Cost 219ter
Proceedings of
Extending Horizons
16th January 2007
Conference organised by COST 219ter
Accessibility to Next Generation Networks
MS INMACULADA PLACENCIA-PORRERO: Thank you very much for the introduction it's right I have moved but not gone! I will be continue working in this area and I will be more active in this, and I'm moving to the disability unit which coordinates the whole strategy on European Commission and disability issues and I'm determined to be sure that access to technology is not forgotten in that strategy. I will try my best.
So, what am I going to say today? First of all I will try to put the accessibility to technology into the context of the European strategy, providing an overview of the activities, then I will go and give some information about the progress that we have achieved in the accessibility strategy. I will not go into details on the communication and the activities because I think it's important to report a little bit on the progress, I will do some reflections on legislation which is a hot topic today. I will end up with some information about research, and some ideas for follow-up.
The European Commission made, in 2003, a report called a European Action Plan that promised a lot of activities and set very high level goals for the year 2010. The plan covered several areas of issues related to people with disabilities, access to employment, lifelong learning, using the potential of new technologies and accessibility to the built environment. Today it's clear that in any of the areas, accessible technology, plays an important role. This is something I'm keen to see in the coming activities. So every two years, the commission promised to write communications saying the achievements set to date and setting up new focuses for the next two years.
As you see, in this activity, the lines of action, accessibility remains having a very high profile but needs to be mainstreamed. Still we do not see enough accessibility issues well reflected and embedded into the practical areas, as I said like employment, education, and entertainment for example. Tourism is a big issue today in Europe, accessible tourism, and technology, access you know, websites to book flights, communication devices, information systems, are not highlighted as an important element into the accessible technology strategy. We need to do that.
So, following on this reflection, the Commission has got a set of disability activities varying from social actions. We are very keen and happy to see that in the new regional funds - the structure of funds that the Commission provides to regions in order to spend to bring infrastructures up to date - there's one article that for the first time mandates that all public money from the Commission, in this structure of funds (which is one of the biggest funds), must be used considering accessibility requirements.
Having said that, now the work starts. What do regions know, and how are we going to tell them what is accessible technology as has been discussed today? This message needs to be transmitted to them. There are some legal actions and we are investigating regulatory opportunities, and there's research, and very relevant in this area is the Telecom legislation and information society policy. But the other areas remain relevant. I will be entering into more detail there.
I wanted to go back as John mentioned TIDE 91, I want to go back to almost 20 years of e-accessibility activities. In research we started with TIDE and we are in the 7 frame programme, spending over 200 million euros on 200 projects, yet still we are needing to find solutions that will help us to prevent that new technologies put on the markets remain accessible. Research in that area remains with the fundamental basic questions, how do I ensure that new technologies, when they appear, consider accessibility? We have had several policy actions. We started with, we highlighted accessibility Europe 2002, 5. Now we have i2010. What we see is that the policy disability of accessibility is increasing and that's good news.
But, when we come and it's also mainstreamed, and that's what I mentioned with the Commission action plan. But when you go to all the documents that we are seeing there, we have had a communication in 2002 about web accessibility. The Parliament and council reacted by committing themselves to having all websites accessible in Europe by 2003. And the end of the European year of people with disabilities, well I have heard the same in the Riga declaration in 2010 and continue to read it in the next one because it's a very big challenge there. I don't want to leave a negative message here, but I think I'm convinced the political intentions are good and we see the promises coming and there's a need to make them a reality. We need help from the scientific community and industry, in order to make these a reality. Politicians cannot make the technical solutions, they need to facilitate a path for these to appear by other means.
We have had ministerial declarations, one in Crete several years ago, which basically is confirmed by the Declaration of Riga. We had a communication on the situation of people with disabilities in the large union. I mention these because, with Europe today, with two additional member states, we have a big challenge ahead of us – having an homogenous or coherent accessibility approach in Europe, where all countries can have, or at least all citizens can have, at least the same minimum accessibility solutions available. That is not the case in Europe today.
The communication on eAccessibility was launched at the end of 2005, a bit more than a year ago. It set up some new approaches towards accessibility, where the Commission will be working together with the member states. It ends up saying that by the end of this year the Commission will come out with a report measuring the progress on accessibility and propose new legislation, propose new measures, including new legislation if deemed necessary. We are in the process of deciding what’s next.
The three new approaches that we are paying more attention to today are accessibility in public procurement, the issue of conformity assessment and the issue of making better use of the existing legislation that we have today.
