In 2010, I was recognised through a Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism Secretary’s Award for Outstanding Team Achievement in the delivery of the Montara Royal Commission.

The Department also recognised my work as a key influencer on AGIMO’s adoption of the WCAG 2.0 Standard in 2009.

RET Business Challenge

In 2009 I took part in the Executive Leadership Program at RET. For my RET Business Challenge (RBC) I proposed the PDF Accessibility Project. The key stakeholders in the Project were AGIMO, Vision Australia and the Australian Humans Rights Commission.

The position of each Organization in this policy area has been well known for years – “PDFs are not accessible”. However in order to influence one, I had to influence the other. I undertook research in the subject matter and developed a strong grasp of the key issues to prepare myself before an eventual meeting with my stakeholders. A number of important events occurred during the project that assisted my RBC such as the FAHCSIA Review into Web Accessibility and AGIMO’s Review of WCAG 2.0.

These reviews gave me a greater appreciation for the desired objectives and associated strengths and weaknesses of AGIMO’s arguments against PDF Accessibility. Following an initial meeting with the Branch Manager for Online Services at AGIMO, a subsequent meeting was arranged at my behest between the key stakeholders and I in Sydney.

In anticipation of the discussion I arranged for an expert in WCAG 2.0 and PDF Accessibility to also attend. Believing that I required a champion for the cause, the PDF Expert was the well re-known Blind Psychologist from the NSW Dept. of Education Mr Andrew Downie. Andrew regularly provides lectures on the value of PDF Accessibility and is the ideal exponent of the technology considering the disability argument from the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Our argument was a success with AGIMO agreeing to review its position on the use of PDFs on Australian Government websites. This was only possible by encouraging debate with the key stakeholders and identifying the common ground to facilitate agreement and acceptance of mutually beneficial solutions. It was achieved from what I had learned in my research preparation that previous attempts to negotiate had failed because the positions had become too polar. By starting on the edges and addressing the concerns of each stakeholder without jumping to the end game straight away has delivered a major outcome for Australian’s with a disability.