Mobile phones as transport tickets

Deutsche Bahn (DB) are trialling an electronic ticketing system Touch&Travel which may overcome problems with the smart card systems of Victorian and NSW. The DB system uses mobile phones and Near Field Communications (NFC). The key difference to contact-less smart cards, as tried with limited success in Victoria and NSW, is that the system is reversed: the card is attached to the train and the passenger's mobile phone is used as the card reader. As a result little infrastructure is needed to be installed by the transport system: the mobile phone provides most of the smarts.

Problems with Myki Smart Transport Card Website

The Victorian Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky has announced that the myki smart card ticketing system is available for trains in metropolitan Melbourne. However, there appear to be some problems with the myki web site.

1. The W3C Markup Validation Service reported 47 Errors and 65 warnings.
2. The W3C mobileOK Checker reported "This page is not mobile-friendly!".
3. The TAW automated accessibility test reported 4 Level One, 30 Level Two and 29 Level Three problems.

These would tend to make the web site less responsive and usable.

The accessibility problems are of particular concern. The web site says:

"We make every reasonable effort to ensure that this website reaches level AA conformance with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG), and conforms to the Victorian Government's Accessibility Standard. ..."

From: Accessibility, MyKi, Victorian Government , 2009

This statement is clearly false (even this page with the accessibility claim on it had dozens of accessibility problems). A reasonable effort has not been made and the web site does not conform with level Double-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Not even the description of the level of compliance aimed for complies with the guidelines (the term "level AA" is incorrect: the correct term is "level Double-A"). On the face of it the Victorian Government is in breech of federal anti-discrimination legislation.

As an example the home page says: "Click the 'BUY' button below to take advantage of the FREE registered myki offer." The image below says "Buy", but the ALT text for the image does not say "Buy" it says "Get myki". This is very likely to confuse any user of the system who can't see the image because they are blind, would not be easily able to identify where "below" was and so would not be able to find a "buy" button. This very obvious problem should have been picked up if even the most minimal accessibility testing had been done.