15 April 2021 When NSW Planning tried to finish its planning instrument, it was the start of a whole new set of problems. There’s an old saying in politics that if you’ve upset everyone, then you must be doing something right. Or perhaps you just screwed up spectacularly. Late last week when the NSW government finally released the second part of its new regulations on short-term holiday letting, there was something [...]
13 April 2021 The owners corporation of an ageing strata block in Tamarama are breaking new ground in financing a $20 million upgrade to address concrete cancer, fire risks and overall unattractiveness. They are developing a whole new penthouse level for the building that will be sold to finance around half the cost of works. It has taken many years of effort and advocacy – but if you read the profile [...]
OCN MEDIA RELEASE: 13 April 2021 “The NSW Government “announced” its final Short Term Letting policy late Friday, with no warning to housing organisations”, Jane Hearn, OCN spokesperson said today. “In a bizarre twist, the Minister has legalised Airbnb in the Affordable Rental Housing SEPP, disguising the mass transfer of critical housing to the tourist market”. “It takes some chutzpah to give into Airbnb and Expedia in the middle of pandemic, [...]
13 APRIL 2021 The NSW government has decided to delay the introduction of new rules for Airbnb-style letting across the state by three months after an outcry from councils and online rental company Stayz. The short-term letting rules were due to come into force on July 30, but the government has decided within the past 24 hours to delay their introduction to November 1. But the non-profit Owners Corporation Network, which [...]
April 12 2021 Late Friday 9 April 2021 the NSW Government quietly “announced” its stripped-down and “final” short-term letting policy. In the middle of a housing crisis, the Government has legalised “Airbnb” facilitating the loss of thousands of apartments and houses across NSW. In a bizarre twist, it used an amendment to the Affordable Rental Housing Policy 2009 to achieve its goal! This would be comic if it was not such [...]
April 12 2021 OCN does not support the extension of this emergency arrangement for alternative electronic methods for meeting or voting. OCN is recommending that the Act should not be amended to remove the requirement that an owners corporation must make a conscious decision to use alternative electronic methods. The emergency measure that overrides the Act should be allowed to expire. Download statement- PDF
10 April 2021 A Sydney woman has been told there is nothing the NSW Building Commissioner can do to help recover her life savings after she bought into a 300-apartment tower that had alleged major defects, despite him reportedly saying an investigation is “likely” to uphold her concerns. It comes as the Herald can reveal a sharp decline in fines being handed out to private certifiers for signing off on dodgy [...]
30 MARCH 2021 OCN welcomes the SCA (NSW) application to establish a Professional Standards Scheme. Such a scheme will set a new benchmark of industry education, conduct, and business practices. > Download PDF
30 MARCH 2021 If there was any doubt which side of the great strata divide Fair Trading is on – between those who make money from Real Estate and those who live in it – it was clarified last week in an announcement from Better Regulation, trumpeting the creation of a Real Estate Expert panel. “The NSW Government has established a panel of real estate professionals to be a voice to [...]
22 MARCH 2021 Australia has more than 3,400 buildings with flammable cladding. In Victoria alone, at least 71 of these buildings have been classified as “extreme risk” and another 368 as “high risk”. Despite the tragic evidence of the risks of cladding fires, rectification work had been completed on only 11 of these buildings by February 2021. The estimated cost of making these buildings safe is in the billions. State governments [...]
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]
