Disabled people: Little done to help them access facilities, transport

THE International Day of Disabled Persons on Dec 3 was yet another wonderful opportunity to promote understanding and increase public awareness of disability issues, and to promulgate the importance of integration and the well-being of people with disabilities.

However, here in Malaysia, one year after Action and Inclusion for the Disabled (AID) wrote a letter regarding the 2006 International Day of Disabled Persons, nothing of any substance has changed.

Consider, for example, the issue of disabled-friendly public transport facilities and buildings.

Accessibility to the majority of facilities, such as buildings, public transport, footpaths and road crossings, even some of those that were recently set up, is not possible since they have not been properly designed to make them usable by everyone.

Universal access to buildings is still a novelty and is by no means universally available. Some buildings built in the past 12 months are totally inaccessible to people in wheelchairs.

RapidKL even introduced so-called disabled-accessible buses, but these vehicles have been designed incorrectly, so that the area designed to accommodate two persons using wheelchairs occupies almost half of the available floor space, and there are only two seats in this half of the bus.

In Penang, the situation is worse because the new RapidPenang buses are universally inaccessible.

Over the past 18 months, AID has been meeting regularly to discuss the routing and accessibility options for the Penang monorail with Melewar Integrated Engineering and we are confident that they have addressed the requirements of the disabled within their monorail design.

We sincerely hope that whichever company constructs the Penang Monorail will ensure that the monorail system is accessible to all, and that the routing and stops will serve all the people who live along its route.

Most pavements are still not accessible to persons using wheelchairs, the blind, and the elderly. There are sometimes ramps of sorts, but more often than not, they are too steep or the kerbs are too high, there are obstructions on pavements, such as lamp posts, sign posts, non-flush manholes, etc.

Tactile markings for the blind are sometimes installed, though some of these do not follow required specifications.

We observed recently, in Kuala Lumpur, a new pavement 1.2m wide where the tactile markings turned 90 degrees left to within few centimetres of a wall, then 90 degrees right, 90 degrees right again and finally 90 degrees left. All this go around a grating 60 sq cm.

Author: ABDUL KARIM STUART RUSSELL for Action and Inclusion for the Disabled, Kuala Lumpur

Website Accessibility Important For Disabled Visitors

A study released by computing and disability charity, AbilityNet, found that people with disabilities favour the most accessible websites when using the Internet. A poll of over 100 people with disabilities showed that the disabled community use the Internet for information, shopping, banking and leisure, just like everyone else. However, most disabled users will spend their time and money only on businesses that cater to their needs with more accessible ( http://www.accuracast.com/services/usability-accessibility.php ) sites.

Demographics of UK's Disabled Audience

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are 610 million disabled persons worldwide. The European Parliament estimates that there are 37 million disabled individuals in the EU, over 50% of whom are of working age. 10.3 million UK residents declare that they have a limiting long-term illness. These numbers are significant enough to make anyone realise the potential audience they could be ignoring by creating websites ( http://www.accuracast.com/services/search-engine-optimisation/website-development.php )that are hard to access.

Disability Discrimination Act

The Disability Discrimination Act ascerts that website owners have had a legal duty, since October 1999, to ensure that all services provided via their website are accessible to disabled people. Any company not complying with the accessibility guidelines could potentially open itself up to legislation and discrimination lawsuits from disabled customers.

Disability Rights Commission: User-friendly websites for all

The disability rights commission launched guidance yesterday on how to launch a website that is user friendly. The document, Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 78, was developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the Disability Rights Commission.

• Details on the PAS 78 can be found at http://www.bsi-global.com/PAS78

Common Accessibility Problems

Typical accessibility problems encountered by most disabled users include:

• Text size on some sites is hard-coded so that it cannot be easily enlarged

• Text labels attached to images (Alt text attribute) are often uninformative or absent

• Pictures of text are often used instead of actual text

• Adverts and features made up of moving images distract visitors with a cognitive impairment

• Interactive presentations such as 'Flash Movies' present access problems for visitors who cannot use a mouse, are vision impaired or who use speech output or voice recognition software

• Mini programs embedded in the page such as JavaScripts prevent full access the sites.

About The Author

Farhad Divecha is the founding Director of AccuraCast, London's leading search engine marketing agency. He has 7 years experience marketing products and services online and offline. His past projects included managing $80 million PC Card product lines for 3Com, consulting for Household, Proctor & Gamble and numerous other large and small companies in the UK and USA. His experience and vision steered AccuraCast to rank among the top 25 search agencies in the UK (NMA 2006 Marketing Services Guide).