Access on the agenda: No longer an afterthought
|
Paper delivered by Elizabeth Hastings |
 |
Introduction: Access for the real community, not just the imaginary one
It is easy to discourage any vision for social change as "utopian". It is easy to emphasise the solid, inevitable, natural quality of the existing order, of the world as we know it, however unattractive, against the imagined, idealistic, unpractical quality of what might be, however desirable.
What is, is as solid as the steps you cannot get up. As inevitable as the newspaper print you cannot read; or the notice you cannot understand; or the rule you cannot comply with. As natural as all the things you cannot expect to do, the places you cannot expect to go, the economic and social and cultural and political life you cannot expect to be fully part of - because you have a disability.
The feel of all of this soaks into us like (Sydney) rain. It soaks into all of us: people who have a disability and people who don't have one, or at least not yet. It is easy to believe that it is all too hard, too expensive; too much to expect or to demand; that what is is what should be.
Even for those of us who do not believe change is all too hard, it is easy to begin to feel that any change towards equality and access is such an uncertain experiment that it must be preceded by at least five years of committee discussions, in the hope of getting every detail absolutely right before one even contemplates discussing it publicly, let alone beginning implementation. Such is the anxiety people feel about change, particularly change of regulations and standards.
Now, there is no doubt that getting from where we are now to a community genuinely and thoroughly accessible to people with a disability does require effort. Above all it appears to require an effort of imagination, as well as other sorts of effort. But in the most fundamental sense for a democratic society, it is the inaccessible present situation that is founded on imagination or illusion; and the accessible and inclusive community which we seek to imagine that is founded on reality.
I mean, of course, that disability is an integral part of the human experience. In the real Australian community at least 18% of the members have a disability. In addition there are the family members, carers, friends, and collaborators or potential collaborators in work or other enterprises, whose full participation in the life of the community is diminished by the lack of accessibility.
Keeping this in mind is an antidote to discouragement or excessive caution in seeking an accessible, equal and inclusive community. A community which includes people with a disability is not some experiment of over-bold social engineers; it is the real community we have now, waiting to be acknowledged. Accessibility is not an experiment we can or should defer, while we procrastinate over whether this or that is really the right time or the right way to try it.
In the real community, everywhere someone's hopes and aspirations are being thwarted, their talents are being wasted, their moral and material resources are being used up, and often those of their family too, for every day that goes by before the achievement of an accessible community in any respect you can think of.
Access in the whole community, not just an artificially limited one
"The community" is not just a place; it is not just a house or street; not just a new type of "placement" for bold social engineers to accommodate people with a disability instead of sending us to institutions with high walls. In plain speech, the real community is not exclusively made up of local facilities for everyday life. The real community is not only bricks, mortar and concrete, and the mere pulling down of concrete barriers is not the provision of access to our community.
It is no great gain for people with a disability if, instead of being dammed up behind a few thick institutional walls, our lives are poured out into thousands, or millions, of stagnant little puddles, allegedly in the community but in fact isolated by lack of information, by lack of transport, by lack of opportunity, by lack of education, by negative attitudes, from the streams and currents and rapids and ocean waves of its real life. (Let my people surf, as some of my Internet-obsessed staff might say.)
Of course the ordinary aspirations of people trying to live ordinary lives are hugely important: whether a person can get into and use the local supermarket, video shop, bank, picture theatre, and football ground matters a lot, particularly to that person. But "living in the community" means more than these things.
For example, access to a community means more than just being able to be a consumer, or a recipient of services. It must mean at least the possibility, if one wants it, of political participation in local, state, and national affairs. It must mean access to the places where votes are taken and meetings are held, and access to the information provided or exchanged there to make participation possible or meaningful. It must mean access to all the things we do as a community or that community membership makes possible for an individual. It must mean education and employment; developing and using abilities for one's own fulfilment and for the benefit of other people.
I do not have access to the community, as it exists for other members, if I can participate in the local school but not in the tertiary course in film making or science or law available to others of similar interests and ability. Furthermore, since employment is hugely important both in ensuring an adequate income and as a source of socially valued role and social connectedness, I do not have equal access to many aspects of the life of the community if I don't have equal opportunity in employment.
