July 8, 2025 • 28 mins
When it comes to digital accessibility, this week's guest is both passionate and knowledgeable. Dr Scott Hollier is the CEO and co-founder of Centre For Accessibility Australia (CFAA), and chatted to Simon about what's new and emerging in the technology spaces that can be of assistance to people with a disability.
CFAA is calling for nominations for the Australian Access Awards, which celebrate organisations and individuals demonstrating outstanding commitment to digital accessibility - recognising excellence across websites, applications, and advocacy initiatives. Categories span a wide range of sectors, including government, education, corporate, and not-for-profit.
To nominate an organisation or an individual, you can complete the form here on the CFAA website.
Support Vision Australia Radio: https://www.visionaustralia.org/donate
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:18):
Hello, I'm Simon Chong and welcome to the program In
Plain Sight, a program where we highlight people who are
making a positive impact and a difference within the disability
sector and their community.
S2 (00:30):
Shining a light on those who might otherwise be hidden
in plain sight.
S1 (00:34):
And it's a pleasure to bring you these interesting stories
to you on a weekly basis here on Vision Australia Radio.
Hello and welcome. Thanks for joining us. And I'd like
to welcome my work experience kid Andrew, who's here again
today to assist with the pushing the buttons and keeping
(00:55):
me on track. Hello, Andrew.
S2 (00:58):
Hi, Simon. Um, yes, somewhat of my age being called
a kid. I haven't been called that in a long time.
S1 (01:04):
And I must say, as a work experience kid, you're
doing a fabulous job. I really appreciate your time and
your efforts that you've been putting in the last few weeks.
Thank you very much. So this week I want to
backtrack a little bit. I want to start by saying
recently I went to a fabulous event run by Deaf
Blind Western Australia to acknowledge Deaf Blind Week. And with
(01:26):
that event, I want to acknowledge some hard working, dedicated,
passionate people that are working to make life easier and
more accessible for people who are deaf blind. And those
people are just the top of my head are Karen Wickham,
Erica Webb, and the lovely Leonie Oliver, who is with
us in the studio a few weeks ago to talk
(01:48):
about the great event. And that was such a fabulous,
warm event. And I really got a lot from that
event to see what someone who is deaf, blind is
achieving and what more they can achieve. And it was
really reassuring and really beneficial, and I wanted to also
acknowledge that they are trying to seek some assistance and
(02:13):
participation for the Young Leaders Program that they are developing,
and we're going to explore that later on in a
future program. Now, Andrew, why are we celebrating Deaf Blind
Week at that particular time of year?
S2 (02:27):
Well, it's all built around the 27th of June, which
is the birth date of Helen Keller. And she was
a very famous deaf blind person. And the date of
the 27th of June has also been officially proclaimed by
the United Nations as the International Day of Deaf Blindness.
(02:48):
So that's the the keystone, I guess, around which all
of the activities and so forth that are taking place
in Deaf Blind Awareness Week.
S1 (02:57):
Yep. And that goes to the advocacy that people working
in and around the deaf blind sector here in Australia
and and around the world have Approached the United Nations
to have this formally recognized as the 27th of June
will be formally known as Deaf Blind Awareness Day. So
(03:20):
that's fabulous and well done to all those people involved
with that. I also want to acknowledge that July is
Disability Pride Month, and we talked about that last time,
and we will be talking about that throughout July and
obviously throughout the program. Ongoingly, because that's what we are
(03:41):
all about here on In Plain Sight and Vision Australia Radio,
because it is about creating an accessible world, an inclusive
world for all, particularly people with a disability. And when
the world is more accessible and easier to access and
feel more included, you can feel pride within yourself as
(04:04):
a person living with a disability and therefore disability. Pride
is a real and lived experience. Andrew. Who have we
got coming up on the programme this week?
S2 (04:16):
We will be talking to Doctor Scott Hollier, who is
the chief executive officer and co-founder at centre for Accessibility Australia.
He specialises in the field of digital accessibility. It's a
fascinating interview that's coming up very, very shortly.
S1 (04:33):
It is, and we were really appreciative of Scott's time.
And we do so much online these days. And for
some time before these kinds of organisations were up and running.
Those of us that had vision impairment or had a
hearing impairment or other difficulties of of disability found it
(04:58):
really difficult to access with ease the online world. And
now with organisations like the centre for Accessibility Australia, They
making life a lot easier for everyone to access the
content that is available online and on our smart devices,
so we look forward to listening to everything that Scott
(05:19):
has to tell us and join us for the interview now. Hello,
and thank you for joining us once again on In
Plain Sight on Vision Australia Radio. And this week our
guest is Doctor Scott Hollier from the centre for Accessibility Australia.
And I'd like to welcome Scott to the studio now. Hello, Scott.
S3 (05:41):
Hello, Simon. Thanks so much for having me.
S1 (05:43):
Thanks for joining us. Now we'll start by getting to
the basics. What is the centre for Accessibility Australia?
S3 (05:49):
Great question. The centre for Accessibility Australia is a not
for profit organisation and we're dedicated to alleviating hardship caused
by digital access issues for people with disability, their families
and carers. There's basically three main parts to what we do.
One is that we provide free support to people with
disability to give them a hand in getting accessibility device
set up on their devices. So if people, for example,
(06:11):
want to get a screen reader up and running on
an iPhone or Android, windows, Mac, we give people a
hand with that. The second part is that we focus
a lot on advocacy. So we run the Australian Access
Awards and things like that to really encourage organisations to
make their content accessible. And thirdly, we do have some
commercial services like auditing websites, running training and workshops and
(06:32):
things like that. And so really it's a combination of
those three things. And we also have 14 staff, ten
of which have lived experience of disability. So having disability
leaders are part of what we do at every turn
is something that's really important to us.
S1 (06:45):
I'll get to all that in a minute, but I
just want to ask you, firstly, what led you to
work for the centre for Accessibility Australia and how did
you get involved with that?
