In July 2006, the US Access Board set up TEITAC (Telecommunications and Electronic and Information Technology Advisory Committee) to review and update what constitutes accessibility in various areas, including communication and information technologies.

AMTA supported an officer, Bruce Maguire, with the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) to attend a meeting in the US of this advisory committee, whose brief was to assist in revising and updating accessibility guidelines for telecommunications products and accessibility standards for electronic and information technology. After several years’ work TEITAC has presented its report to the Access Board.

“The Access Board is considering the TEITAC report. Quite a few of the Committee members submitted minority reports along with the main TEITAC report. These minority reports do not disendorse the TEITAC's work, but raise various issues that they feel warrant further consideration by the Board (an example is the "accessible in theory versus accessible in practice" issue),” Mr Maguire said.

“Once the Board has finalised its own report, it will make recommendations to Congress for changes to Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. It is then open to Congress to make further changes before the new Sections are promulgated. This will all take time, so a final version of the guidelines is still some way off. In the meantime, one should be cautious about drawing conclusions about the final wording or content of any of the TEITAC recommendations, notwithstanding that there are some general trends that are unlikely to change significantly (e.g., harmonisation with international standards, technological neutrality).”

Mr Maguire said there is increasing lobbying in Australia for the introduction of accessible public procurement policies. The recent ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the current work on developing a new Commonwealth Disability Strategy will give added stimulus to this lobbying. Most recently, a number of submissions to the investigation into access to electronic media being conducted by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy have called for the introduction of accessible procurement as part of a systemic approach to addressing the inaccessibility of key aspects of electronic media.

In the ongoing discussions of public procurement in the Australian context, the TEITAC work, and the final version of the guidelines, will be significant. Once the guidelines have been enacted, they will be studied to see how feasible it would be to adopt them (with appropriate modifications) in Australia, he said.

About TEITAC.

TEITAC Report.