Access to the community as more than access to physical spaces
Let me follow for a moment more my point that access to the community implies more than simply access to and in particular places in a person's local area. Clearly, access means more than physical access alone, or more than access only for people with a physical disability. A sign giving essential directions which cannot be read or understood is a very effective barrier to access, and an attitudinal barrier will exclude many people just as effectively. But my point is also that, in the Australian community at least, with its distances and separated populations, its reliance on technology, access also includes access to "transactional spaces" which are not necessarily identical with particular physical place. These "transactional spaces" are those created by information and communications technology, whether one is talking of "cyberspace", or of the capacity of television to bring the world into a person's home, or of telephone communications.
Access "to" people with a disability as well as "for"
A little earlier I mentioned talents being wasted. I think it is important to remember, when we are talking about an accessible community, that access is not a one way street, even if it does have properly designed kerb ramps! It is not just a matter of people with a disability having access to "the community", there is also the question of whether the community has access to people with a disability, of whether we are to be cut off like an island continent.
In the United States, the Clinton Administration has been fond of using phrases like "We do not have even one American to waste!" in explaining the need for a more accessible society, in particular the need for more effectively inclusive education for people with a disability. Of course, American political culture and rhetoric is different from ours, but I would not be at all sorry to find at least this area of discussion in Australia becoming more Americanised. I think there is something immensely important in the idea of common citizenship, not just as a matter of common entitlement to equality and justice, but of common opportunity to contribute to the common good.
It is true and good to say that people with a disability should enjoy a decent life just because we are human beings; it is true and good to say that we should have assistance in attaining a decent life if we need it, because some of us do need it and we are part of a community that can afford to provide that assistance; it is true and good to say that we should have justice because it is just.
There is, however, more to be said if we are not merely talking about claims on society in the abstract, which either go unfulfilled or fall on the State as representative of society; and certainly to talk only of claims on the State is not enough. Entitlements to benefits gained from the State may be and in many cases are founded on justice, but they end up being administered and experienced as if they were founded on pure benevolence, concern for welfare, or, that much debased word, charity. Even to be a recipient of justice is still to be a recipient. In any case, the actual and politically accepted roles of the State in our society are limited and seem to be shrinking year by year.
So I think it is essential to emphasise that access is not only about justice for people with a disability, not only about needs. It is also about being able to participate and contribute, to take up our responsibilities as citizens, and the ability of other people in the community, indeed the whole community, to benefit from this participation and contribution.
I am not seeking here to make the frequently made point that universal design, design for accessibility, often directly benefits many other people in addition to people with a disability. Mind you, it is a frequently overlooked point, a valid point and a useful one - it does not hurt to have allies and there will be more of them for people with a disability as the Australian population ages. But today I want to stress another point: that the contribution and participation of people with a disability in whatever area of the life of the community we are talking about is valuable in itself, not just because the things that make this participation and contribution possible also make things easier for other people.
Sometimes this is easy to see: is it more important that computer speech processing and synthesis equipment is convenient for lawyers who are not very good at using a keyboard, or that it enables a Stephen Hawking to work and communicate? But I hesitate to even mention "famous cripples" like this in public. We do not all need to be Hawking or Beethoven or Helen Keller, or Einstein with the attention deficit disorder now attributed to him, for our contribution to matter and be worth having - not if we are really a community with "not one person to waste"; not if we are really a community "for all of us"; not if we are really a community at all.
There are many ways that this matters.
Will Australian employers have access to the most effective use of the full range of skills and abilities of all of Australia's people or only, at most, 82%? Will our cultural, artistic, scientific endeavours? Our political systems? Will business have access to the broadest possible potential markets, or only to ones discounted by at least 18 per cent?
I have tried on other occasions to encourage a raising of the level of debate on the economics of discrimination and equality in relation to people with a disability; to see if we might start to discuss more than just the costs of providing access and the costs of regulatory regimes intended to secure access and equality. I have tried to stimulate more and better consideration of the costs of the lack of accessibility; the costs of segregated provision of services rather than mainstream access.
This is an issue worthy of serious attention on the microeconomic reform agenda - not just the province of bleeding hearts.
