The Dutch lead (again)

So we all know that the Netherlands is the best place to bring up your kids already, but I fell over this today while reading through the GAWDS mailing list. It's a link to an article entitled
"New Dutch accessibility law" which announces a fairly detailed and comprehensive law ensuring that any new Dutch government sites are accessible and any older ones made accessible by 2011.

I get so frustrated/ jealous when I think about the DTI debacle and how we just can't get our act together in the UK. Web managers are largely left to their own devices here and many find it's too much of an effort to consider the needs of their disabled constituents.

I'm going to stop ranting there for the time being. I don't want to distract from the fact that the Dutch have done something pretty amazing if you compare this to the policies of UK and other developed nations. They made a decision to make something better. Such ground breaking ideas seem to rarely enter the minds of British politicians who seem to be struggling to keep the status quo.

Government website petition

This has already been done a few times, so I'm just going to be lazy and quote from Dan Champion's blog:

Ian Fenn (I'm assuming of Chopstix fame) has setup an e-petition at the 10 Downing Street site asking the PM to ensure that websites launched by government comply with WCAG.

Let's face it, Tony needs some good news before he buggers off on the lecture circuit, so it's definitely worth a shot, if only to highlight the continuing non-compliance of the DTI and other high profile government sites.

There are 517 open petitions at the site at the time of writing, and we only need 81 signatures to make the first page, and 9123 to displace the top petition, so get over there now and sign it, you know it makes sense.

Do it now!