S3 (06:55):
So I used to work for an organisation based in
Sydney and then um, that organisation focused a lot on, um,
trying to ensure that people with disability had great access
to media content, and that organization went off in a
different direction. And it became a really clear gap around, um,
supporting people with disability, families and carers in getting access
(07:17):
to online content, and really wanted to focus on what
we can do to support that area. So given that
there was a gap in the not for profit sector
at that time, myself and two others, we decided to
come together and try and form an initiative to promote
the importance of digital access. And then that grew into
a not for profit. So from there, in 2020, we
(07:39):
formed centre for Accessibility Australia. Our board came together and yeah,
we're just actually celebrating our fifth birthday this week, so
it's very good. Yeah, it's a really exciting time and
it's been exciting to see that organisation grow. And although Covid, um,
in 2020 was an interesting time to try and start
an organisation, um, I think something that was really important
(07:59):
at that time is that a lot of people had
to go online because there was no other choice, given
the lot of traditional services had to shut down. And
so there was a real need to support organizations in
getting their content accessible at that time. So so really,
the formation of the center was a really important thing
at that time. And we've just continued since then.
S1 (08:18):
And just let people know your vision impaired yourself and
you have retinitis pigmentosa. Is that correct?
S3 (08:24):
That's correct. So in terms of my vision, I have
no night vision, not much central vision these days and
fairly narrow tunnel vision. So I use a cane to
get around. And yeah, three quarters of our staff, including myself,
have lived experience of disability. So really important to have
that perspective in all the work we do.
S1 (08:41):
Yeah, it sure is. Now what is digital accessibility?
S3 (08:47):
So essentially digital accessibility is about supporting people with disability
to be able to actively participate online. And the way
we look at it, there's really two essential parts to
digital access. One is we want to make sure that
people with disability have the right tools in their device
of choice, And the other part is you want to
make sure that content is created in a way that
(09:08):
supports the use of those tools. So we want to
make sure that whatever device people are using, that they
can use that independently with great accessibility features. And the
good thing is that most of our daily devices like phones, computers, tablets,
all have great accessibility features built in. And often it's
a case of learning how to use them. And so
then a lot of our attention turns to how do
(09:30):
we support organizations in making their websites accessible to international standards?
How do we get those apps accessible? How do we
get those documents accessible? So when we get those two
parts of the equation coming together, when people get great
tools on their device of choice and the content's accessible,
then independence is achieved. And that independence is really our
key focus.
S1 (09:49):
I wasn't aware that you also gave, um, assistance to
individuals to help them set up their devices and their
computers or whatever to, to to help them make it
more accessible for them as well.
S3 (10:02):
Yeah, that's a really key part of our charity and
a big part of why we sit in the not
for profit space. So we have a few ways that
people can get in touch. Um, and it's across a
range of different disabilities. So we have a free help
desk on our website. We have lots of information about
how to set up key accessibility tools in a variety
of different devices and operating systems, and then we also
(10:23):
have the ability for people just to call us or
drop us an email. And we do provide that support
free of charge. So if anyone does want to get
a device set up for themselves or maybe a parent
or a carer and they're keen to turn on that
screen reader or get that magnifier up and running or
turn things into high contrast, for example, then yeah, we
can provide that help for free.
S1 (10:44):
That's excellent. And if you're listening to the podcast, we
will give that information about how to find the centre
for Accessibility Australia on their web page and all the
details there. Accessibility. When we talk about accessibility, we are
aware of Physical accessibility for people who have physical disabilities. Uh,
(11:05):
ramps and wheelchair access and things like that. And a
lot of lifts that we go into now, they'll say
level one, level two, they'll talk. We here at Vision
Australia are quite aware of what's required to assist someone
who is blind or has low vision. And we hear
about talking computers and stuff like that, which is basically
what a screen reader is. But what are some of
(11:28):
the other aspects of accessibility for a web page or
a computer or a phone?
S3 (11:34):
One of the things about trying to make sure that
content is accessible is that we do have some great
international guidance to support us with that. So when we
try to make content accessible, we have really clear guidance
on what those things are. Thanks to the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines, or wcaG, as we call it. And so
there's 13 key things in that standard that provide us
(11:56):
guidance on how to make things accessible. So some of
the more specific vision related parts of that standard are
things like making sure that there's alt text on images,
so that if you are using a computer to read
things out to you, that a description of that image
is read out. We want to make sure there's really
great contrast. So there's a recommendation around foreground background and
text color and how that should contrast and also user
(12:19):
interface elements. So if you have that little hamburger icon
in your app, if you can't see that, then that
really makes it tricky to get around. So there's a
contrast requirement for things like that. And also making sure
that we can get around our content using only a keyboard.
So if you're using technologies that rely on keyboard like
desktop based screen readers, that that works. And also making
(12:39):
sure that if we're using mobile devices like Talkback on
Android or VoiceOver on an iPhone, that we can swipe
around and making sure those swipe gestures work too. So
there's just a few parts of the standard that really
provide clear guidance to developers, two designers, people creating that
content out there for us. It applies to documents as well.
(13:00):
So I think one of the really exciting things these
days is that we do know what needs to be done,
and it's really just about encouraging organizations who might not
have that awareness to do it. A good example, which
is as much vision related. But when Windows 11 came out, um,
it had a lot of great accessibility features. But then
just overnight, Microsoft released this fully featured, um, voice navigation feature,
(13:24):
which was just part of an update. And so overnight
Windows 11 went from an operating system which had some
good accessibility in it. But suddenly, for people who relied
on voice navigation and other functionality like that just completely changed.
And that was just an update. So keeping devices up
to date is a really good thing to do.
S1 (13:42):
It sure is. And it's interesting on the Apple Mac user.
And when I bought my last one, the computer started
talking straight away. And then I went, okay, because I
couldn't set it up with the screen screen by then.
And the computer was already talking and I thought, oh,
this is fabulous. That's that was its default position to talk.