Let me give you a quote from the latest issue of my regular newsletter which tries to make some of these points in a more straightforward way. I said to my readers:
Many of you will soon be doing your Christmas shopping, and taking your holidays. May you find accessible goods to buy, and accessible accommodation and entertainment to enjoy! Likewise, may those of you in the retail, hospitality and entertainment business reap the benefit of providing discrimination free services and facilities to consumers and holiday-makers with disabilities, and to their families and friends!
Laws for the real community
Probably nothing I have said so far seems very new. When all we are doing is acknowledging the real community, including people with a disability as it does, most steps in achieving access and equality will seem obvious, boring even, at least once they are achieved or maybe once they are sketched out. But it has been a long road, and still is, from the consciousness of people with a disability that we do exist and are part of the community, to the demand that this reality be accommodated and that the required social changes occur.
For better or worse, this society places great faith in the law and legal institutions as means of delivering such change. The law in Australia has gone a long way towards recognising the real community which includes people with a disability rather than just the imaginary community which does not, but we are still only in the early stages of working through the program of giving those laws real effect.
The jurisdiction of the original federal Human Rights Commission of 1981, on which I served as a Commissioner, included reference to United Nations instruments on the rights of people with a disability. That jurisdiction did not create enforceable rights in relation to disability and there was a limited amount we were able to do with it, but in the same period, and largely in response to the aspirations, expectations and energy surrounding the International Year of Disabled Persons, general State laws on discrimination were either created or amended to include people with a disability.
Through the 1980s, the federal level of law and government produced the most sweeping statements of inclusion and human rights for people with a disability but, now it can be seen clearly, not in a way entirely matched by the actual scope or practical effect of laws and programs.
Not until the passage of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1992 did legislation at the Federal level catch up with the rhetoric, in recognising the real composition of the real community and requiring that all people have equal access to the ordinary rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
The Disability Services Act of 1986 was and is an important piece of legislation, but for all its impressive statements of the rights of people with a disability as human rights, it was and remains a narrowly based piece of legislation, concerned only with our rights as users of specialised services for people with a disability. It is, frankly, very depressing when representatives of the disability community send me submissions, sincerely meant and developed with scarce time and resources, that a regulatory regime on disability access in a service for the whole community such as public transport must explicitly reflect the Principles and Objectives of the Disability Services Act. Why should it? How would anyone be better off if it did? These questions are not answered; it seems to be simply assumed that if the subject matter is in any way about disability, the Principles and Objectives of the DSA must be applied. These Principles and Objectives are at best appropriate for their specific area of application - they are not appropriate to be adopted as an all purpose touchstone of simple faith.
In this State of Western Australia, and also in New South Wales, the State Disability Services Act performs much wider functions than in other states and territories. As well as regulating services specific to people with a disability, it requires Government departments and agencies, whatever sort of service they provide to the public, to develop plans indicating how they will ensure that their services are equally effectively provided to those members of the public who have a disability.
From what I have seen, the Disability Services Commission here in Western Australia is exercising its mandate under this legislation with an energy, intelligence and focus on practical results unsurpassed anywhere else in Australia. I have been particularly impressed by the recently released checklists for achieving accessibility, and I shall certainly be taking up the invitation in those materials to reproduce their content. They give clear guidance as to what must be done in order to comply with the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act, and the Western Australia Equal Opportunity Act, to create inclusive community.
Action plans for Commonwealth Government
In 1994 Federal Cabinet adopted the Commonwealth Disability Strategy as, amongst other things, a policy response to the requirements of the DDA. The Strategy as adopted included a commitment that Commonwealth departments and agencies would lodge Action Plans under the DDA. These would be their own plans on how to ensure that the Commonwealth's own agencies comply with the Commonwealth's own legislation, and would be lodged by 1997.
To date only one such plan has lodged by a Commonwealth Department or agency. This contrasts with a steady stream of Action Plans from education providers and local government authorities, and plans beginning to come in from State government and private business enterprises. Let me admit at once that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is only now finalising its own Action Plan - these things always take longer than you expect!
