We have a legal obligation to make sure information can be accessed by everyone.
All Victorian Government entities must comply with the accessibility standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA. Meeting WCAG standards means our content is accessible to people with disabilities.
This includes people who have:
- low or no vision
- learning or cognitive difficulties
- hearing impairments.
People use different assistive technology to access content. The most common are:
- screen readers
- screen magnifiers
- voice recognition
- keyboard navigation.
For example, people use screen readers to navigate and understand what is on a web page by moving around the page through headings and links.
Accessibility is not just about disability
Accessibility does not just apply to people with disabilities – a users’ ability to access content may change in different situations.
Someone’s ability to access your content could be affected by their:
- location –such as a noisy environment or an area with slow connection speeds
- health – such as tiredness or recovering from an injury like a broken arm
- equipment – they may only have a mobile phone to access the internet
- language – not fluent in English or have low literacy levels.
To learn more about accessibility, visit Making the web accessible.
“I just need it published now”
It's easy to skip publishing standards when there's a tight deadline and you need to get something online.
This will ultimately work against you. If the content doesn't meet user needs, people simply will not read it.
Leaving content until the last minute is not an acceptable reason to skip publishing standards. It's your responsibility to plan your content and allow enough time for review, revision and publishing.
You
demonstrate responsiveness by designing content to meet user needs.
Not everything needs to be published
Not everything needs to go on this website. Content should not be published if:
- there's no real need for a user to read it
- the information is already available elsewhere on the internet (link to the other website instead)
- it satisfies your priorities instead of the user’s
- it's more appropriate on another platform, like the intranet.
The department’s policy
All website content must be based on a valid user need and follow the requirements on this page. The Digital team have final approval on what is published, and may reject or rewrite content that doesn’t follow this policy.
This page contains information adapted from: