Proceedings of

Extending Horizons

16th January 2007

Conference organised by COST 219ter

Accessibility to Next Generation Networks

MR FRANCISCO DA SILVA: Thank you, good afternoon. As I'm the Chairman of the ETSI board, I was invited to make this presentation today. We are very honoured and glad to have the possibility to make this presentation to this forum. The COST 219ter and previous ones were an inspiration for our work in the human factors requirements. This is why we felt obliged to have this kind of presentation, and today already the Chairman of the COST 219ter has already referred to this relationship. I will say this from our side, before I continue I would like to say this is not the 100% of my life. I'm employed by Portugal Telecoms, the Portuguese equivalent of BT.

I would also like to make many comments on today as things that were said were very interesting but I don't have time. I will mainly present ETSI for those that don't know about it and the opportunities as a tool that could be used for the long-term work of making accessibility for all a real thing. But don't have illusions this will take many, many years and it will involve a big fight and lots of work on these issues.

For those that don't know what it is ETSI is one of the three European centres of Standards Organisations, we had already mentioned another one today CENELEC - and the other one is SEN and we are the three sister organisations. And our work is mainly for electronic communication areas. This is an independent not-for-profit organisation that was created in 1988. The special feature of ETSI compared with other standardisation organisations is that it is participated in directly by members that are industry users, universities, state departments, all are there directly as members. We have about 654 of these members..

And we are not a regulatory body and not a certification body. We are not a frequency allocation body and not part of a European Commission. Not part of CEPT. We organise our work in three different directions. One is as a European Standards Organisation, we comply with the laws and the regulations. We do what the European Commission requires from us, and also EFTA and I think there are synergies between these sides and it's the Global Standards Producer. It is well-known one of the most well-known results of our institute is the GSM and also quoted several times today - the third generation.

Besides providing services - as a global standards body, don't forget we have a European body and we are and retain, as I said before, these European responsibilities. Many of the ETSI European members are global players, and mainly the IT industry, the telecommunications industry, the operators, and from the beginning we seek always the standards to be adopted worldwide. It is also good for instance for the small and medium enterprises working for IT and if they have a larger market they will comply easily with the obligations of the legislation, and can combine their economical interests and political interests. Many - we have more than the 100 members that have no established operations in Europe. By the way, the United States have more members in ETSI than most of the European countries.

ETSI is responsible for GSM, everybody knows about this, and digital television, and we are coordinating this with broadcasting bodies, and the cordless telephone was spoken today and one of the standards produced by ETSI.

And as a service provider we create test specifications and methodologies, for example Interoperability testing (Plugtests™) and Forum hosting (Forapolis) and we are testing with any organisation, and can ask ETSI to provide for these kinds of project and they can be global, and have used these services, and also we are hosting like a mobile forum which is also at ETSI.

And as I told you there are five categories of members: Administrations, Administrative Bodies and National Standards Organizations Network Operators Manufacturers Users Service Providers, Research Bodies, Consultancy Companies/Partnerships, and others. The are four types of membership: full, associate, observer and counsellor.

This is the ETSI structure like everywhere else the technical committees. And ETSI partnership projects and they are semi-autonomous organisations that are on one side they are ETSI and on the other side they are also participating by other regional organisations and other bodies from all over the world, and China and United States and Japan. And this is the case of 3G PP which is of interest for you developing the mobile standards. It was the first ETSI partnership project.

ETSI partnership projects, we spoke about GPP. We have standard organisations in other parts of the world, and also market representation partners. One of them was here – the GSM association.

For globalisation and co-operation at this level, all, more relevant organisations in the world are participating together with ETSI. ATO is participating, even if it is not regional, as a special status. There, we have very general recommendations that all of these organisations want to follow.

Now I come to the subject of today’s conference itself. ETSI, by its nature, has to be – and it is – committed to accessibility for all. This is a reality. We have many works that can prove it and show it. We try to bridge the interests expressed by the commission and the needs of the market. We have all these members from the industry side. We understand that innovation and standardisation go hand-in-hand and feed through into products allowing disabled, elderly and other people with special needs to benefit from the next generation networks and services. This statement was made some time ago in another conference here in the UK, exactly with these terms.

We are careful with the representation of the users in our work at all levels. We have one of the two vice chairmen of the GA – the General Assembly – and always someone from the user community. We have always one seat reserved for the users on the board. Even this time we have two users to people, persons from the users in the board. One that was elected to the seat of the users is President of ANEC. We have also a user group. The chair person is another member of the board, presently a member of the board on the work on human factors.

This is the terms of reference of the user group. It includes users with special needs. I don’t know if it is the correct way of labelling it, but it means these users that have been referred to here today. User groups have good connection with all the technical bodies, not only with the Technical Committee Human Factors and the chairmen, including the new generation networks to try at least, it seems, to go so quick that the requirements are not taken into account. It’s something that was said today. But they are now in practice.

