The DTI to the rescue!
The Prime Minister has responded to the petition over UK government sites’ accessibility, which came about because of the fuss Dan Champion and I made over the Department of Trade and Industry’s disastrous redesign:
“The Government is committed to ensuring that all government websites are accessible and easy to use for people with disabilities.
Action 7 of the Prime Minister’s Digital Strategy is to ‘improve accessibility to technology for the digitally excluded and ease of use for the disabled’.
This strategy is to be implemented by DTI with support from OGC and eGU (now the Cabinet Office Delivery and Transformation Group). A cross-government review of the Digital Strategy is currently under way under the supervision of the DTI).”
Joined-up government? My arse.
13 Responses to “ The DTI to the rescue! ”
The Disability Equality Scheme for the DTI (see http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file35733.pdf) outlines an intention to satisfy WCAG level AA on their website by end of February 2007.
Almost worthy of one of your Friday jokes !
When it comes to government, the cock-up theory usually has the greatest explanatory power. So, the best that can be said is that the lack of joinedupness (I’m sure I’ve seen that word in government papers) is generally the result of incompetence and ignorance rather than arrogant disregard for citizens. Although there’s a bit of that too.
Three cheers for the finest civil service in the world.
Of course there are quite a few hard working, caring and committed civil servants too. Like those who know me, and a certain blogger’s Mom and Dad of course
Hoorah! And Jeffrey Archer for Minister for Truth.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who read this and thought “What??!?”
It doesn’t appear as if they even read the petition, there doesn’t appear to be an acknowledgement that there was a c**k up, and the policy that was in place before this debacle is still the same policy.
I wonder is FoI will allow for the release of the target completion date of the review and the review findings… or would that information cost too much to retrieve!
I was pretty excited to see that there was any kind of response from the petition but indeed, this didn’t make much sense or have any real meaning – just trying to baffle us with acronyms on what not.
From my understanding of government and public sector hierarchy any research papers or strategies planned will take up to about a year to complete so the fight goes on I would think….
What I find most alarming is that the ‘Digital Strategy’ document refered to (when you eventaually track it down past the broken links) is actually dated April 2005:
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/work_areas/digital_strategy/
The reply to the petition seems to parade the strategy an ongoing ‘way forward’, rather than a promise from a couple of years ago that they’ve (so far) failed to deliver upon.
Fortunatley I wasn’t *too* excited to receive this the reply. Having received responses from number 10 for other petiotions, my expectation had been suitably managed.
Strategies are fine, detailed plans are better and of course solid action best of all. Why do I feel as though we are a long way off this?
Damn straight.
I find it hard to believe that the guy who wrote the response read even read the petition.
What we must be careful to do is channel any future FOI requests through one or two people so the government can’t use the old “mob psychology” chestnut again.
dti/the government = bunch of cocks.
…imho.
If you’d like to support accessibility at the EU level, the European Disability Forum is currently running a petition seeking 1,000,000 signatures to force effective legislation, combating all forms of disability discrimination. You can read more at:
Pretty much my thoughts too.
There’s a bit of chat about this on the Accessify Forum