S3 (14:04):
It is. And look, this wasn't the case even five
years ago. So what's not you know, the fact that
we can get an out of the box experience and
independently set things up, and, and it's a real testament
to companies that they, they do take accessibility more seriously.
S1 (14:20):
Well, it's also a testament to people like yourself and
others who've done advocacy to these major companies to say, hey,
we want to use your fancy computer as well.
S3 (14:30):
Absolutely. And so, you know, we're one voice of many,
and it's great that, you know, so many organizations have
come together. There's also, um, in some countries like the
EU and the US, they've got some great policy and
legislative frameworks now. And again, that's from the, you know,
work behind the scenes. Um, one of my roles is
I work with W3C, who produces that wcaG standard to
try and create international guidance to provide accessibility support. And yeah,
(14:54):
lots of voices come together and say, hey, this is
what needs to happen. And although sometimes it doesn't feel
like things change as quickly as we'd like. But, but
change is happening, and that's really exciting.
S1 (15:04):
Can I point out one example that is often a
common one about PDFs? Now, there are ways of creating
a PDF that makes it accessible so that those of
us that use screen readers to so the computer can
talk the document to us, it will recognize the PDF
as text. And there's another way of creating a PDF
(15:25):
that the screen reader just recognizes the PDF not as
a document, but as an image. So you tap on
it or point the cursor at it and it will
just say image. Image. Okay, that's no good. So how
do you address things like that, Scott.
S3 (15:42):
It's a great question. And if I had to say
what is the most controversial issue in the digital access space,
I would say it's the PDF. And you're absolutely right
that PDFs can be made accessible. And I say that
knowing that there might be picketing and flaming torches suddenly
coming after me. But. But it is true that PDFs
can be made accessible when the right accessibility criteria are
(16:05):
put to it. And we talked about wcaG, and there's
also another standard called PDF, UA, which provides lots of
great guidance on how that can be achieved. The problem
is that most of our daily experience, and I include
myself in this, is that PDFs we get are ones
which someone chucks a book on a photocopier that gets scanned,
it gets emailed to PDF, and like you say, that's
just images locked in a file called PDF and it's
(16:27):
completely inaccessible. I got one email to me the other day,
which was a really important event, and when I got
my screen reader to read it, it said image image,
image image, image image 14th of February. So I knew
something was happening on the 14th of February, but I
have no idea what that is. And this is unfortunately
a common experience, so I can fully understand when people go,
(16:48):
I don't like PDFs, they don't work for me. Um,
and what we try to do is we try to
work with organisations and say, well, look, you can make PDFs,
but they do need to follow accessibility criteria, and it
is a bit more of an arm wrestle than say
a word doc or putting something on a website. So
there is more work.
S1 (17:04):
And we understand why PDFs are used for the reason
you mentioned there, but also that they're more secure. You
can't alter a PDF like you can a word document
and so on. So there are those reasons.
S3 (17:16):
Yeah, I think, you know, the world has said that
they want to use PDFs. And, you know, while certainly,
you know, there are other formats around which are easier
and potentially more accessible, like Epub, but, um, you know,
the world has spoken on PDFs. And so from our
point of view, it's like, okay, well, let's given that
PDFs are popular and want to be used and can
be made accessible, you know, let's uh, let's work with
(17:37):
organizations to ensure that that gets achieved. Um, and I think,
you know, probably the part of PDFs that people talk
to us the most about is, um, is bills and
things like that, because they almost all come into PDFs
and depending on the organization, they may or may not
be accessible. So we try and work with organizations to
support them in fixing those issues.
S1 (17:56):
I find it really frustrating. I'm vision impaired and I
can see what's on the screen of my iPhone, and
I know that if I do certain gestures with the
what's called the voiceover on, it won't work efficiently or
won't sometimes won't work at all. If I turn the
voiceover off, it will work. There was a really favorite
(18:17):
app that I was using that's now changed to a
different one, and I can't access it at all because
it won't interact at all with VoiceOver. And it's so frustrating.
S3 (18:26):
And that is probably the number one frustration we receive
from people that, you know, we're at a point now
where a lot of that first side of the equation
has been addressed. We do have great built in tools
in our everyday devices. We don't have to spend thousands
of dollars, usually on buying assistive technologies. Usually we can
just walk into a store, buy a phone, buy a
computer and know that there's great accessibility features there. But
(18:48):
if the content's not designed, as you're saying, Simon, in
the way that it needs to be based on that
international standard, then we end up in in having great difficulties.
A good example for me personally is that I use
a news app, and that news app works really well.
It's really well designed. I can access the latest news independently,
no problem. But I have a phone provider, and if
(19:08):
I pull up the phone provider app to try to
check my usage or billing, all I hear on my
screen reader is icon, font or, you know, image or.
S1 (19:19):
Yes.
S3 (19:19):
You know, I just there is no meaningful information. I
can't get past the login screen. And so that's completely undone.
My ability to independently do that. And you know, I
don't want to get in trouble finding out that a
bill was due that I didn't know about. So, you know,
that is that is a really major issue. And if
they just followed the standard, then that would, um, that
would have been addressed.
S1 (19:38):
Now we're focusing on the vision impaired, but we can't
ignore it. Our friends that have other disabilities and there
are other forms of accessing the internet and your phone
and so on. That could make it a lot easier
to access your fabulous content, like if you have a video,
if you can add Özlem interpretation to make it easier
(20:00):
for a person who is deaf or hard of hearing
to watch your fabulous video as well. And Scott, you mentioned, um,
alt text, which is a way of describing a picture
or a photo or something like that. And just today
I was reminded, I shared a Facebook post and I
didn't add an image description to the picture that I shared.
(20:21):
So we all do it, and we all love social media,
but we need to make it friendly for everybody to use.
S3 (20:29):
Yeah, absolutely. And, um, I think we're all guilty from
time to time of, of doing things which are not
necessarily the most accessible way because we're in a hurry.
