things we do need to be concerned about.
So for example, if I wanted to find out, let's say for example, someone has emailed me a photo and I want to know what's in that photo.
Now, usually on a web page, someone would need to put alternative text in so that my screen reader can read out a description of that image. But if someone's just sent me a photo or I've taken a photo, then there won't be any alt text with that. So what I would do now is I'll, because I use an Android phone, I'll fire up the Talkback screen reader and I then have a feature, which has only come to my phone relatively recently, where Google Gemini, Google's AI platform, can look at that photo and it will actually read out to me a description of that photo. And the description is pretty detailed. It's about a paragraph in length and it will go into quite a bit of detail about that image.
Now that's absolutely fantastic that I would normally have no way of telling what that image is and the AI does a reasonable job of telling me what that is.
However, if I then ask Google Gemini to generate a description for me a second time, even though it's the same image, and even though I'm still using Google Gemini, it will actually give me a different description of what that image is. And now it'll be similar, but depending on what rabbit hole the generative AI goes down, it might pick up different parts of the photo that it wants to tell me about, or it might focus on one thing and not another thing. And then if I do it a third time, it will be different again, and a fourth time will be different again.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Never ending.
Dr Scott Hollier
That’s it. And so as a legally blind person, you know, I then have questions. It's like, ‘okay well, which one is accurate? Are they all accurate? Are none of them accurate?’ I don't have the vision to tell.
So do I trust the fact that AI is telling me these things? And look, it's close enough that it's helpful, but could I rely on it?
And another really good example at the moment is live captioning. So we do have the ability to turn on captions, live captioning in meetings.
For example, in PowerPoint, you can tick a box to say use subtitles and you'll then see live captions come up at the bottom of the PowerPoint presentation. And that's a great feature to be able to turn on. But how reliable is it?
So it's great in terms of if it's paired with curated content and the live captions get about 9 out of every 10 words right and that's helpful. But is one out of 10 being an issue, a acceptable error rate if this was like a mission critical meeting where you absolutely had to have a good record of the meeting? Well, the answer is probably no.
So I think this is where AI sits at the moment. We're seeing some huge benefits and for me personally, I'm seeing some really exciting things. In fact, one thing I really love doing with my phone is I got an update not that long ago where I can now take a selfie.
So it actually gives me verbal instructions to say up a bit, left a bit.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Oh, wow. So it gives you a bit of direction.
Dr Scott Hollier
You're now in frame. Yeah, then it gives a countdown and it actually lets me take a photo. So I can send a picture to my family if I'm travelling and that works pretty well.
AI is great in that just every now and then an update happens and it's like, ‘oh that's fantastic. I can do this new thing now’. But coming back to those accuracy issues, privacy, security, yeah you know, people with disability aren't always in the situation where they can actually confirm if AI is telling the truth or not and as I think we've all learned with AI is it does hallucinate and it lies with confidence.
So, you know, there is this push and pull with AI. I think the benefits are huge. But yeah, we do need to still have that a little critical eye on it, I think.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Yeah, it definitely does make it harder. Like you were saying, there's no way for some people to even confirm if it's telling the truth.
Dr Scott Hollier
Exactly.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So there's a lot more work to be done in that space, it sounds like.
Dr Scott Hollier
Absolutely.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So give us a pipe dream, Scott. Where do you hope AI can take accessibility? What's the dream for you?
Dr Scott Hollier
I think the dream for me is that at the moment, there's still a lot of requirements for accessibility to be done by the user and it's my hope that perhaps AI can solve a lot of the accessibility problems before it gets to me.
So for example, currently if we do want to make content accessible, we need to focus on the international standard of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, as we call it. The current version of WCAG is 2.2 and it has 13 guidelines as to what we need to do to make content accessible. So for example, I was talking earlier about making sure we have alt text on images, and we want to make sure there's captions on videos. I want to make sure that if we have a heading, that the heading is properly available to assistive technologies. Sometimes we cheat and we might select text and click bold and go, ‘oh, yeah, that looks like a heading’. I've been guilty of that in the past. But for assistive technologies, it doesn't recognize that as a heading.
But it's my hope that maybe we could have AI in the web browser where as web pages are loading in, maybe AI can go, ‘okay, well, let me add the alt text that we need as this web page is loading. That thing that looks like a heading, I reckon that is a heading and I will set that up so that assistive technologies can get it’. Or it might go, ‘you know, that doesn't contrast very well. I might just push out the colour palette before it loads to make sure that it's a really good contrast’. And I don't think we're too far away from that. I don't think so either.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
With the way that even Google has AI in the search results and things like that.
