OCN made a brief submission opposing contracts entered into by developers which simply shift the cost of core infrastructure to apartment purchasers, lock them into long term contracts, and deprive them of choice.
21 May 2021 According to Karen Stiles, executive director of apartment owners peak group Owners Corporation Network, the long-running case had exposed more than the cracks in the Opal Tower. “It was really the start of the turning point where the government had to admit we had a problem with rampant building defects in residential towers and actually had to do something to address it,” she said. Read more:> HERE
More electric vehicle drivers can soon charge up at home and work, with a step-by-step guide released by the NSW Government, and a pilot site providing proof of concept for EV-ready buildings. The EV Ready Buildings materials and webinar registration details are available on the Drive electric NSW EV ready buildings webinar webpage. Speakers at the webinar include the EV Council Head of Energy and Infrastructure, Ross de Rango, and Owners Corporation [...]
1 MAY 2022 The Owners Corporation Network (OCN) opposes embedded network contracts entered into by the developer of the apartment building. Read Policy:> OCN Policy - Embedded Networks May 2022
A large Sydney developer has been ordered to fix serious defects in a 10-storey apartment building in the city’s southwest for the second time in three months. In the latest orders, the state’s building watchdog has warned of a serious defect in the construction of load-bearing walls in the Canterbury building’s basement car park which it found “did not support a ground floor slab”. Read more:> HERE
OCN strongly supports the root and branch review of the Home Building Act 1989 and associated legislation, to ensure maximum consumer protections.
A 25-year contract originally sold by developer Meriton for hundreds of thousands of dollars, giving another company exclusive rights for property management and letting services in one of their multi-storey apartment complexes, has been cancelled by a tribunal in a first for NSW. Apartment residents who successfully challenged the contract that earned Meriton an extra $310,000, in a practice that is now outlawed by the NSW Government, and which tied the [...]
OCN welcomes the NSW Government’s intention to deliver an energy system that puts the customer at the centre of policy and program design, while delivering an affordable and reliable energy future that helps achieve net zero emissions by 2050
Investors from retirees to single mothers on low incomes fear losing their properties after their strata levies jumped from under $2000 per quarter to more than $10,000 for building repairs they had no say in approving. Bright and Duggan told the Herald it was appointed to do work that the owners’ corporation had “failed to undertake over many years with the highest priority of ensuring the building can be safely occupied”. Executive director [...]
A Queensland regulator has banned a Surfers Paradise woman from smoking on her apartment balcony after a neighbour’s complaint, declaring it to be a “hazard” rather than a “nuisance”, in a move that could allow bodies corporate to outlaw smoking completely. “If you live with the urban myth that strata title is like a title to land, you are only encouraging ongoing conflict,” Mr Goddard, a spokesman for the Owners Corporation [...]
Owners Corporation Network
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email [email protected]
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to [email protected]
