Oly: SOCOG will not change website despite HREOC ruling

AAP General News (Australia)
08-28-2000
Oly: SOCOG will not change website despite HREOC ruling

SYDNEY, Aug 28 AAP - Sydney Olympic organisers today said they would not comply with
an order by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) to make results
tables on their website accessible to blind people.

A spokesman said Games organiser SOCOG was continuing to study a HREOC decision handed
down today that found SOCOG had discriminated against Bruce Maguire, who is blind.

Commissioner William Carter found SOCOG had discriminated against Mr Maguire by making
key parts of its website inaccessible to him and ordered it to make improvements for vision-impaired
people, including providing access to results tables.

But SOCOG spokesman Milton Cockburn said the organisation had expert advice that this
would cost $2 million and take more than a year to do.

"Sydney 2000 is committed to ensuring accessibility to vision-impaired users to as
much of its site as possible where this can be achieved in a time and cost-effective manner,"

Mr Cockburn told AAP.

"Much of the Olympic.com site can be accessed by Mr Maguire.

"However, IBM's advice to us is that it is not feasible to meet Mr Maguire's demands
that real time results tables can be reformatted for his use.

"This would cost in excess of $2 million and take 368 days to complete."

SOCOG would therefore not comply with this order "because of the cost and huge amount
of time involved," Mr Cockburn said.

Mr Cockburn said SOCOG's decision was not influenced by the fact that HREOC's orders
were non-binding and non-enforceable.

He declined to comment on Mr Maguire's threat to return to HREOC if he was not satisfied
with SOCOG's changes after the Games.

AAP jjs/sb/cd

KEYWORD: OLY BLIND LEAD

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