Australia

This country/region is part of the Global Law and Policy Page, which contains information about laws that protect disabled people’s rights to participate in the digital world.

Australia’s general Disability Discrimination ACT (1992) has been held to apply to website accessibility by a Ruling in 2000 by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The Australian Human Rights Commission published updated Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services in April 2025 to take into account that digital is ubiquitous and people with disability needs access across the board. The Guidelines are intended to assist organisations to meet their obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act when providing digital goods and services.
- A recording of the launch webinar and other resources are available from Intopia’s Guidelines Resource Kit
- The Australian Human Rights Commission also has an ongoing program of work around Technology and Human Rights. In 2021 they published a report on Human Rights and Technology that made a number of recommendations around Artificial Intelligence and also accessible technology for people with disability.
- Digital policies with accessibility requirements for the Australian government
  - The Digital Experience Policy was released in July 2024 and supports a focus on improving the experience for people interacting digitally with government. This 2024 DX Policy has several standards including:
    - The Digital Service Standard v2 with new criteria ‘Know your user’ and ‘Leave no one behind’ to address accessibility.
    - The Digital Inclusion Standard which sets the requirements for inclusive and accessible digital government experiences.
    - Related blog posts giving an overview:
  - The Australian Government’s Commonwealth Procurement Rules require evidence of conformance with applicable Australian Standards – from an accessibility perspective, AS EN 301 549:2024 is applicable.
  - The Digital Sourcing Consider First Policy released by the Digital Transformation Authority in June 2019 also has a requirement for accessibility
  - The updated, now digital, Style Manual has lots of information to support the production of accessible content.
- Accessible IT Procurement: A guide to procuring accessible ICT for Higher Education providersbut is applicable to all sectors
- Most state governments have supporting accessibility documentation, for example
- Australian Standards relating to digital accessibility and published by Standards Australia:
  - AS EN 301 549 – Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services (direct adoption)
  - AS ISO/IEC 30071.1 – Information technology — Development of user interface accessibility — Part 1: Code of practice for creating accessible ICT products and services (direct adoption)
  - AS ISO 14289.1 – Document management applications – Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility, Part 1: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/UA-1)