This is very difficult. This is the good intention, but we are doing our best. The user groups have user meetings in European countries, in co-operation with national organisations. They gather opinions from the broadest possible spectrum of users. It would be good in this case to have more connections with this project.

Then we have the specialised. This is the users themselves. This is the specialised committee, it is the human factors. I don’t know if we have the Chairman from BT. Before, it was – I think you recall him. We are well connected with these issues of special needs, with the disabled and elderly people. So this was important for us, and the previous chairman has been one from this community of users and of researchers.

Now they are paying very much attention to this, particularly those connected with the Technical Committee Human Factors. It co-operates with other groups, ETSI. It does not work alone – outside, to assist and to produce tenders or other deliverables which are in accordance with the good human factors practice.

I have spoken of our sister organisations, CEN and CENELEC. We have a co-ordination that is done through the Joint President’s Group, and the Joint President’s Group co-ordinates common policy issues and holds regular meetings with the Americans. From this side also, things that can come from the user communities, the result from these matters, can be from a policies point of view.

Besides this, we organised three years ago a conference on disabled and aged persons issues. It is probable some of you were there. This was organised by ETSI, CEN and CENELEC.

At another level, we have another type of co-ordination of these three standards organisations. It is the ITC standards body. They are with other specific providers. This co-ordination body is the successor of another from the ‘80s, when this conference between IT and telecommunications began, and because this area began to have many grey areas. It has created this organisation to better allocate the work in each case. It considers requirements for standards in specifications and, in consequence, considers at what standard those specifications need to be created.

Other tasks would be carried out; it could be in CEN, CENELEC and co-operation between the two of them. In this framework, the Technical Committee Human Factors is active for the co-ordination group that works under the ICT-SP.

I come back to this Global Standards Collaboration. What are they doing in concrete to this? There is one thing clear with all these organisations: other fora may be invited to participate. One of the groups that works there is a user working group. The meeting was last year, in Chicago.

Today, someone spoke about the Australians and others. They are also very active. This is a very important group where it is not only possible to exchange information from different parts of the globe but also where we adopt recommendations, including definitions and how to consider these issues.

What I have said in the last two meetings, in 2006 and 2005, is that most of the considerations in the work was directed towards special needs and its users. This is important also, that we consider we can amplify and you can amplify your value if considering that we can use every forum, including this forum. This was the resolution of the last meeting.

All these things were recognised officially by all these organisations. It is important for any kinds of standards, and the value they have for the market and for the people, to include the user-input requirements. This is a worldwide conclusion.

Challenges and barriers facing users in the structure, culture and practices of the standards community: this is a self-criticism. We understand it. We have tried to solve it with measures that I’ve told you about before. But it is difficult, and it is recognised all over the world.

In the case of new generation networks, what is also recognised is that new standards may lead to unanticipated problems or complexities for the general public. Before a standard is finalised, trials in real-life situations should be conducted. Following the last presentation of this morning, they should do it before: during the time they are there developing the issues, participating. The standards-making process should be subject to scrutiny in general.

Concerning the consumer involvement in standards-making, it was adopted in this meeting. The wide range of high-interest subjects of relevance to users discussed include accessibility, NGN, questions of service, protection of personally identifiable information, emergency services and RFI. I think you have considered many of them here. This is what was recommended and decided that every organisation that has user involvement in standardisation should remember.

And another thing is to have a user communication strategy, and in common similar to all the organisations in the world. To collaborate with other organisations that are not electronic communications and ISO in particular the ISO/ IEC Joint Technical Committee.

So, now coming back to ETSI and ETSI Technical Committee Human Factors.

The Technical Committee provides voluntary work and this is the case of the Chairman however some users and consumers and special users are paid for their work which ensures completition in the quickest way, so that you can achieve the results. These are the Specialist Task Forces, and they have to be approved by the Technical Committee of course, and these have been in operation in this area since 1991. I think one of the first ones the users of the type of disabled, and the elderly, it was in the time I suppose if it was already. And also we have had a close collaboration with the EC accessibility mandate 376.

There are four current STFs, one being for the mobile device interfaces, and one speaker here today has said "work very much with the mobile and lobby them. This is an opportunity" and you have here the STF working. Please give interim contact with these people because they are waiting for you. There are four STFs starting in 2007.

ETSI considers strategic priorities each year. This year it is the NGN interoperability and testing, radio spectrum, RFID and the last one membership care including relations with academia and research. This is important this year if you want to be included this is an action and the Chairman of the general assembly. If you want to intervene in these things go to him or through me I will help the contacts.

The last word don't forget all the stakeholders that are present and not yet involved in this work, please don't minimise, forget the use of this tool. You are very well welcomed and I think it will be very fruitful for you.

Thank you very much

DR JOHN GILL: Thank you very much. And a very interesting presentation. We have now got a tea break which I suggest we try to limit to 20 minutes please. Thank you.

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