Let me admit further that, although the guidance material which we prepared for Commonwealth agencies on development of action plans was widely praised when it was distributed, clearly this material has not yet been as successful in practice as we hoped it would be in assisting those responsible for producing Action Plans. A perception seems to have developed, in some Departments at least, that preparing a plan needs to be a vast, resource- consuming bureaucratic exercise.
The Commission will be consulting with departments over the next few months to see if any further assistance or clarification we or others can provide would assist in getting results.
Although elements of the process under the Western Australian Disability Services Act and the DDA are different and should not be confused, I think organisations, including Commonwealth departments or agencies, looking at developing a DDA Action Plan could do much worse than pick up and work through the checklists developed by the Western Australian Disability Services Commission.
In the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's own guidance material in this area, we have tried to direct attention to some basic points:
- can people with a disability get in to the places where Commonwealth laws and programs are administered?
- if they cannot now, what is being done to achieve equal access over time?
- what is being done to ensure access to the program where access to the particular building is not yet provided?
- can people with a disability communicate with the agency and receive information from it?
- will they be treated with equal respect and effectiveness by staff as the users of an agency's services?
It cannot, surely, be too hard to make a plan to address these points and to identify what further points might need to be addressed in future revisions of an initial plan.
Action plans for business and other sectors
I am reinforced in this view, that it is not too hard just to make a plan and make a start on the road towards accessibility, by the response that I am getting in my current work promoting the Action Plan concept to business organisations and major enterprises.
An Action Plan is not an absolute defence against complaints; but it does provide an enterprise with a structure for arranging its own effort towards compliance with the DDA before complaints force a response on it. An Action Plan developed and implemented with a reasonable degree of commitment is likely enough to persuade most people who could make disability discrimination complaints not to: most people with a disability are amazingly eager to be reasonable, given the opportunity.
Most managers are not aware of the ways in which existing ordinary practices may exclude people with disabilities. I have consistently found that people become very interested and enthusiastic once we start to discuss the concrete and practical things they can do to make their enterprise more accessible.
I have referred in my regular Newsletter to the fact that an organisation as large and significant as Telstra is working on an Action Plan, which I hope will be launched in the very near future. Another major enterprise in the telecommunications industry is also interested in developing an Action Plan, and several major banks are actively engaged in work towards a Plan or giving it serious consideration.
Here in Western Australia there is what I think is the outstanding example of the Department of Transport's Action Plan. I have no doubt that areas needing improvement, addition and revision will become apparent with experience, but I think this Plan, as it is, is significant. It is particularly so for the commitment to effective consultation with people with a disability that went into its development, done in a way that appears to have produced effective input without unproductive delay in getting a final result; for the breadth of issues it covers; and for its adoption of meaningful targets and definitions of what the access aimed for means.
What access means
"What the access aimed for means." This of course is where we get to the hard part. It is all very well to tell builders or designers of other facilities or systems that they should consult people with a disability - and so they should. But because our needs are various and individual, the answers someone will get, who actually needs to make a decision, may well also be various and individual, and more or less comprehensive, depending who is consulted. This is why if accessibility is to implemented or even attempted, it is important to have agreed or authoritative standards stating clearly what access means in different situations.
Standards
When the DDA was passed, provision was made for rights and obligations to be set out in more detail and with more certainty through instruments to be known as "Disability Standards", which could be developed by the Attorney-General, subject of course to approval or amendment by the Federal Parliament. Once a Standard is in force, actions in conformity with that Standard are protected from being unlawful acts under the DDA.
It was recognised that, in the interests of everyone involved, there needed to be better ways of deciding how, when and where services should be made accessible, rather than fighting about it case by case by case, or having design of services and facilities dependent on the progress of more or less random complaints and how those complaints are handled by different courts and tribunals interpreting the very general terms of discrimination laws.
Transport standards
Against this background, and in response to a number of complaints under the DDA, the Australian Transport Council established a Taskforce to develop draft Disability Standards for accessibility of public transport. I represented the Attorney-General on that Taskforce. As well as representatives of all Transport Ministers, the Taskforce included representatives of the bus and coach and taxi industries, and a number of representatives of people with a disability.
After extensive consultative processes, the Taskforce agreed on draft Standards. In turn the Ministers referred the draft Standards, agreed to be "a technically feasible" way of providing access, to the Attorney-General in June this year.
