The South African Human Rights Commission investigated the format of government notices published by the Government Printing Works, finding many were image-only scans inaccessible to screen readers and machines. In December 2025, it wrote to the minister of home affairs urging machine-readable formats. The department committed to improvements in January 2026.
In 2025, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) examined government notices issued by the Government Printing Works under the Department of Home Affairs. Testing revealed that many notices were published as image-only scans, often skewed or degraded, preventing text selection, screen-reading software interpretation, and effective optical character recognition. This compromised access for blind and visually impaired individuals and rendered the content invisible to digital systems reliant on structured text. Such practices hinder inclusion in global datasets, exacerbating data bias concerns raised by African institutions. South Africa's Constitution, the Promotion of Access to Information Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities mandate accessible formats. In December 2025, the SAHRC sent a formal letter to the minister of home affairs, outlining legal obligations and recommending digitally generated, text-based publications compliant with accessibility standards. The letter stressed that accessible data supports disability rights and democratic participation. In January 2026, the department responded positively, pledging to review processes, implement technical changes for machine-readable formats, and enhance quality controls. The SAHRC welcomes this and will monitor progress. The intervention highlights how digital publication practices intersect with equality and access rights, urging similar reforms across Africa to ensure legal materials are searchable and represented in digital ecosystems. Nomahlubi Khwinana, SAHRC commissioner, and Dr Eileen Carter, provincial manager, authored the piece advocating for these changes.
