Accessibility

The requirement for all Australian Government agencies is that they ensure the information and services are provided in a non-discriminatory accessible manner. The aim is to make government based websites easy to use and accessible.

ASIC Connect has been developed to adhere to the Australian Government standards in respect to accessibility (more specifically the Disability Discrimination Act 1992)

The following areas have been addressed in ASIC Connect which are relevant in complying with the current Australian government set standard of Level A of the
*Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.0:

• Include alternative descriptive text for all images to assist screen readers identify content.
• Descriptive naming of input fields and controls within the page
• Design all pages so that screen readers can easily and quickly identify content areas on the webpage.
• Ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour
• Allow information to be distinguishable and of high contrast between foreground and background colours
• All site functionality to be operable via keyboard
• Operation and information within the pages is easy to understand
• Ensure pages are not designed in such a way that is known to cause seizures (such as excessive flashing animations or objects within the page)
• Content is robust enough to be read by a wide variety of user agents - such as screen readers and other assistive technologies
• Browser compatibility - information presented within ASIC Connect can be viewed in a logical sequence for main browsers which includes Internet Explorer** and Firefox without any lose of data or readability.

If you have any difficulty viewing information or you are experiencing problems accessing content on ASIC Connect for any reason, please contact us.

Notes:

*WCAG 2.0 is a technical standard developed under the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This standard level is used to determined Australian Government agencies websites compliance.

**ASIC Connect recommend that Internet Explorer Version 6 users upgrade to Version 7 or higher for optimised user experience of ASIC Connect. Although version 6.0 will still allow ASIC Connect to be accessible some users will experience lower performance of the ASIC Connect website as its support and compatitibility with current web standards and 3rd Party software is limited.

You can check your current Explorer browser version by clicking on "Help" in the browser menu and then select "About". The version numbers will show in the popup window.

You can upgrade your Internet Explorer 6 to higher version at the official Windows Microsoft website:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/internet-explorer/downloads/ie