Accessibility failures - process and register

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 requires agencies to ensure people with disabilities have the same access to information and services as others in the community. It is a requirement for all Government sites to meet WCAG AA guidelines.

This process will help guide you through the process for handling pages that do not meet our Accessibility standards.

Process for Accessibility failures

1. alert the content editor via email that the page does not meet our standards using the pre-written email template. The editor then has the option to:

   1. update the page to meet the standards, or

   2. proceed with the publishing. Before publishing, the content owner will need to provide the following:

      1. an email to acknowledge that they are in breach and would still like to proceed with publishing

      2. contact details (to be published) for any accessibility requests

      3. accessibility disclaimer added to page

      4. page details and exception reason added to the table below.

Alerting the content owner of the breach

Hi ______,

Unfortunately, the page you have submitted for review does not meet our Accessibility standards and is unable to be published at this time.

[Describe where the standards are not being met]

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 requires agencies to ensure people with disabilities have the same access to information and services as others in the community. It is a requirement for all Government sites to meet WCAG AA guidelines.

We request that you update your page to meet the Accessibility standards before it can be published. Details on how to make your page Accessible can be found on our Single Digital Presence website.

If you are unable to make your page Accessible and would still like to proceed with publishing, we require you to respond to this email with the following acknowledgement. A disclaimer notice will also be placed on the page.

I understand that the following page does not meet WCAG AA standards and is in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. I accept the responsibility for any action that may be initiated by failing to comply. I also agree to provide contact details for anybody seeking an accessible version of our information. These contact details will be published publicly on the web page, along with an Accessibility disclaimer.

Page title & link:
Reason for exception:

Contact email:
Contact phone number:

Authorised by:
Date:

If you have any questions, please email digital@dpc.vic.gov.au and a member of the content team will be able to assist.

Many thanks,

[your name]

Updating the page revision notes

Once the email has been sent, set the page back to Draft with the following revision note. This will let the team know that this person has already been contacted:

This page does not meet Accessibility standards and cannot be published. It includes a number of documents without a HTML version available. Please see my email for further detail.

Content owner acknowledgement

Before a non-compliant page can be published, the content owner will need to email digital@dpc.vic.gov.au with the following disclaimer:

I understand that the following page does not meet WCAG AA standards and is in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. I accept the responsibility for any action that may be initiated by failing to comply. I also agree to provide contact details for anybody seeking an accessible version of our information. These details will be published on the web page, along with an Accessibility disclaimer.

Page & link:
Reason for exception:

Contact email:
Contact phone number:

Authorised by:
Date:

Accessibility disclaimer - page callout

For non-Accessible pages, the following notice is to be placed on the page in a callout:

Page exception list

The following pages do not meet WCAG AA standards. The content owners acknowledge and accept that they are in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and have requested to have their page published anyway.