27 March 2020 Apartment buildings teeming with residents staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic have experts warning of "cruise ships on land". It's prompted an urgent call for government guidelines on Australian strata properties to prevent high-density outbreaks of COVID-19. Channel 7 Christine McGinn > Full article on Channel 7
18 December 2019 On Christmas Eve last year, Jenny (not her real name) carried her baby down to the ground floor after being told to evacuate Opal Tower, moments after she heard a loud bang while she was in her apartment. "They told us all to "back off, back off"," she said. "The police said the building was going to fall down and that we had to walk away from the building." [...]
OCN MEDIA RELEASE: 19 August 2019 ‘Hands Off’ regulation leaves thousands of apartment owners 'out in the cold' "The residential building industry has abandoned apartment buyers and the risk of costly defects has been shifted onto innocent apartment home buyers left devastated by sub- standard work” Jane Hearn, Director of the Owners Corporation Network said today. The Owners Corporation Network (OCN) is the only association of apartment owners whose sole [...]
12 AUGUST 2019 > Watch the full segment at abcnews.com.au Liv Casbin
12 AUGUST 2019 The pain of NSW's building crisis was captured in Mascot Towers owner Vijay Vital's testimony at the inquiry, when he broke down describing the loss of his home. Mascot Towers was evacuated on June 14 due to cracks but engineers have yet to find the cause. "I stand here as a parent and my daughter asks me "when can I go home?" he said amid tears. "I have [...]
3 AUGUST 2019 A small group of private certifiers have signed off on 130 buildings with compliance problems, including allowing residents to move into one property that did not have toilets or taps fitted. The six offenders have been hit with 111 disciplinary actions since 2005, accounting for about a quarter of all such penalties. The Owners' Corporation Network, the peak body for apartment owners, said the repeat offending was further [...]
29 JULY 2019 The NSW government's reform plans for the state's failing building and construction industry are not enough to fix it, industry groups warn. Consultations on the state's planned reforms – which involve the adoption of the recommendations from the Shergold-Weir report ahead of new legislation – have closed, drawing strong responses from the public. The Owners Corporation Network (OCN) submission to the government says the current reforms merely help [...]
23 JUNE 2019 The Minister for Better Regulation has denied there are widespread problems in the city's high-rise residential housing sector, saying “I don’t believe there is any great cause for alarm for other apartment buildings across Sydney". Announcing an emergency financial assistance package for residents of the beleaguered Mascot Towers block on Sunday, Minister Kevin Anderson said the NSW government would restore "confidence" with “the biggest shake-up of the construction [...]
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 enquiries@ocn.org.au
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 enquiries@ocn.org.au