The first one, about which I have talked several times – it is probably known to you – is about the mandate that the Commission has issued to this Commission and has been accepted. The contract is waiting for signature. It is hanging up in an administrative office. We hope it will be soon, soon, soon available.
Now, without entering into the details of what the mandate will do, it is aiming to develop a European standard which will be referable in legislation, in public tenders. Without having a European standard, this is very difficult to achieve. We have seen that sometimes.
Referring to a de facto international standard might bring fragmentation. We need to sort this out so that there is a common, clear standard for being able to refer directly to.
I would like to highlight one thing. That is, in the mandate we put some emphasis in the last phase of procurement, which is called the “word phase”. You have a second requirement at the beginning which you would have to comply with to be able to be considered in the bid. That is a set of technical requirements for accessibility. But we aim in the mandate to explore the possibility to consider accessibility and a reason to select what is called the most economically advantageous. It is not the most accessible only but also the one that provides the best economically positive solution. That means if you can make the case of accessibility being a big advantage economically, this could be a good criteria in the final selection phase. This could bring companies to compete on accessibility because the most accessible product will have more economically positive repercussions.
Why are we paying so much attention to public procurement? I’m going to be blunt on that. Often when I have asked European companies that are starting to develop accessibility products why they are doing this, very few of them, I have to confess, have referred to the Crete declaration, or to web accessibility communication, or to the papers that I put before the parliamentary solution. Basically they say to me quite often, “Because we want to sell in the US, and we are obliged by Section 508. Once we have the products, we put them here in Europe.” This is the answer I get from industry. Basically, we are learning from the good things of the US, and this seems to be a good one.
I would like to devote a few words to that. I want to invite you to participate. There is a big opportunity there to bring new requirements. We have a formal requirement with the US, government-to-government, to discuss strategy. The US is revising their own standards for procurement on accessibility. They have created a committee. They have invited, for the first time, some international participants. Although, in this committee, the participation is fixed, most of the work happens in subcommittees. They are subcommittees on general interface, on software, on telecommunications. All the relevant things on technology are there. The participation on those committees is open for anybody.
I would say go to Google and type in TEITAC. Bring the perspective, experience and requirements. This is part of the mandate that we got, the agreement that we had with the US Government. That is, our participation would bring this message to European accessibility practitioners and experts in order to foster their participation into the process. It is really an open process.
The next issue is conformity assessment. We have a study in the mandate. This is a very hot issue. The more that we learn about it, I tend to see that there is strong confusion between what it is, the type of activity that you do, the content of the activity, and the nature of the activity.
I will say that I don’t care, basically, if I am a user. If the process is right, I don’t care if I’m a user who certifies or declares that the product is accessible so long as it is accessible. If you test it as a company that sells it, or I test it, or a third party tests it, and the result of it is reliable, reproducible, it says it comes to the same conclusion, then I’m fine. But the process needs to be clear enough.
Then there is the issue of whether it is voluntary or mandatory. The question is how do we ensure that, whatever solution is chosen, or processes chosen, we come out with accessible products. Then the debate comes about on the quality or the characteristics of each of those alternatives and the reliability of these alternatives.
Today in Europe the discussion is mixing some of these elements. They need to be analysed separately. The choices need to be made based on clear arguments. Avoid mixing them up so that the choices are confused.
On the issue of better use of legislation, I would say use it all. That is the conclusion of all the years I’ve had. Use it as much as possible – all the possibilities we have today. We often see that accessibility and eAccessibility are mentioned in several directives. Quite often, the commission proposal was very high-level standard, and quite demanding. But, in the process of negotiation, several words appear into this directive, which is usually “member states must”, and then between commas, quite appropriate, “if possible”. Sometimes the mast is changed by me, and then the options on the possibilities offered are not always used. I’m not saying it is always the case. We have good examples in many member states, but a lot of work has to be done. That has been the conclusion of the INCOM report, that many of the opportunities that the legislation provides are not really used up to the standard they could be used.
The main concerns that were identified at the end of 2003 in the first report remain. Still, we do not have realtime text communication, 112 is not accessible and still digital television solutions are not yet there. So we need to continue working.
Some reflections about legislation: I would like to inform you – it has been said this morning – about equality legislation. Maybe you know that the European Disability Forum is launching a campaign this year in order to collect one million signatures to have a directive on equal access to goods and services. But an issue there remains to be tackled. That is, the legal basis for that type of legislation requires unanimity among all member states. It can only be approved with a unanimous procedure, based on Article 13. That presents quite a few challenges – not impossible, but you need to work on that also.
