Making local government accessible

Leichhardt Council have made their Draft Management Plan and Budget 2009/2013 available online. Unfortunately, as Annandale on the Web says, this 1.5 Mbyte 298 page PDF document is not particularly public friendly. The council might like to consider making the plan available as a set of web pages which meet accessibility standards, in accordance with the Australian Disability Discrimination Act. An automated test appears to indicate that at present the Council's web site does not comply with the Act.

While not a legal necessity, it would be useful to have the web pages follow mobile web guidelines. The Council page which describes the plan scores 62/100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker, which is not a good result. The council should aim for at least 90/100. This would make for a much easier to handle document, in small easy to download and read segments. As well as working on devices such as iPhones and Blackberries, this would make the plan easier to read on older computers with slow Internet connections.

But apart from the poor formatting, there is much to be positive about in the plan, including support for light rail.