I know that something I used to be guilty of
before I really fully understood, um, the difference that it
makes is I used to just select text and click
on bold and say, oh, well, there you go. There's
my heading. And for screen reader users, they really do
(20:51):
need it to be properly marked up as a heading. Otherwise,
screen readers don't know it's their heading. And so I
think we're always on a journey of learning. Yeah, you
made a great point there about, um, supporting other disabilities.
So in the wcaG standard, it does talk about captions
on videos. So we always have captions on video. And
it does talk about making sure that sign language is
on video. And so interestingly the standard that we follow
(21:14):
in Australia goes to wcaG 2.2 level AA compliance. And
what that means is that there's three different levels. You
can implement the wcaG standard AA and AA. And in
Australia we go to AA. But sign language comes under
AA which is rarely implemented. So most videos in Australia
don't have sign language. We've made a decision as an
(21:34):
organisation last year that we really wanted to include Auslan,
given that for people who are deaf, that is their
first language. So all our professional videos now do have
Auslan on them. And the great thing with social media
that you were saying before is that social media does
support a lot of great accessibility. So videos can have captions,
(21:55):
you can have alt text on images, you can have
good heading structure.
S1 (21:58):
So they're very capulus organizations to people that create the
social media. They want every customer they can get.
S3 (22:04):
Absolutely. And we're important customers you know. That's right. I
saw a stat the other day that said that the
spending power of people with disability is 9 trillion AUD. Now,
you know, that's a hell of a lot of money
of goods and services that we want to buy, we
want to participate in. And so that that business case
argument is a great one amongst many arguments to make
(22:26):
content accessible.
S1 (22:27):
Now, the center for Accessibility Australia, as well as doing
all that advocacy and other great work, you also try
to promote organizations and businesses that are providing great accessibility
in the digital space. And you've got some awards coming up,
is that right?
S3 (22:45):
We do. And thanks very much for mentioning it. So
every two years we run the Australian Access Awards. So
the purpose of the awards are basically to celebrate organisations
and individuals that do really good work in the space.
So if you have come across a great website or
an app or um, something that you think is really
(23:05):
helpful to your life, then I'd really encourage listeners to
put in a free nomination. So it's an accessibility awards.
We have a free nomination process until the end of August,
and then we'll have a ceremony in November. And we've had,
you know, a number of winners. This is the fourth
time we've run the awards. So we run them every
two years, and we always see some great recognition of
(23:29):
organisations that are really giving it their all to ensure
that their content is accessible. And also, um, it's really
helpful competition too. So for example, in our first awards,
ANZ um took out um, a corporate website of the
year in terms of making their banking processes accessible. And um,
our last awards, we saw Bendigo Bank take out the
(23:50):
same award because they were they saw that other banks
were getting recognition for this type of work, and they
really wanted to to step up their processes too. And
so part of the awards is to celebrate. Part of
it is to encourage and, you know, a nice little
healthy competition. You're making things accessible isn't such a bad
thing either. So, uh, yeah, really encourage people to put
in nominations are free. It's really important that the community
(24:11):
is the one that gets to decide who's doing great
work out there. Uh, and if you'd like to put
in a nomination, please do.
S1 (24:17):
And we'll add those details to the podcast description when
the podcast is released. Now, we'll have to finish soon. Scott,
I was just thinking while you were talking about the
digital accessibility, it's a bit like when we acknowledge a
business that has good physical accessibility. It's one thing to
be able to enter the building and go to the business,
(24:38):
but it's another thing to be able to access it
and be feel totally included. And that would be the
same in the digital space or using a website or
an app. Would that be right?
S3 (24:49):
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the challenges we have in
Australia is that while we have some good legislation saying
that if you're building a new building, you need to
have that ramp, you need to have that accessible physical access. Um,
our legislation is still trailing a bit in terms of
providing the equivalent support in the digital space. Happily, there
has been some policy updates from the Human Rights Commission
(25:11):
moving us to the latest version of that wcaG standard,
which has been a great. That just happened in April.
So we're seeing some improvements. Um, but really, we need
a big overhaul of things like our Disability Discrimination Act,
Disability Services Act, and others to really help us catch
up to the rest of the world. So that's another
space that we advocate strongly.
S1 (25:28):
Sounds like a story for another time, too, Scott. Unfortunately,
time has caught up with us. Uh, is there anything
you'd like to finish with before we have to close
our conversation today, Scott.
S3 (25:37):
Probably just one other little thing that might be of
interest is that we are seeing some improvements thanks to AI.
There's a lot we could have. a whole other half
hour discussion about the pros and cons, but, um, yeah,
we're just starting to see I creep into some of
our everyday processes. For example, um, it is possible now to, uh,
if alt text is missing from an image, we have
(25:58):
the ability to get AI to at least have a
go at telling us what that is. There's some great apps,
like the seeing AI app and some built in functionality
to iPhone and Android, and we're seeing improvements with Windows
and Mac as well. So perhaps on another occasion we
can see where all that goes, and we'd love to
love to chat about that.
S1 (26:16):
Most definitely. Now, I think I saw something about that
on the, uh, on the organization's Facebook page this morning
about the new the new innovations around AI. Well, we
have to close up now, Scott. This conversation has gone
so quick. It's so very interesting. And, um, I am
online a lot, so it's important to me. And it
is interesting because a lot of people, especially with physical disabilities,
(26:39):
are online a lot because they physically can't get out
as much as other people. So it is an important
aspect of our lives. So Doctor Scott Hollier, thank you
very much for joining us here at Vision Australia Radio,
and I really appreciate your time today. It's been really
valuable and interesting.
S3 (26:55):
Thank you so much, Simon. Really appreciate it.
S1 (26:56):
Okay. That's all for today folks. Thanks for joining us
this week. Look forward to speaking to you another time.
Catch up with you then.
