Retina Australia's website upgraded, rebranded and accessibility compliant

4 April, 2023

Retina’s Australia’s new website is now live, upgraded for functionality, rebranding and very importantly, accessibility. The website was redesigned to comply with the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.1 (WCAG), which is an internationally recognised benchmark for measuring the accessibility of websites. Retina Australia engaged the Centre for Accessibility Australia to conduct the website audit, which has now been independently rated as AA compliant with WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

Dr Scott Hollier, CEO of the Centre for Accessibility Australia

“As a person with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) who is legally blind, it’s been a privilege for me and my nine staff to support the digital access journey of Retina Australia. A key part in being able to effectively and independently participate in life with RP is to find reliable, accessible information. With Retina Australia’s accessible website there is an assurance that this is the case and there’s lots of great information to lend a hand.”

Retina Australia would like to sincerely thank Janssen Australia for its generous support toward the upgrade of our website.

Finalist for the Best Not-For-Profit Website of the Year

Retina Australia’s website was subsequently awarded as a Finalist for the Best Not-For-Profit Website of the Year at the Centre for Accessibility Awards in November 2023.

More about the Centre for Accessibility Australia

By Dr Scott Hollier, CEO of the Centre for Accessibility Australia

As the leader of a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to alleviating hardship caused by digital access issues, my team and I are often asked to audit websites, apps and documents based on their accessibility. While it’s always a privilege to support organisations in making their content better, I was particularly excited as a person with RP when Retina Australia asked our team to perform accessibility checks for their new website.

To explain more about how my organisation, Centre For Accessibility Australia operates, there are essentially three parts to the work we do: the first is a free help desk to help people overcome digital access challenges, the second is to advocate for the importance of digital access and the third is our paid services where we audit websites and apps to help organisations make their content more accessible.

The process of auditing a website is based on the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard. This standard is supported by the Australian Human Rights Commission. For websites, apps and documents to be accessible to a variety of disabilities it must comply to the standard. From a vision perspective, this may include things like checking images have alternative text, good colour contrast, screen reader support on keyboard and touchscreen, and making sure that menus don’t disappear when you’re zoomed in with a screen magnifier.

With the audit for Retina Australia recently being completed, it’s been great to that all of the requirements of the standard have been addressed and we have been able to independently rate the new website as WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. The dedication of the development team and the pursuit of accessibility ensures that there’s a great accessible website at the end of the process.

If you’d like to learn more about digital access you can visit www.accessibility.org.au and if you’d like to learn more about me, you can find information on my book Outrunning the Night: a life journey of disability, determination and joy.