New opportunities, Old reactions

Well, almost another year has passed by, and nothing seems to change…

The Public Administration just keeps on pumping out useless and illegal waste of public monies to slide in “under the deadline”.

“Damn the citizens, full speed ahead“. This time in the Lombardy Region.

(is that logo growing “fuzz” or do I need new glasses?)

Where to start?

“Access Denied” to the documentation of Italia.it: a defeat for the Stanca IT Accessibility Law?

 

by Lorenzo Spallino – www.webimpossibile.net

The formal appeal of Scandaloitaliano requesting that the documentation regarding the bidding and contracts for the portal Italia.it be made available has been denied by the Commission for Access to Public Documents of the president of the Council of Ministers.

The reasoning applied by the Commission lays a grievous limitation on any possible objective analysis of the level of compliance of the Stanca law on accessibility of Information Technologies [first of which, web technologies; NdT], since it hinders any way of checking the conformity to article 4, which penalizes by nullifying the contracts which do not foresee compliance to the twenty-two technical requirements.

Read the rest (sorry, in Italian)

Breaking news: parliamentary inquiry into the accessibility of italia.it

Today witnessed had the usual appointment on Raidue (around h.16.00) with Question Time in the Italian house of parliament [n.b. they use the English term "Question Time", even in Italian], during which government officials answer parliamentary questions.

The honorable(s) Palmieri and Campa of Forza Italia (Go Italy!), coauthors of the Legge Stanca (L.9/04) accessibility law, asked “fretfully” if it were true, as can be read on blogs and in newspapers, that the tourism portal italia.it doesn’t comply with the previously mentioned law, thus resulting as being “inaccessibile“, particularly in consideration of access by disabled persons.

For the government, the Minister for Relations with the Parliament  Vannino Chiti (DS – Democrats of the Left) answered.

Usability of italia.it: brief excursus by a disappointed designer

A nice, circumstantial analysis of the usability of the www.italia.it portal, sent to “ScandaloItaliano” by the excellent Daniele Tonon.

Preambles are useless, let’s get to the facts.

Just like many other IT professionals, as soon as the single most important institutional web project ever launched by Italy – www.italia.it – came online, I rushed to discover its pages.

Accessibility and italia.it, comments by a user with a handicap

It’s not easy dealing with a “scandal”, and it’s even less so being objective in doing so.

On February 24th Andrea Mancini, author of Biso.it and member of the Blog Scandaloitaliano asked me a report on the accessibility and usability of Italia.it the new Italian National Tourism Portal.

I wrote to Andrea right away, telling him I would work on the report but also that I would need a few days. I didn’t need that time just for me, I wanted to find a way to get other people involved, people with a different handicap from my Spastic Tetraparesis which, anyway, doesn’t cause me any problem concerning web navigation. Given this assumption, today I will talk about two different scandals.

Read and comment. It’s a pleasure, Carlo Filippo Follis

Has italia.it declared war on Croatia?

Francesco notes two elements of new high quailty content for us on the €45m. Italian National Tourism Portal.

The first regards the map with the big red pixels that greets us at the entrance to the site [now that the sparkling green News pixels have disappeared]. It seems that towards the top right of the map, there is an extra pixel that doesn’t belong, in a geographic area that is anything but innocent.

Oops, better check it out.

Italia.it: legal repercussions in terms of accessibility

Italia.it and the Stanca Law in terms of accessibility: here is a clear and detailed analysis by Lorenzo Spallino (in Italian).

Abstract

After a long gestation, Italia.it, the Italian National Turism Portal is taking its first steps. Complaints shower from all sides claiming a violation of the conditions guaranteeing access to information technologies by people subject to disablities, as set down in the Italian law of January 4, 2004 and the descendent legislation. In order to better understand what the legal ramifications are of the inaccessibility of the portal, this article offers a contribution in methodology, helpful also to understand how Italian legislation actually does (or doesn’t) work in terms of acessibility of information technologies.

(partial translation of the Italian)