S2 (27:12):
That concludes in Plain Sight for this week. Join us
at the same time next week on Vision Australia Radio,
VA radio digital and online at VA radio. You can
also listen on demand by searching for In Plain Sight
by Vision Australia Radio. Wherever you get your podcasts, or
ask your smart device to play in Plain Sight by
(27:33):
Vision Australia Radio. Thanks for listening.
S1 (27:36):
Thank you.
Hello, I'm Simon Chong and welcome to the program In
Plain Sight, a program where we highlight people who are
making a positive impact and a difference within the disability
sector and their community.
S2 (00:30):
Shining a light on those who might otherwise be hidden
in plain sight.
S1 (00:34):
And it's a pleasure to bring you these interesting stories
to you on a weekly basis here on Vision Australia Radio.
Hello and welcome. Thanks for joining us. And I'd like
to welcome my work experience kid Andrew, who's here again
today to assist with the pushing the buttons and keeping
(00:55):
me on track. Hello, Andrew.
S2 (00:58):
Hi, Simon. Um, yes, somewhat of my age being called
a kid. I haven't been called that in a long time.
S1 (01:04):
And I must say, as a work experience kid, you're
doing a fabulous job. I really appreciate your time and
your efforts that you've been putting in the last few weeks.
Thank you very much. So this week I want to
backtrack a little bit. I want to start by saying
recently I went to a fabulous event run by Deaf
Blind Western Australia to acknowledge Deaf Blind Week. And with
(01:26):
that event, I want to acknowledge some hard working, dedicated,
passionate people that are working to make life easier and
more accessible for people who are deaf blind. And those
people are just the top of my head are Karen Wickham,
Erica Webb, and the lovely Leonie Oliver, who is with
us in the studio a few weeks ago to talk
(01:48):
about the great event. And that was such a fabulous,
warm event. And I really got a lot from that
event to see what someone who is deaf, blind is
achieving and what more they can achieve. And it was
really reassuring and really beneficial, and I wanted to also
acknowledge that they are trying to seek some assistance and
(02:13):
participation for the Young Leaders Program that they are developing,
and we're going to explore that later on in a
future program. Now, Andrew, why are we celebrating Deaf Blind
Week at that particular time of year?
S2 (02:27):
Well, it's all built around the 27th of June, which
is the birth date of Helen Keller. And she was
a very famous deaf blind person. And the date of
the 27th of June has also been officially proclaimed by
the United Nations as the International Day of Deaf Blindness.
(02:48):
So that's the the keystone, I guess, around which all
of the activities and so forth that are taking place
in Deaf Blind Awareness Week.
S1 (02:57):
Yep. And that goes to the advocacy that people working
in and around the deaf blind sector here in Australia
and and around the world have Approached the United Nations
to have this formally recognized as the 27th of June
will be formally known as Deaf Blind Awareness Day. So
(03:20):
that's fabulous and well done to all those people involved
with that. I also want to acknowledge that July is
Disability Pride Month, and we talked about that last time,
and we will be talking about that throughout July and
obviously throughout the program. Ongoingly, because that's what we are
(03:41):
all about here on In Plain Sight and Vision Australia Radio,
because it is about creating an accessible world, an inclusive
world for all, particularly people with a disability. And when
the world is more accessible and easier to access and
feel more included, you can feel pride within yourself as
(04:04):
a person living with a disability and therefore disability. Pride
is a real and lived experience. Andrew. Who have we
got coming up on the programme this week?
S2 (04:16):
We will be talking to Doctor Scott Hollier, who is
the chief executive officer and co-founder at centre for Accessibility Australia.
He specialises in the field of digital accessibility. It's a
fascinating interview that's coming up very, very shortly.
S1 (04:33):
It is, and we were really appreciative of Scott's time.
And we do so much online these days. And for
some time before these kinds of organisations were up and running.
Those of us that had vision impairment or had a
hearing impairment or other difficulties of of disability found it
(04:58):
really difficult to access with ease the online world. And
now with organisations like the centre for Accessibility Australia, They
making life a lot easier for everyone to access the
content that is available online and on our smart devices,
so we look forward to listening to everything that Scott
(05:19):
has to tell us and join us for the interview now. Hello,
and thank you for joining us once again on In
Plain Sight on Vision Australia Radio. And this week our
guest is Doctor Scott Hollier from the centre for Accessibility Australia.
And I'd like to welcome Scott to the studio now. Hello, Scott.
S3 (05:41):
Hello, Simon. Thanks so much for having me.
S1 (05:43):
Thanks for joining us. Now we'll start by getting to
the basics. What is the centre for Accessibility Australia?
S3 (05:49):
Great question. The centre for Accessibility Australia is a not
for profit organisation and we're dedicated to alleviating hardship caused
by digital access issues for people with disability, their families
and carers. There's basically three main parts to what we do.
One is that we provide free support to people with
disability to give them a hand in getting accessibility device
set up on their devices. So if people, for example,
(06:11):
want to get a screen reader up and running on
an iPhone or Android, windows, Mac, we give people a
hand with that. The second part is that we focus
a lot on advocacy. So we run the Australian Access
Awards and things like that to really encourage organisations to
make their content accessible. And thirdly, we do have some
commercial services like auditing websites, running training and workshops and
(06:32):
things like that. And so really it's a combination of
those three things. And we also have 14 staff, ten
of which have lived experience of disability. So having disability
leaders are part of what we do at every turn
is something that's really important to us.
S1 (06:45):
I'll get to all that in a minute, but I
just want to ask you, firstly, what led you to
work for the centre for Accessibility Australia and how did
you get involved with that?
