He called for government departments and agencies to improve their adherence to government standards and legislation which required them to provide equal access to public information for disabled people.

''Of all organisations, government departments and agencies know they should be making documents and information accessible to everyone.''

He had been disturbed by repeated instances of important information published by government with little consideration of accessibility for disabled people. Important reports and papers, all initially inaccessible to many disabled people, had been published recently. He cited the green paper on carbon emissions trading and the GroceryWatch website.

Mr Innes, who is blind, said the green paper on carbon emissions trading had more than 500 pages.

''When I tried to read the PDF files with my synthetic speech software, it told me that there was one paragraph in those 500 pages. This made the document unusable, because I couldn't move from section to section.''

Making information as socially important and highly publicised as the GroceryWatch website and the green paper on carbon emissions trading inaccessible to a significant sector of the population was a disgrace, he said.

''... People with disability have an equal right to participate in public debates about important issues.''