Helpful Information about abuse and violence - Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria

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About this website

DVRCV's website provides:

  • information to support people experiencing abuse or violence;
  • a guide to current issues, government policy and law reform;
  • contacts for support services in Victoria and in Australia, and
  • information about our training, publications, and library. See the Site Map for an overview.

In 2005 DVRCV re-developed this website to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. The re-developed website was funded by the Department of Human Services, Victoria.

What are some of the accessibility issues with websites?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated that in 2003, 3.95 million people in Australia had a disability.

Many people are unable to see, hear, move or process some types of information on websites. For example, some cannot use a mouse to click links on a webpage, and instead use the keyboard or another device to select links. Some people use 'screen readers' with speech or braille outputs to read the text on a website. Some people need to be able to increase or decrease the font size or to change the colours on a webpage to enable them to read it.

Improving website accessibility is important for organisations like DVRCV (formerly DVIRC) as it means that more people can read the information we provide. Web accessibility also benefits older people who have changing abilities because of aging. It also is useful for people living in rural areas where their internet connection is slow. On a slow internet connection, websites with lots of graphics or animations take a long time to download, so simple websites that download quickly are preferred.

In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) makes it against the law to treat someone unfairly because of their disability. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has issued an advisory note on accessibility of World Wide Web pages, based on the guidelines by the World Wide Web consortium. The advisory notes assist organisations involved in developing web pages, by making clearer what the requirements of the DDA are, and how compliance with them can be achieved. (see HREOC website 'World Wide Web Access Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes')

What has DVRCV done to improve accessibility?

DVRCV 's website aims to conform with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (see Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0). These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities, and how to improve website useability in general. This website aims to conform with the WCAG 1.0 Double-A level standards.

To assist us to re-develop our website, DVRCV consulted with Accessible Information Solutions, a consultancy service provided by the Vision Australia National Information Library Service.

DVRCV 's website has been designed using an attached style sheet. This means that the design and style elements (eg; the layout, colours and columns) can be removed from the page, leaving only basic text, which is easier for many to read.

[To change the use of style sheets, colours or fonts on a webpage using Microsoft Internet Explorer, see the Tools menu > Internet Options]

All of the images used in the website have text alternatives to describe them.

Text on this page can be re-sized. In Internet Explorer, use the menu option View > text size > (larger / smaller). In Netscape 7.2 use the menu option View > text zoom.

More information on accessibility:

Follow these links for more information:

Feedback

DVRCV welcomes your suggestions or feedback on this website: contact our Publications Coordinator on 9486-9866 or via email. We endeavour to keep the information on this site up to date, but cannot guarantee that information provided is completely accurate. Any mistakes brought to our attention will be corrected as quickly as possible. See Disclaimer

 

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