S3 (06:55):
So I used to work for an organisation based in
Sydney and then um, that organisation focused a lot on, um,
trying to ensure that people with disability had great access
to media content, and that organization went off in a
different direction. And it became a really clear gap around, um,
supporting people with disability, families and carers in getting access
(07:17):
to online content, and really wanted to focus on what
we can do to support that area. So given that
there was a gap in the not for profit sector
at that time, myself and two others, we decided to
come together and try and form an initiative to promote
the importance of digital access. And then that grew into
a not for profit. So from there, in 2020, we
(07:39):
formed centre for Accessibility Australia. Our board came together and yeah,
we're just actually celebrating our fifth birthday this week, so
it's very good. Yeah, it's a really exciting time and
it's been exciting to see that organisation grow. And although Covid, um,
in 2020 was an interesting time to try and start
an organisation, um, I think something that was really important
(07:59):
at that time is that a lot of people had
to go online because there was no other choice, given
the lot of traditional services had to shut down. And
so there was a real need to support organizations in
getting their content accessible at that time. So so really,
the formation of the center was a really important thing
at that time. And we've just continued since then.
S1 (08:18):
And just let people know your vision impaired yourself and
you have retinitis pigmentosa. Is that correct?
S3 (08:24):
That's correct. So in terms of my vision, I have
no night vision, not much central vision these days and
fairly narrow tunnel vision. So I use a cane to
get around. And yeah, three quarters of our staff, including myself,
have lived experience of disability. So really important to have
that perspective in all the work we do.
S1 (08:41):
Yeah, it sure is. Now what is digital accessibility?
S3 (08:47):
So essentially digital accessibility is about supporting people with disability
to be able to actively participate online. And the way
we look at it, there's really two essential parts to
digital access. One is we want to make sure that
people with disability have the right tools in their device
of choice, And the other part is you want to
make sure that content is created in a way that
(09:08):
supports the use of those tools. So we want to
make sure that whatever device people are using, that they
can use that independently with great accessibility features. And the
good thing is that most of our daily devices like phones, computers, tablets,
all have great accessibility features built in. And often it's
a case of learning how to use them. And so
then a lot of our attention turns to how do
(09:30):
we support organizations in making their websites accessible to international standards?
How do we get those apps accessible? How do we
get those documents accessible? So when we get those two
parts of the equation coming together, when people get great
tools on their device of choice and the content's accessible,
then independence is achieved. And that independence is really our
key focus.
S1 (09:49):
I wasn't aware that you also gave, um, assistance to
individuals to help them set up their devices and their
computers or whatever to, to to help them make it
more accessible for them as well.
S3 (10:02):
Yeah, that's a really key part of our charity and
a big part of why we sit in the not
for profit space. So we have a few ways that
people can get in touch. Um, and it's across a
range of different disabilities. So we have a free help
desk on our website. We have lots of information about
how to set up key accessibility tools in a variety
of different devices and operating systems, and then we also
(10:23):
have the ability for people just to call us or
drop us an email. And we do provide that support
free of charge. So if anyone does want to get
a device set up for themselves or maybe a parent
or a carer and they're keen to turn on that
screen reader or get that magnifier up and running or
turn things into high contrast, for example, then yeah, we
can provide that help for free.
S1 (10:44):
That's excellent. And if you're listening to the podcast, we
will give that information about how to find the centre
for Accessibility Australia on their web page and all the
details there. Accessibility. When we talk about accessibility, we are
aware of Physical accessibility for people who have physical disabilities. Uh,
(11:05):
ramps and wheelchair access and things like that. And a
lot of lifts that we go into now, they'll say
level one, level two, they'll talk. We here at Vision
Australia are quite aware of what's required to assist someone
who is blind or has low vision. And we hear
about talking computers and stuff like that, which is basically
what a screen reader is. But what are some of
(11:28):
the other aspects of accessibility for a web page or
a computer or a phone?
S3 (11:34):
One of the things about trying to make sure that
content is accessible is that we do have some great
international guidance to support us with that. So when we
try to make content accessible, we have really clear guidance
on what those things are. Thanks to the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines, or wcaG, as we call it. And so
there's 13 key things in that standard that provide us
(11:56):
guidance on how to make things accessible. So some of
the more specific vision related parts of that standard are
things like making sure that there's alt text on images,
so that if you are using a computer to read
things out to you, that a description of that image
is read out. We want to make sure there's really
great contrast. So there's a recommendation around foreground background and
text color and how that should contrast and also user
(12:19):
interface elements. So if you have that little hamburger icon
in your app, if you can't see that, then that
really makes it tricky to get around. So there's a
contrast requirement for things like that. And also making sure
that we can get around our content using only a keyboard.
So if you're using technologies that rely on keyboard like
desktop based screen readers, that that works. And also making
(12:39):
sure that if we're using mobile devices like Talkback on
Android or VoiceOver on an iPhone, that we can swipe
around and making sure those swipe gestures work too. So
there's just a few parts of the standard that really
provide clear guidance to developers, two designers, people creating that
content out there for us. It applies to documents as well.
(13:00):
So I think one of the really exciting things these
days is that we do know what needs to be done,
and it's really just about encouraging organizations who might not
have that awareness to do it. A good example, which
is as much vision related. But when Windows 11 came out, um,
it had a lot of great accessibility features. But then
just overnight, Microsoft released this fully featured, um, voice navigation feature,
(13:24):
which was just part of an update. And so overnight
Windows 11 went from an operating system which had some
good accessibility in it. But suddenly, for people who relied
on voice navigation and other functionality like that just completely changed.
And that was just an update. So keeping devices up
to date is a really good thing to do.
S1 (13:42):
It sure is. And it's interesting on the Apple Mac user.
And when I bought my last one, the computer started
talking straight away. And then I went, okay, because I
couldn't set it up with the screen screen by then.
And the computer was already talking and I thought, oh,
this is fabulous. That's that was its default position to talk.
S3 (14:04):
It is. And look, this wasn't the case even five
years ago. So what's not you know, the fact that
we can get an out of the box experience and
independently set things up, and, and it's a real testament
to companies that they, they do take accessibility more seriously.
S1 (14:20):
Well, it's also a testament to people like yourself and
others who've done advocacy to these major companies to say, hey,
we want to use your fancy computer as well.