The draft Standards set out a twenty year timetable for moving to more fully equal accessibility of public transport services. This timetable includes some points which have to be achieved substantially earlier: in particular the Standards, when adopted, would apply to all new equipment and facilities from that point.
The draft Standards also provide transport operators with the capacity to argue that some obligations should be deferred within or beyond the twenty year period, or in exceptional cases should not apply at all; they preserve the existing ability of operators to argue that in particular circumstances providing equal access would impose unjustifiable hardship.
The draft Standards attempt to provide an appropriate combination of flexibility and certainty. They contain a mix of performance requirements, and more detailed technical specifications of one or more acceptable ways of complying with these requirements. Most of these specifications simply apply existing Australian Standards.
The draft Standards do not purport to deal with every last operational issue or every possible user requirement, but in my view they represent a vast advance on the present position in terms of everyone being able to see in some detail what is required of them and how and by when it should be achieved.
The Attorney-General's Department has commenced the Regulatory Impact Statement ("RIS") process required before the draft Standards on public transport can be considered for adoption.
For people who want to comment on the draft, for transport providers preparing Action Plans, and for people with a disability and others seeking resolution of issues of non-discriminatory access to public transport, copies of the Draft Standard can be obtained from the Human Rights Branch of the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department.
Education standards
Inspired in part by the progress made with Transport Standards under the DDA, Education Ministers have also established a Task Force to consider development of Standards. Although the Commission is not directly represented on this, I have been able to meet with this group and separately with many of its members. I have shared with them the Commission's experience in the development of other Standards and information which we have accumulated, through the complaints process and in discussions in five States with a large number of parent groups, teachers' unions, education providers and policy makers, about major barriers and challenges which must be addressed if people with a disability are to achieve equality of access to and participation in education.
The Commission has contributed to drafting of example Standards to be included in the next report of the Task Force to Education Ministers in December, and will continue to contribute to this important project as it progresses.
Employment standards
At the request of the DDA Standards Project (the disability community representatives) the period for comment on a draft Disability Standard on discrimination in employment has been extended, from the 29 November date originally agreed, to the end of February 1997. It is disappointing that this will inevitably delay further consideration of Standards in this area, but a revised draft will be issued for further comment as soon as possible. The draft Standard is available from my office in standard or large print, Braille or tape, and is also now available at the Commission's site on the Internet.
Commonwealth Government information and communications
The possible need for a DDA Standard on equal access to Commonwealth Government information and communications has been raised from a number of sources, including in the settlement last year of a complaint by the National Federation of Blind Citizens of Australia. After what I think are unconscionably long delays, for a number of reasons which I will no go into here other than to make clear they were not my or the Commission's doing, an Issues Paper in this area has just been released for discussion. The Issues Paper is available in a range of formats from the Human Rights Branch of the Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department. This paper is also available on the Commission's site on the World Wide Web.
The discussion of issues in this paper is clearly dated in some respects, not surprisingly since the initial draft was done (by my office) over a year ago, but here are the main issues raised:
General issues
- How far should Standards go beyond a general obligation to provide equal access? Should they specify particular forms and formats in which information and communication is and is not required to be provided?
- What requirements should apply only where requested by a person with a disability rather than as a matter of routine?
- In situations where fully equal access is not required or possible, does any "second best" rule apply about the level of access?
- Do Standards need to address the question of additional fees or charges for providing information in non-standard forms?
Access to information materials produced in print
- Must materials always be made available in Braille? In large print? On tape/other audio form? On computer disc? On sign language video? In other forms such as "words and pictures"?
- In what circumstances do some formats not need to be produced?
- What production standards should be applied to these formats?
- May production and distribution of non-standard print formats be contracted out to commercial producers or community organisations? Or must non-standard print materials be available from the same source as standard print?
- Should non-standard print versions of information always be made available at the same time as standard print material? If not, what "second best" rules apply?
- Other than "words and pictures" and "plain language" versions of print, what means would enable equal access for people whose disability involves difficulties with comprehension?
- When should readers or other assistants have to be provided to afford access to printed materials?
