Here at Centre for Accessibility Australia (CFA Australia), we’ve recently introduced Auslan sign language on our new videos and are in the process of updating our existing ones. This decision has been in response to feedback from the Deaf community that people should have videos in their first language. However, for all levels of the Australian government, Auslan is not very common, so we wanted to take a moment to discuss why that’s the case and how a recent policy update has opened the door for this to be addressed.
The main reason why Auslan is not very common on videos in Australia is due to the requirement for the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard. In Australia, the Australian Human Rights Commission notes the need to implement the WCAG standard, which is critical for information to be accessible. However, there are three implementation levels of the standard – Level A, AA, and AAA. In Australia, the recommendation is for Level AA compliance. While this does include accessibility features such as captions, the requirement for sign language comes in at Level AAA. So, although there’s no legal requirement for Auslan, unlike captions, a recent change in government policy has opened the door for Auslan to be a federal government requirement.
In recent times, the Digital Service Standard (DSS) – the guideline on what the federal government needs to do to make its content accessible – removed the specific reference to levels. In Criterion 3 – No One Left Behind, it states that, in addition to the AHRC requirement, the latest version of WCAG should also be adopted. Initially, this change did cause some confusion among practitioners who were unsure as to which parts of the WCAG standards would apply. However, recently, the lack of specific levels being stated – and the reference that it’s done in addition to the existing AHRC requirement – has been interpreted as a commitment to the whole of the WCAG standard, which includes Auslan.
While CFA Australia strongly welcomes this commitment in policy, it is somewhat lacking in practice, with little evidence of consistent Auslan on government videos. We would like to encourage the federal government to take up the commitment of its new policy and commit to supporting the Deaf community by ensuring people who use Auslan as their first language have effective access to all government information.
It now makes policy sense, but ultimately, from our perspective, we believe the best reason is the same reason that we’ve made this move – it’s what the community has asked us to do. To understand why Auslan is critical, we’d encourage you to watch our video “How Digital Accessibility Affects Me”, where a person who is Deaf explains the difference it makes.