Dr Scott Hollier
Absolutely. So I'm optimistic that in the years to come, what is currently a human requirement to implement these accessibility things. Common accessibility challenges of today could be addressed by AI. But yeah, until we get hallucinating AI bots to be accurate, and also obviously privacy and security issues, yeah it still is a little ways away. but optimistic for the future.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So who is responsible for ensuring accessibility is considered? And do you think that understanding of responsibility has changed?
Dr Scott Hollier
There's a lot of work going on.
One of the hats I wear is the W3C, which is an organisation that produces the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. I'm part of a group with W3C that works to provide international guidance in this space. And we are working on some international guidance on accessibility AI at the moment.
So there's a lot of research going on out there, which is really exciting and I think that research will contribute a lot to where this goes and what can be improved.
In terms of what can be changed, it'll be really interesting to watch this space. But there's a lot of passion and it really is a global community and I think that's something that's really exciting. Being located here in Perth, geographically, we're relatively isolated, but in the global community we all have great power and opportunity to contribute to this work and it's a privilege to do so.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
So the team that I'm a part of is working hard to understand our responsibility, especially when developing functionality and content for the Department's websites. We put a lot of effort into writing using plain language. Does that help?
Dr Scott Hollier
Absolutely. And this is where I think AI will have some more benefit.
At the moment, if you go to, you know, let's say ChatGPT and you say, ‘convert this text into plain language’, look it will convert some things but what comes back still isn't quite to the level of what plain language needs to be.
And something I often do in workshops is I like to get Mary Had Little Lamb, feed that into an AI language translator and then translate it back to English. And yeah, it has some interesting results.
It doesn't quite get the hang of, you know, it's fleece as white as snow. It usually says something like, ‘it snowed sheep hair’. Because white as snow trips it up. And so we do have, I think, opportunities to look at that and even in our work, we do sometimes say, okay, well, you know, we have this phrase and AI, what do you think? And sometimes it'll give us some helpful suggestions and sometimes it doesn't.
But I think at the moment, even though AI is probably not quite ready to, you know, be in a position where we can just throw a document to it, say convert it to plain language and declare mission complete, the importance of plain language is super important and just making sure that we do have things in common words, we do make sure that we avoid double negatives and, you know, be aware of tense and, you know, a lot of the other important aspects of plain language. It does make such a huge difference and it's wonderful that there is so much work going on to support plain language and just make sure that people, especially in that lower secondary reading level, can really clearly understand what text is and yeah, I think it's wonderful there is so much effort being put in that space.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
For some who don't have the lived experience, such as people like yourself, Scott, we sometimes use phrases such as, ‘it's good to see you’, or we'll write, ‘see below’, even though there is no intent to upset anyone. Is this being insensitive to some people? Are we driving away some of our audience?
Dr Scott Hollier
In my view, no.
I think for me, it always comes down to intent and if people's intent is genuine, then you know, I don't see that there's any problems with language and I use it too. I mean, even though I'm blind, I'll still say, ‘oh look, it's great to see you’, you know? And I don't believe there's any issues with that.
And we have so many things in our everyday language that relates to seeing and hearing and other things that, you know, I don't personally think it's an issue. But again, I think it really does come down to intent.
You know, I've learned from experience that if people are really trying to offend you, then you're usually aware of it and if people are just using common expressions, I reckon that's pretty fine too.
So there are, I guess with terminology, a few things that can trip people up. So one of the big ones is that between visually impaired, vision impaired, and partially sighted.
So in the US, they tend to use visually impaired and in Australia, we tend to use vision impaired. And visually impaired can be interpreted as calling someone ugly because you're visually impaired. So this is one, and partially sighted is more of a UK term.
So I appreciate that terminology can be a minefield. But for me personally, if someone says, ‘oh, you're visually impaired’, you know, I understand what they mean. I'd like to think they're not calling me ugly.
You know, and it's pretty clear by the intent as to what people mean. So I do remember having a lecturer at university used to say, you know, ‘I'm quite happy if you call me by this name or that name, but don't call me Hey You’. That always stuck with me.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
We've been talking a lot today about technology and how it has changed over the last few years and years before that. Do you think that there are people out there who would benefit from some of these accessibility tools that don't even know it and aren't even looking for support?
