Guide Dogs Queensland have received a warm welcome in Mount Isa as it looks to pilot an accessibility program in the region.

The program will allow organisations and community services to reach the one in six people who have a disability.

Client engagement and collection dog officer Jonathan Hall said Guide Dogs Queensland had created an accessibility toolkit to assist organisations to create accessible content.

Accessibility allows everyone equal opportunity and access to the same information, Mr Hall said.

“Producing accessible content is an easy process and it benefits everyone because as an organisation you can reach a wider audience, and as a customer you can connect to more content,” he said.

“We asked what (people with low vision) need and how they want to be communicated with, and the toolkit grew from there.

“We aim to teach people how they can make small changes that will provide more accessibility to people with low vision.

“We realised the need as some of our staff who have low vision didn’t have access to all of our documents.

“So we started making changes to the way we work and create documents. Now we are showing other organisations how to do the same.”

Mr Hall said it was important for organisations to make their information accessible, not only to meet the requirements of the state government’s anti-discrimination laws, but because some information was life and death.

“We found in bushfires and other disasters the QFES websites were not accessible, so there is a real need for this information in the community,” he said.

Mr Hall said the community organisations he had spoken with in Mount Isa had been very open and positive about the program and he was excited about continuing to work in the North West.

This article appeared in North West Weekly, 1 September 2022.