Computerised information
- How far may on-line access (or other computerised information such as computer disc or compact disc) substitute for direct production by agencies of Braille, large print and audio output?
- What, if any, technical requirements should Standards address (e.g. to ensure that output is accessible and that material can be translated between formats)?
- What, specifically, should Standards on information and communication say about physical accessibility of equipment and facilities used to provide access on computer?
- Can/should Standards include anything about making access to computerised information easier for people with comprehension difficulties?
- The Commonwealth may in some cases rely on electronic transfer of information rather than on direct production of materials in forms other than standard print. If it does this, how far must it increase individuals' and/or organisations' capacity to receive information electronically and reproduce it in appropriate forms (e.g. by provision of funds, equipment, staff assistance or training)?
Broadcast information
- Should DDA Standards say something about captioning of Commonwealth information broadcast on television (e.g. information from the Australian Electoral Commission and free time allocated to political parties)?
- Should DDA Standards say anything else about equal access to broadcast information?
Telephone communications
- Should Commonwealth agencies have to provide direct TTY access? Could they provide access in some or all circumstances by other means, such as through the national relay service or through computer networks?
- Should DDA Standards set specific requirements about relay services?
- Where there is direct TTY access, what level of access should be provided?
- Should DDA Standards say something about telebrailler access?
- Should DDA Standards say something about voice amplification features of telephones?
Face to face communications
- When should Commonwealth authorities have to provide interpreters, note-takers or other assistants?
- What qualifications/accreditation should such assistants have?
- What equipment should Commonwealth authorities have to provide? What equipment should be the responsibility of the person with a disability?
- Should communications facilities such as hearing loops be addressed in these Standards, or in Standards about Commonwealth premises?
These issues, and the rest of the paper, have been released to encourage discussion and to alert interested parties to the kind of issues being considered by the group considered drafting of Standards in this area. Draft Standards to be released for public comment some time in 1997 will be informed by responses received to this paper, but drafting is likely to commence soon - probably as early as next month - rather than waiting for an extended period for extensive responses to the discussion paper to accumulate.
Built environment and the Building Code of Australia (BCA)
Over the past few months I have received a number of requests from the building industry, designers, regulators, managers and users for the Commission to develop guidelines to clarify what does and does not constitute discrimination in "access to and use of premises"' under the DDA.
I decided last month that I would commence work on such draft guidelines, as a statement of principle and policy of the Commission. I shall be seeking comments from interested organisations and individuals towards the end of the year with a view to the guidelines being adopted by the Commission in March 1997. I hope that these guidelines will be particularly useful to people and organisations in the process of developing premises.
Guidelines will effectively answer the question "What can developers, owners, managers, operators and regulators do to eliminate discrimination against people a disabilities and thereby reduce the chance of a successful complaint against them under the DDA?" Guidelines would be the Commission's opinion of what would, under normal circumstances, amount to reasonable access in the context of the objects of the DDA.
The defence of unjustifiable hardship as provided for in the DDA would not be altered by the issuing of a guideline, although the Commission would consider the degree to which a respondent had achieved the level of access described in the guideline when considering a complaint.
The draft guideline will be available by the middle of December and open for comments until by late February 1997. Again, it will be published on the Internet.
The issuing of guidelines is a process quite separate from the negotiations and consultation taking place over the revision of the Building Code of Australia.
There is no question that I support the Australian Building Codes Board's revision of the BCA, which I see as a fundamental component of the response to calls for equitable and dignified access. The Guidelines are intended to promote exactly this.
For anyone not familiar with the detail of processes in this area, let me try to set out the major points.
The Australian Building Code Board (ABCB), which is responsible for the BCA, launched the new BCA 96 at its national conference on 14 October.
BCA 96 is primarily a performance based code which attempts to encourage architects, builders, managers and regulators to move towards innovative ways of achieving high standards of safety, health and amenity in the construction of buildings. BCA 96 does, however, also contain specifications which are "deemed to satisfy" particular performance requirements, and there are a number of significant changes and additions in the area of access for people with disabilities.
BCA 96 will not be given authoritative effect through State and Territory laws until at least mid 1997 because of legislative requirements.
