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1.INTRODUCTION

Italian Legislation on eAccessibility: the Stanca Act

Prof. Ing. Pierluigi Ridolfi
CNIPA
Chairman
Government commission for the use of ICT in favor of disabled and disadvantaged people

The Commission

• It is permanent
  
• Not only in favor of disables, also elderly and disadvantaged classes
  
• Representing seven Ministers:
  • Innovation and Technology
    
  • Communications
    
  • Welfare
    
  • Health
    
  • Education
    
  • EU-Politics
    
  • Equal Opportunities

Tasks

• Make proposals to guarantee access to information for disabled, elderly and disadvantaged people
  
• Promote research projects finalised to the use of ICT for disabled
  
• Take initiatives in their favour, focusing on information, education, access and working rights in general
  
• A secretariat, established within CNIPA, carries out the technical activities of the Commission

What is CNIPA

• CNIPA is the National Centre for Informatics in Public Administration
  
• It is the "technical arm" of the Minister for Innovation and Technologies
  
• Its mission is to help public administration in using ICT effectively

The "Stanca Act"

• The Italian "primary law" to favour disabled access to ICTs
  
• Promoted by the Italian Minister for Innovation and Technologies
  
• Approved unanimously by both Chambers in 2004

General Characteristics

• The Law was made flexible and readily adaptable to technological evolution
  
• General concepts are separated from the technical rules, established by "lower levels" acts
  
• The Law foresees obligations for:
  • The Public Administration
    
  • Subjects providing public services

Legal framework for accessibility

Objectives (Article 1)
Innovations

• Web sites of the public administration will satisfy the accessibility requirements
  
• Private organisations are stimulated to make their web sites accessible
  
• Accessibility criteria are applied to learning tools used in schools of every order and kind
  
• Textbooks will be available in a digital version to disabled students and remedial teachers

Scope (Article 3)

• The Law is addressed to:
  • Public Administrations
    
  • Public economic agencies
    
  • Private enterprises distributing public services
    
  • Transport and telecommunications agencies

Obligations (Art. 4)

• The satisfaction of accessibility requirements is necessary for contracts of the P.A. of Internet sites
  
• It's a preferential condition for private subject to benefit of public contributions for the purchase of ICT tools for disabled

International regulations (art. 12)

• Technical regulations take in account the international regulations:
  • the European Union recommendations on accessibility
    
  • wide acknowledged rules and "de facto" standards
• Main references:
  • World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation, mainly the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
    
  • Standards defined in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the USA
    
  • Standards and technical requirements defined by International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
    
  • "Design for All" criteria

Enforcement regulation (2nd level)

• Establishes criteria, rules and procedures for the evaluation of the accessibility of web sites
  
• Defines controls on sites and IT applications of private operators

Modus operandi

• Wide hearings of social and market stakeholders:
  • associations of disabled
    
  • associations of developers expert in the field of accessibility
    
  • hardware and software suppliers
• Sharing information and documents
  
• Feeding discussion and collect comments
  
• Creating wide consensus

Innovations

• Validation based not only on accessibility, but also on usability criteria
  
• A two-way approach to the validation has been adopted:
  • technical validation
    
  • subjective validation
• Cnipa maintains a public list of professional auditors
• The disabled are involved in the validation process
  
• A new logo!

3rd level: technical rules
1) technical requirements and different levels of accessibility of Internet sites
2) technical methodologies to evaluate websites' accessibility
3) technical requirements of desktop and laptop computers
4) technical rules for the accessibility of electronic textbooks and didactical tools (art. 5)
5) initiatives for the accessibility to multimedia products (art. 7g)

Example of a technical rule

2.1.3 Requirement number 3

• Statement: Furnish an equivalent textual alternative for each non textual object in a web page ….
  ….
  ….
  
• WCAG 1.0 reference: 1.1, 6.2
  
• Sec. 508 reference: 1194.22 (a)
  …

Status of the work

• Technical rules and methodologies for websites and computers ready and submitted to E.U., final approval expected in June
  
• Technical rules for textbooks and didactical tools: final draft available
  
• Technical rules for multimedia products: work is on-going

 

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