Canberra’s wake-up call on accessible ticketing
"It is astonishing that Transport Canberra and the ACT Government chose to go ahead with a system in which public transport users with vision impairments or mobility devices were negatively impacted and in some cases unable to use the service at all."
These were the words from the latest government report on the MyWay+ digital ticketing system [PDF] rollout, which confirms what we’ve raised for months, there were systemic accessibility gaps.
Some interesting observations in the report:
- Accessibility compliance wasn't requested from the vendor until after release
- There was no pre-launch accessibility assessment
- If legislated requirements couldn’t be met, MyWay+ wasn’t ready to launch
Shipping while "accessibility is in delivery" is a go or no-go failure that excludes people with disabilities.
But the broader concern is if a major vendor struggled to deliver an accessible system at launch in a regulated, mature market, how many similar deployments elsewhere carry the same risks unseen where regulation and audit are weaker?
Accessibility must be a hard gate.
Any public-facing digital system needs three things funded accessibility from day one, independent testing, and a launch that only happens once it meets the standard. If you skip that, you’re shipping a broken product.