The ABCB has made it very clear that the launch of BCA 96 in no way alters their commitment to completing their review of the BCA in order to achieve consistency with the requirements of the DDA. This review is now well under way. The period for comment on the Discussion Paper which the ABCB released at the end of July has now closed and the ABCB will be looking at responses with a view to releasing a further paper early in 1997 with specific proposals for changes to the BCA.
I value the opportunity to contribute to revising the BCA so it gives adequate guidance about providing access that complies with the DDA. My membership of the Building Access Policy Committee, and participation in the review of the BCA, however, does not limit my current responsibilities to ensure that the objects of the DDA are achieved.
Issues surrounding equitable access to and use of premises are complex and require work on a number of fronts and so it is important that all those involved coordinate actions across our respective areas of responsibility. I have, in proposing that the Commission issue guidelines, responded to very constructive requests from my colleagues in the BCA revision process and builders, designers, operators, users and regulators in the community. I welcome assurances of support I have received from a number of sources for the development of interim guidelines and the significant role they have to play in attaining certainty in relation to stakeholder rights and responsibilities under the DDA.
Telecommunications reform
Another very important area of access where I have been asked to develop guidelines is access to telecommunications services.
You are probably aware of a determination last year by the President of the Commission in a case brought against Telstra by a Perth man, Mr Scott, who wanted Telstra to provide him with a TTY since, being deaf, he could not use a standard handset. Sir Ronald Wilson upheld the complaint, and Telstra is not only complying with the decision in respect of Mr Scott and thousands of others similarly situated, but as I have said earlier is planning to launch an Action Plan shortly indicating how it will provide nondiscriminatory access to its services more generally.
One of the results of this case appears to be in the provisions of the draft Telecommunications Bill released recently by the Government. The "standard telephone service" which carriers are required to deliver has been redefined to include not just standard handsets, but other equipment required to provide equal access for a person with a disability. The Bill does not prescribe precisely what equipment and facilities must be provided in particular circumstances; the approach, rather, is that what is required is whatever is needed to comply with the DDA - hence the request to me from a major disability organisation for guidelines on the effect of the DDA in this area.
I am giving this request serious consideration, and have not yet decided whether such guidelines under the DDA should be prepared. The Telecommunications Bill provides for the making of its own "disability standards" to define what obligations in this area mean in detail, and this provision is clearer than that in the DDA in requiring consultation with affected parties before such Standards are made. Standards as proposed under the Telecommunications Bill, however, do not provide an absolute defence under the DDA as DDA Disability Standards would.
I hope to have further discussions with the Department of Communications in the near future to assist me in determining what role the Commission can best play in this area.
World Wide Web access paper
Because of the increasing importance of the Internet as a means of publication, and its potential as a means of access to information for people with a disability, I have issued a paper seeking comment on the possibility of the Commission adopting guidelines under the DDA on accessibility of World Wide Web pages. Distribution of this paper will be primarily through the Internet but it is available from my office on paper - if you must have it that way! - or in other formats. I hope that this paper will provoke debate in an area which has seen much work and interest overseas, but as far as I can determine not nearly enough in Australia to date.
Conclusion
I have sought in this paper to indicate some of the scope suggested by the phrase "accessible communities". As you have seen, this idea takes us ranging widely through different aspects of the experience of being a human being in community with all human beings. The primary experience of a human being with a disability, at least the primary experience in relation to community, is one of thoughtless, unnecessary and hurtful exclusion from nearly every social, political, educational, cultural, commercial or communication transaction. To encounter a barrier to freedom of movement or interaction once in a lifetime seems to send some people into a frenzy of punitive litigation; to encounter such barriers all day every day is the ordinary experience of people who have a disability. Luckily for those who have carelessly erected these barriers, people who have disabilities are much better at accommodating to a hostile environment than those without disabilities are at accommodating energetic, involved, money-spending, talented and responsible citizens with disabilities. If this were not so our courts would be entirely devoted to restoring the taken-away rights of people who have disabilities.
I commend this conference for its proactive emphasis, and trust that you will arrive at solutions and plans which will, once and for all, bring an end to the artificially constructed, excluding universe in which we have lived till now. Yes; I do wish to change the world as we know it.
