Published in the media
17 JULY 2019 Building ministers from around the country are trying to work out how to restore confidence in the construction sector following the emergency evacuation of two Sydney apartment blocks when structural cracks appeared. > Watch the full segment at iview.abc.net.au Jules Holman
12 JULY 2019 Harry Triguboff's Meriton wants immediate reforms to the construction industry in NSW to stop substandard buildings from going up, as a growing number of experts argue the government should issue low-interest loans to apartment owners battling defects. The perception of a crisis in Sydney’s residential apartment market snowballed this week after the Herald revealed another evacuation of a unit block at Zetland, while the Premier conceded that self-regulation [...]
11 JULY 2019 With Sydney-siders growing increasingly nervous about defective properties, here are some top tips for how to avoid buying a lemon. A third Sydney apartment block has been rendered unliveable in the space of twelve months after major defects were discovered in the buildings. With the owners of these properties essentially left high and dry by the builders and government, how will you make sure you won’t live to [...]
11 JULY 2019 The alarming rise in New South Wales apartment buildings found with cracks is a nation-wide issue that 'has been building over the last 20 years.' Strata lawyer Stephen Goddard from the Owners Corporation Network has told Sky News the discovery of cracks in three NSW buildings has raised alarm bells in the building industry. 'One building is an accident, two’s a coincidence and three is systemic failure,' he [...]
11 JULY 2019 With state planning ministers meeting this month, informed in part by a behind-closed-doors meeting of development “stakeholders” in NSW last week, you can be sure that building defects in their myriad forms will be on their agenda. From the crumbling Opal and Mascot towers in Sydney to the estimated thousands of apartment blocks across the land that are clad in deadly flammable composite, there will be plenty to [...]
10 JULY 2019 A third Sydney apartment block is under scrutiny over building and safety issues after it was revealed its residents were evacuated last year. Residents from the 30 loft-style apartments at 19 Gadigal Avenue in Zetland, in Sydney's southwest were evacuated late last year, while City of Sydney staff had inspected the building in February and found it had "extensive and severe water damage", a city spokesman said. Stephen [...]
10 JULY 2019 An inner Sydney apartment building remains abandoned eight months after its occupants were evacuated over water and fire safety defects, in revelations expected to deliver a fresh blow to confidence in the city's building standards. The emergence of a third residential unit building with severe defects will intensify pressure on the state government to address concerns about building standards. Cracking forced the evacuation of Sydney Olympic Park's Opal [...]
4 JULY 2019 Stephen Goddard, OCN - interview starts 20 mins and 45 seconds into the Breakfast Show. > Listen to the full interview at 2DayFM Stephen Goddard
4 JULY 2019 The advice from Owners Corporation Network spokesman Stephen Goddard could not have been more blunt: Don’t buy apartments off the plan. His actual words in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney's dirty strata secrets emerge through cracks in Mascot Towers -See post below for full story) were “prudent purchasers cannot buy strata ‘off the plan’ or, given that most defects emerge within a decade of construction, any [...]
05 JULY 2019 Unfortunate owners in the Mascot Towers complex could see up to 40 per cent of their affected units’ value wiped away due to negative stigma attached to the building. In scenes similar to what happened with the Opal Tower in Sydney Olympic Park, residents were evacuated on Friday night and structural support added to the building in Mascot after it was noticed that cracks in the building were [...]
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.
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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.
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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]
