The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has concluded its three-year inquiry into insurance affordability in northern Australia by calling for broker commissions to be replaced by a fee-based system. > Read the full article in Insurance News here > Link to ACCC Project Overview
30 NOVEMBER 2020 OCN is calling upon the government to refer the propositions identified in the Strata Schemes Management Amendment (Sustainability Infrastructure) Bill 2020 to the review of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) currently underway. >Download PDF
18 NOVEMBER 2020 Owners of buildings with flammable cladding in NSW will still need to pay tens of thousands of dollars per apartment to rectify their complexes after the NSW Government refused to Victoria’s lead in paying for flammable cladding to be rectified. Whilst the preference would be for the government to pay for the cost of remediation, Karen Stiles, Executive Officer for OCN welcomed both the announcement of the low [...]
17 NOVEMBER 2020 Apartment owners forced to replace flammable cladding on high-risk buildings across NSW will be able to access interest-free loans as part of a $1 billion government program over the next three years aimed at helping to resolve the crisis. The program, which will be unveiled in the state budget on Tuesday, includes $139 million to establish and offer technical support to owners for the remediation of at-risk buildings. [...]
16 November 2020 Today in the 2020-2021 NSW Budget, the Government announced a landmark three-year program to remove combustible cladding on hundreds of the most at risk residential buildings across the state. Minister Anderson thanks OCN as a key stakeholder in the journey. The centre-piece of Project Remediate is a commitment to pay interest on loans by commercial lenders to Class 2 residential building owners and owners corporations to help them [...]
12 November 2020 The construction industry must deliver buildings that don’t harm people physically, emotionally or economically, and that have a small environmental footprint, if it wants to win back consumer confidence, says NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler, who will be speaking at The Fifth Estate’s Building Circularity event in two weeks. The industry must start cutting embodied carbon in building projects, and could one day be subject to pricing signals [...]
NOVEMBER 2020 The conspiracy of silence that surrounds apartment buildings and possible defects would be ended in the next round of landmark building reforms. In the wake of the Grenfell, Mascot and Opal tower disasters, Better Regulation Minister Kevin Anderson is proposing law changes forcing strata schemes to hand over basic maintenance information about their building. OCN executive Karen Stiles said the strata portal would only be the second in the [...]
3 November 2020 The certifiers who passed the notorious Opal Towers as fit to live in have had a finding of professional misconduct against them downgraded in a secret deal with the very government body meant to protect homeowners. The agreement between the Building Professionals Board and certifiers McKenzie Group Consulting was approved by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal with the terms to remain “confidential”, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. [...]
27 OCTOBER 2020 Consistently unruly Airbnb guests and hosts will be publicly shamed and banned for up to five years under new rules for the NSW short-term rental industry that come into force for the Christmas holidays. From December 18 the state's fair trading watchdog will have the power to craft conditions for short-term rental accommodation users and operators who have breached a new code of conduct. The new rules come [...]
13 OCTOBER 2020 Listen to a radio segment recording from ABC Radio Sydney including an interview with Karen Stiles, Executive Officer of OCN, discussing pets in strata. ABC Radio Sydney, Breakfast with Robbie Buck & Wendy Harmer.
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]
