Annual Report 2002–03:

Accessibility

Each year FaCS uses the annual report as a benchmark for the accessibility of FaCS information online. We hope that you would agree that this year is no exception in reflecting the work being undertaken across FaCS to improve the accessibility and readability of these online information products.

Accessibility conformance

The Accessible Information Solutions web accessibility group at the National Information & Library Service has worked with FaCS and its developers to ensure that the FaCS Annual Report for 2002-03 meets the highest levels of best-practice accessibility. The Annual Report was checked for accessibility on November 12, 2003 and found to conform to our interpretation of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at the Triple-A level.

Accessibility details

We encourage all users of the report to provide feedback regarding any access problems, small or large. Providing as much information as possible about your computer, operating system and browser makes it a lot easier to identify your access problems and fix them where possible.

As a key driver for the Commonwealth Disability Strategy, FaCS aims to once again provide a report accessible to the largest possible audience while demonstrating that the report can still remain attractive. We use the standards for web design (references are outlined below) and style sheets to do this. Some of the features of the site that demonstrate this are:

alternative text links for image based links
summary attributes for layout tables
caption and table header attributes for data tables
descriptive text equivalents for figures, charts and graphs
adjustable text sizes
consistent navigation themes
extensive style sheet presentation control
multiple browser testing

For users with vision impairments, we particularly encourage you to provide us with feedback regarding the accessibility of the Annual Report 2002–03. FaCS works with internal and external agencies to develop standards that attain to the highest level of accessibility for users with vision impairments but user feedback is an integral part of this process.

Standards

Standards followed in the development of this site are based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 1.0 (WCAG 1.0), a set of guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to enable equal access to all users of the internet.

Under these guidelines, we've attempted to achieve a AAA rating for accessibility in all possible areas. Check the WAI-QuickTips for a brief overview of building web sites enabled for access impaired users or see Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 for a detailed insight.

Known issues

Netscape version 4 and non Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) browsers

The Netscape version 4 browsers have a method for displaying CSS which is not as standardised as modern browsers. Other older browsers don't display CSS at all. Standard CSS is the major element in the 'interface design' of this web site and due to the limitations, the interface of these portals are not as 'stylised' in these browsers as they are in newer browsers.

All the information is still available and the text can still be scaled using the browser preferences or options.

Printing pages

We've produced a style sheet for CSS enabled browsers but if results are unsatisfactory please send us feedback. Again, providing as much information as possible about your computer, operating system, browser and printer make it a lot easier to identify problems. Alternatively we can suggest downloading the PDF versions for printing.

CSS based site for access impaired users

As encouraged above, feedback from vision impaired users on the accessibility, particularly regarding the new 'CSS layout' structure, of this site is welcomed.

Financial statements now available as HTML

In previous years the audited Financial Statements were only available as image files and as PDF files. This year we have provided HTML versions of the audited Financial Statements 2002–03 as well as the original image files. If you would like further information or access to the audited Financial Statements in another format please contact the Communication and Media Unit on (02) 6244 1854 or email CMU@facsia.gov.au.

Large pages

There are several large pages that may take longer to download due to extensive table data and figure graphics. Please send us feedback if you think the download times were too excessive.

Please contact us with feedback regarding any problems accessing this report.