S3 (14:30):
Absolutely. And so, you know, we're one voice of many,
and it's great that, you know, so many organizations have
come together. There's also, um, in some countries like the
EU and the US, they've got some great policy and
legislative frameworks now. And again, that's from the, you know,
work behind the scenes. Um, one of my roles is
I work with W3C, who produces that wcaG standard to
try and create international guidance to provide accessibility support. And yeah,
(14:54):
lots of voices come together and say, hey, this is
what needs to happen. And although sometimes it doesn't feel
like things change as quickly as we'd like. But, but
change is happening, and that's really exciting.
S1 (15:04):
Can I point out one example that is often a
common one about PDFs? Now, there are ways of creating
a PDF that makes it accessible so that those of
us that use screen readers to so the computer can
talk the document to us, it will recognize the PDF
as text. And there's another way of creating a PDF
(15:25):
that the screen reader just recognizes the PDF not as
a document, but as an image. So you tap on
it or point the cursor at it and it will
just say image. Image. Okay, that's no good. So how
do you address things like that, Scott.
S3 (15:42):
It's a great question. And if I had to say
what is the most controversial issue in the digital access space,
I would say it's the PDF. And you're absolutely right
that PDFs can be made accessible. And I say that
knowing that there might be picketing and flaming torches suddenly
coming after me. But. But it is true that PDFs
can be made accessible when the right accessibility criteria are
(16:05):
put to it. And we talked about wcaG, and there's
also another standard called PDF, UA, which provides lots of
great guidance on how that can be achieved. The problem
is that most of our daily experience, and I include
myself in this, is that PDFs we get are ones
which someone chucks a book on a photocopier that gets scanned,
it gets emailed to PDF, and like you say, that's
just images locked in a file called PDF and it's
(16:27):
completely inaccessible. I got one email to me the other day,
which was a really important event, and when I got
my screen reader to read it, it said image image,
image image, image image 14th of February. So I knew
something was happening on the 14th of February, but I
have no idea what that is. And this is unfortunately
a common experience, so I can fully understand when people go,
(16:48):
I don't like PDFs, they don't work for me. Um,
and what we try to do is we try to
work with organisations and say, well, look, you can make PDFs,
but they do need to follow accessibility criteria, and it
is a bit more of an arm wrestle than say
a word doc or putting something on a website. So
there is more work.
S1 (17:04):
And we understand why PDFs are used for the reason
you mentioned there, but also that they're more secure. You
can't alter a PDF like you can a word document
and so on. So there are those reasons.
S3 (17:16):
Yeah, I think, you know, the world has said that
they want to use PDFs. And, you know, while certainly,
you know, there are other formats around which are easier
and potentially more accessible, like Epub, but, um, you know,
the world has spoken on PDFs. And so from our
point of view, it's like, okay, well, let's given that
PDFs are popular and want to be used and can
be made accessible, you know, let's uh, let's work with
(17:37):
organizations to ensure that that gets achieved. Um, and I think,
you know, probably the part of PDFs that people talk
to us the most about is, um, is bills and
things like that, because they almost all come into PDFs
and depending on the organization, they may or may not
be accessible. So we try and work with organizations to
support them in fixing those issues.
S1 (17:56):
I find it really frustrating. I'm vision impaired and I
can see what's on the screen of my iPhone, and
I know that if I do certain gestures with the
what's called the voiceover on, it won't work efficiently or
won't sometimes won't work at all. If I turn the
voiceover off, it will work. There was a really favorite
(18:17):
app that I was using that's now changed to a
different one, and I can't access it at all because
it won't interact at all with VoiceOver. And it's so frustrating.
S3 (18:26):
And that is probably the number one frustration we receive
from people that, you know, we're at a point now
where a lot of that first side of the equation
has been addressed. We do have great built in tools
in our everyday devices. We don't have to spend thousands
of dollars, usually on buying assistive technologies. Usually we can
just walk into a store, buy a phone, buy a
computer and know that there's great accessibility features there. But
(18:48):
if the content's not designed, as you're saying, Simon, in
the way that it needs to be based on that
international standard, then we end up in in having great difficulties.
A good example for me personally is that I use
a news app, and that news app works really well.
It's really well designed. I can access the latest news independently,
no problem. But I have a phone provider, and if
(19:08):
I pull up the phone provider app to try to
check my usage or billing, all I hear on my
screen reader is icon, font or, you know, image or.
S1 (19:19):
Yes.
S3 (19:19):
You know, I just there is no meaningful information. I
can't get past the login screen. And so that's completely undone.
My ability to independently do that. And you know, I
don't want to get in trouble finding out that a
bill was due that I didn't know about. So, you know,
that is that is a really major issue. And if
they just followed the standard, then that would, um, that
would have been addressed.
S1 (19:38):
Now we're focusing on the vision impaired, but we can't
ignore it. Our friends that have other disabilities and there
are other forms of accessing the internet and your phone
and so on. That could make it a lot easier
to access your fabulous content, like if you have a video,
if you can add Özlem interpretation to make it easier
(20:00):
for a person who is deaf or hard of hearing
to watch your fabulous video as well. And Scott, you mentioned, um,
alt text, which is a way of describing a picture
or a photo or something like that. And just today
I was reminded, I shared a Facebook post and I
didn't add an image description to the picture that I shared.
(20:21):
So we all do it, and we all love social media,
but we need to make it friendly for everybody to use.
S3 (20:29):
Yeah, absolutely. And, um, I think we're all guilty from
time to time of, of doing things which are not
necessarily the most accessible way because we're in a hurry.
I know that something I used to be guilty of
before I really fully understood, um, the difference that it
makes is I used to just select text and click
on bold and say, oh, well, there you go. There's
my heading. And for screen reader users, they really do
(20:51):
need it to be properly marked up as a heading. Otherwise,
screen readers don't know it's their heading. And so I
think we're always on a journey of learning. Yeah, you
made a great point there about, um, supporting other disabilities.