You need to go back to your member states also, see what the situation is there and present your proposals. They are going to be the ones, whatever the commission proposes, defending or discussing in council whether they support a commission proposal, yes or no. Please remember that.
A lot of issues appeared there about how to conceive the technology – equality into rights-based legislation. Most of the legislation existed in other parts of the world, and in some countries are not completely successful in handling the technology issues. I think in a forum like this people like you are contributing to that.
There are a lot of things about definitions, interpretation, issues about assistive technology provision, prevention. How do you put legislation that prevents accessibility problems, that doesn’t stifle innovation, the issue of conformity assessment and so forth? Also, there are the issues of professional and organisational responsibility. If you are going to delegate some responsibility to some organisation, how do you ensure that their professional qualifications are right, that they know what it is that they are supposed to be responsible for?
We have a workshop on this, and workshops with experts have produced an interesting report on this item. Here are some of the conclusions, about the need to ensure that ICT legislation mixes the approach between equality legislation, sectorial legislations and issues of better legislation.
One of the issues of that workshop worried me a lot. As you know, the commission has been pushing the design for all networks and promoting a curriculum to educate engineers to be more knowledgeable about accessibility issues so that they are more capable to produce more accessible products.
I thought maybe being too naive that all people had this problem but to my surprise in this workshop we had quite a good set of lawyers, very experienced on accessibility issues. Basically, they said that they had a similar problems with judges, and lawyers. They say that basically, you know, things are left to their interpretation and don't know the subject we need to educate them and accessibility needs to be incorporated and then I tend to reflect that what we are trying to do is substantially changed the basis of, and the fundamental thinking of society. Introducing accessibility in all kind of professions and we had this with architects and then with the built environment and technologies. When we go into the rights based approach we have the same type of challenges with lawyers. So I guess we have the same with politicians, and with all kinds of professions: teachers and so forth and so forth. This is something to reflect how to really tackle these issues. So, we have a study that is providing and, going to provide some indicators to measure the progress of accessibility in Europe. And, report to the commission having two measurements, and to see if there's something to say about the evolution of accessibility. The measures that have had a more positive impact on them.
So the idea is to address, and measure the impact of some implementation measures, and to assess how the situation in Europe evolves. They will look to other parts of the world also, and the first measurement is about to happen, is happening at this moment. It will be reported soon and the second would be 12 months after. So also I invite you to revise this as soon as this is available, and provide your comments and feedback.
Some examples of indicators, we put there whether it could be measuring or assessing policies, assessing measures, and there are some indicators related to awareness, and to the competences that people might have and also to the technology itself. And related more to the implementation phase.
Just to tell you the schedule - the first measurement this year and early this year, and the next measurement 12 months after. To finish, just to inform you that on the research side we are also having an opportunity for participating and there's a call for proposals open now, and that it is focusing on independent living, ICT and ageing. And on architectures for independent living and active ageing.
There will be a call published in accessibility and inclusive ICT, that has several objectives embedding accessibility in mainstream ICT, and as well as high advanced research on computer interaction. I invite you to go to the web pages the references at the back of the presentation and check, and be able to participate.
So, lastly, I would not be leaving here without giving you some home work! I think I will abuse this possibility, and inform you of what's next, what are the plans for the commission? Where are the key activities and documents we will be working so you can participate and influence them for the best.
This year is the European year of equal opportunities. So, make sure that in your national activities and at European level also, accessibilities are well reflected. And it's the European year which covers all aspects of the equality legislation and it's also about gender, age, religion and race, and disability and ageing, and make sure the disability and ageing is prominent enough so do take advantage of the year and activities of the year.
Towards the end of this year we have to produce the bi-annual report and say what are going to be the priorities for the next two years in Europe - this is quite wide as I said, the coordination action plan of the commission and provide us with ideas for accessibility, ICT accessibility related issues and how to main-stream the embedded community policies. Also, the commission will produce a communication or document reporting on the accessibility progress as stated in the 2005 communications and we will continue to work in the article 33f of the terminals directive where there are possibilities there to address accessibility.
So please those of you that know about this - and one of the priorities is how to make real time text communication accessible and visible in mainstream technologies. So please feel free to participate, and provide ideas and solutions. Because it's a very controversial issue.
Finally in the mainstream electronic communication frame work, the commission will propose a Green Paper on the universal service, and user rights. And there will be a call also for expressions of ideas, and your opinions and you will be able to send comments. Please make sure that accessibility is well reflected on. This is our opportunity for you to keep busy if you weren't already busy enough this year!!!
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