'It is unlawful for a person who, whether for payment or not, provides goods or services, or makes facilities available, to discriminate against another person on the ground of the other person's disability'
Commonwealth of Australia Law, 2010, Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Act Compilation C2010C00023, Section 24 'Goods, services and facilities')
The Australian Human Rights Commission states the following: 'The Commission's view is that organisations who distribute content only in PDF format, and who do not also make this content available in another format such as RTF, HTML, or plain text, are liable for complaints under the DDA. Where an alternative file format is provided, care should be taken to ensure that it is the same version of the content as the PDF version, and that it is downloadable by the user as a single document, just as the PDF version is downloaded as a single file.'
Australian Human Rights Commission, 2009, World Wide Web Access: Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes
In October 2009, the following data was extracted from the whole of government search engine (Funnelback):
Just over 61% of Queensland Government's online web content was in HTML format.
PDFs accounted for nearly 35% of web content – more than 100,000 PDFs.
The average file size of an HTML page was 29 KB compared to an average of 305 KB for PDFs.
Highlights from the 'Interacting with Government: Australians' use and satisfaction with e-government services – 2009' study, section 2.4 Broadband Connection:
The proportion of people with a broadband connection has increased from 68% in 2008 to 76% in 2009.
One in ten (10%) use the internet but do not have a broadband connection.
Although those living in metropolitan and rural/remote areas have the same level of internet use (85%), there are differences in broadband access. Four in five (80%) who live in metropolitan areas have a broadband connection, in contrast to three quarters (73%) of rural/remote residents.
Since the last study, there has been an increase in the proportion of people living in rural or remote areas who do not have a broadband connection because it is not available in their area. In 2009, a third (34%) of those without broadband reported this as the reason for not having it, compared with one in five last year (18%). This compares with one in five (18%) of those from regional areas who do not have a broadband connection because it is not available and six per cent of those who live in a metropolitan area.
Approximately 10% of Australians with internet access are still using dialup internet connections and only 62% have download speeds of more than 1.5Mbps or greater.
Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2010, 8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, December 2009
1 in 10 people in Australia use equipment or an aid to help them cope with their condition or manage with their everyday life. Over 1 million Australians have a significant hearing impairment, with around 30,000 Australians totally deaf. Around 300,000 Australians have a substantial vision impairment (i.e. not correctable by glasses), with around 20,000 totally blind.