So in the wcaG standard, it does talk about captions
on videos. So we always have captions on video. And
it does talk about making sure that sign language is
on video. And so interestingly the standard that we follow
(21:14):
in Australia goes to wcaG 2.2 level AA compliance. And
what that means is that there's three different levels. You
can implement the wcaG standard AA and AA. And in
Australia we go to AA. But sign language comes under
AA which is rarely implemented. So most videos in Australia
don't have sign language. We've made a decision as an
(21:34):
organisation last year that we really wanted to include Auslan,
given that for people who are deaf, that is their
first language. So all our professional videos now do have
Auslan on them. And the great thing with social media
that you were saying before is that social media does
support a lot of great accessibility. So videos can have captions,
(21:55):
you can have alt text on images, you can have
good heading structure.
S1 (21:58):
So they're very capulus organizations to people that create the
social media. They want every customer they can get.
S3 (22:04):
Absolutely. And we're important customers you know. That's right. I
saw a stat the other day that said that the
spending power of people with disability is 9 trillion AUD. Now,
you know, that's a hell of a lot of money
of goods and services that we want to buy, we
want to participate in. And so that that business case
argument is a great one amongst many arguments to make
(22:26):
content accessible.
S1 (22:27):
Now, the center for Accessibility Australia, as well as doing
all that advocacy and other great work, you also try
to promote organizations and businesses that are providing great accessibility
in the digital space. And you've got some awards coming up,
is that right?
S3 (22:45):
We do. And thanks very much for mentioning it. So
every two years we run the Australian Access Awards. So
the purpose of the awards are basically to celebrate organisations
and individuals that do really good work in the space.
So if you have come across a great website or
an app or um, something that you think is really
(23:05):
helpful to your life, then I'd really encourage listeners to
put in a free nomination. So it's an accessibility awards.
We have a free nomination process until the end of August,
and then we'll have a ceremony in November. And we've had,
you know, a number of winners. This is the fourth
time we've run the awards. So we run them every
two years, and we always see some great recognition of
(23:29):
organisations that are really giving it their all to ensure
that their content is accessible. And also, um, it's really
helpful competition too. So for example, in our first awards,
ANZ um took out um, a corporate website of the
year in terms of making their banking processes accessible. And um,
our last awards, we saw Bendigo Bank take out the
(23:50):
same award because they were they saw that other banks
were getting recognition for this type of work, and they
really wanted to to step up their processes too. And
so part of the awards is to celebrate. Part of
it is to encourage and, you know, a nice little
healthy competition. You're making things accessible isn't such a bad
thing either. So, uh, yeah, really encourage people to put
in nominations are free. It's really important that the community
(24:11):
is the one that gets to decide who's doing great
work out there. Uh, and if you'd like to put
in a nomination, please do.
S1 (24:17):
And we'll add those details to the podcast description when
the podcast is released. Now, we'll have to finish soon. Scott,
I was just thinking while you were talking about the
digital accessibility, it's a bit like when we acknowledge a
business that has good physical accessibility. It's one thing to
be able to enter the building and go to the business,
(24:38):
but it's another thing to be able to access it
and be feel totally included. And that would be the
same in the digital space or using a website or
an app. Would that be right?
S3 (24:49):
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the challenges we have in
Australia is that while we have some good legislation saying
that if you're building a new building, you need to
have that ramp, you need to have that accessible physical access. Um,
our legislation is still trailing a bit in terms of
providing the equivalent support in the digital space. Happily, there
has been some policy updates from the Human Rights Commission
(25:11):
moving us to the latest version of that wcaG standard,
which has been a great. That just happened in April.
So we're seeing some improvements. Um, but really, we need
a big overhaul of things like our Disability Discrimination Act,
Disability Services Act, and others to really help us catch
up to the rest of the world. So that's another
space that we advocate strongly.
S1 (25:28):
Sounds like a story for another time, too, Scott. Unfortunately,
time has caught up with us. Uh, is there anything
you'd like to finish with before we have to close
our conversation today, Scott.
S3 (25:37):
Probably just one other little thing that might be of
interest is that we are seeing some improvements thanks to AI.
There's a lot we could have. a whole other half
hour discussion about the pros and cons, but, um, yeah,
we're just starting to see I creep into some of
our everyday processes. For example, um, it is possible now to, uh,
if alt text is missing from an image, we have
(25:58):
the ability to get AI to at least have a
go at telling us what that is. There's some great apps,
like the seeing AI app and some built in functionality
to iPhone and Android, and we're seeing improvements with Windows
and Mac as well. So perhaps on another occasion we
can see where all that goes, and we'd love to
love to chat about that.
S1 (26:16):
Most definitely. Now, I think I saw something about that
on the, uh, on the organization's Facebook page this morning
about the new the new innovations around AI. Well, we
have to close up now, Scott. This conversation has gone
so quick. It's so very interesting. And, um, I am
online a lot, so it's important to me. And it
is interesting because a lot of people, especially with physical disabilities,
(26:39):
are online a lot because they physically can't get out
as much as other people. So it is an important
aspect of our lives. So Doctor Scott Hollier, thank you
very much for joining us here at Vision Australia Radio,
and I really appreciate your time today. It's been really
valuable and interesting.
S3 (26:55):
Thank you so much, Simon. Really appreciate it.
S1 (26:56):
Okay. That's all for today folks. Thanks for joining us
this week. Look forward to speaking to you another time.
Catch up with you then.
S2 (27:12):
That concludes in Plain Sight for this week. Join us
at the same time next week on Vision Australia Radio,
VA radio digital and online at VA radio. You can
also listen on demand by searching for In Plain Sight
by Vision Australia Radio. Wherever you get your podcasts, or
ask your smart device to play in Plain Sight by
(27:33):
Vision Australia Radio. Thanks for listening.
S1 (27:36):
Thank you.
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