Dr Scott Hollier
Absolutely and this is one of the big parts of the mission of Centre for Accessibility Australia.
So many people don't know that these features are built into their everyday devices and so we often get phone calls, it might be from a supporter or a carer or a family member saying, you know, ‘oh, there's someone here that I really want to lend a hand to and they can't hear very well or have mobility impairment, you know, have challenges understanding things. Is there anything that can be done to help?’ And when you walk them through what's already built into their phone, especially, they're like, ‘oh, so we already you have that? I had no idea’. And that's a really common and understandable reaction because there has been this evolution of these tools improving.
Before 2009, the idea that an iPhone could be accessible to someone who's blind was considered laughable. I remember reading some of the forums at the time when the first iPhone came out. And people saying, ‘oh, look, it'd be great if you could make a touchscreen accessible, but it'll never happen’. And then the iPhone 3GS came out. We had the voiceover screen reader using swipe gestures and suddenly a blind person can use an iPhone. And even though those of us who are passionate in this area and research and study this area pick up on these things quickly, so many features are being just snuck into the everyday devices that it's understandable that most people don't know they're there.
So a big part of the mission of our organization is to provide that support is to give people a hand to get in touch and we're absolutely delighted to be able to share that information with people and get them up and running.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And I can imagine a lot of the improvement in this technology has also changed the game in terms of affordability for these assistive and accessibility tools.
Dr Scott Hollier
Definitely. And so, yeah, that example I was giving earlier where, you know in the 90s, nearly 2000s, you would have had to have spent about $2,000 on a high-end computer and another $2,000 on having great accessibility tools, which is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people with disability.
And yeah, now, I mean, one of the great things is that if you want accessibility, you can buy an expensive flagship smartphone but the $150 smartphone from Woolies also has great accessibility features.
So that affordability aspect is huge now. You know, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on, in most cases, there are certainly some disabilities that may still need those specialist products. In most cases, whether you are buying the $1,000 smartphone or the $150 cheaper smartphone, you don't have to compromise accessibility to get that support on a budget, which is fantastic.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
Now, before we let you go today, the Australian Access Awards are back this year and nominations are now open. Can you tell us about the awards and what they're for?
Dr Scott Hollier
Absolutely.
So one of the great things that we love doing as an organisation is to recognise great organizations that are doing really important work in a digital access space. And there are quite often the case that when an organization makes a website accessible or makes an app accessible, that people with disability are absolutely delighted that's the case. But because often the recognition of someone doing that isn't seen every day, you don't often see the person at the end of that smartphone or the end of that laptop screen being so happy that this website is accessible. So we really wanted to do something to recognise organisations that do good work in this space.
So 2019, we started the Australian Access Awards and that's now continued. So this year is the fourth Australian Access Awards. And yeah, we're delighted to have that back.
So nominations are open at accessibility.org.au/awards and nominations are free. So if there is an organisation in the corporate sector, not-for-profit sector, government sector, and importantly, education sector, then we'd absolutely encourage people to put in a nomination. We also celebrate organisations, individuals, and initiatives.
So if you're aware of someone doing really good work in this space, if they've gone the extra mile to make that content accessible, we'd love to celebrate them and nominations are open until the end of August.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
And why is it important to highlight and promote digital accessibility excellence across Australia?
Dr Scott Hollier
It really comes down to that second half of the coin about making sure that the tools that people are using do work in an accessible way and if we make our content accessible, then that will be possible.
It really is about independence. And there are a lot of great best practice examples out there. If anyone does want to head to our website, we have all our previous winners, including the Department of Education, which they won an award in 2023.
And so there's a lot of great organisations to celebrate and because of that, the more we make the online accessible world work for people with disability, the better independence gets and that might be buying groceries, that might be getting information as part of a school or through an education process, it might be accessing a government service, might be that really important not-for-profit that you like to use, it might be great initiatives and great people.
So we're really privileged to have a chance to celebrate that and really encourage listeners to get involved.
Fiona Bartholomaeus
You've been listening to Ed Talks WA.
This podcast has been recorded on Whadjuk Noongar land. We pay respect to the traditional owners and to their elders, past, present and future.
Notes
Learn more about the Centre for Accessibility Australia.
Nominate an individual or organisation for the Accessibility Awards.
Access the Centre for Accessibility Australia's Helpdesk.