4th European eAccessibility ForumeAccessibility of Public Services in Europe

Dónal Rice. Senior Design Advisor, ICTCentre for Excellence in Universal Design

Paris, 12 April 2010

Comparative approaches to current legislation on

e-Accessibility in Europe

IntroductionCentre for Excellence in Universal Design• Standards• Education and Professional Development• AwarenessSenior Design Advisor, ICT• Chair of CEN Workshop Agreement on Curriculum for

Training Professionals in Universal Design (Autumn 2010)• Editorial coordinator on the e-Accessibility Toolkit for

Policy Makers• Member of Expert Group on e-Accessibility with EC• Secretariat of EDeAN (2010)• PhD candidate with NUI-Galway on law, regulation and

web accessibility

Comparative approaches to current legislation on e-Accessibility in Europe

• Overview of types of regulation in place in Member States on e-accessibility

• What is the available research telling us • Issues of legitimacy and effectiveness• Technology regulatory theory frameworks• E-Accessibility Toolkit for policy makers

Policy approaches• MeAC identified a “patchwork” of different laws and policies

dealing with e-accessibility:– frameworks of e-government or disability law – equality legislation– Interventional approaches such as ministerial resolutions, – national action plans, – strategic policy frameworks and– codes of practice

• From ‘strong’ sector specific regulation to ‘horizontal legislation’• web accessibility policies tending to be more robust• levels of accessibility of public (government) website are very

low

Theories of Technology regulation

• Regulation consists of activities of:– standards setting– directing behaviour– monitoring compliance– detecting– correcting

• To what degree do these activities occur in Member States in relation to e-accessibility?

Legitimacy and effectiveness

• Roger Brownsword:– Are the regulators objectives legitimate? – Are they going about the regulation in the right kind of way?– Are the regulatory interventions effective? – Does the regulation engage with the domain in which it is trying to

regulate?– Does the regulatory environment match up to our cosmopolitan ideals?

• Lawrence Lessig:– 4 modalities of regulation: the market, architecture, law and

norms– “Code as law”

Accessible website

• Legislation: what you should/must do

• Regulation: what the requirements are (standards)

• Code of practice: how to go about doing it

• Cosmopolitan ideals of equality and fair treatment

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

•Monitoring: web observatory•Constraining CMSs

• Cost of consultancy and training

• Capacity of consultants• Commercial viability of

technology required (CMSs )

Law Social pressure

CodeMarket forces

e-Accessibility Toolkit for policy makers

http://e-accessibilitytoolkit.org• To provide a platform to develop useful resources for Policy Makers

implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities• Focusing on what works, what does not with case studies on policy and

programs from around the world• Developed by G3ict, UN GAID and ITU with the support of the National

University of Ireland, Galway, Industry, NGOs, and Policy Makers

Developing e-accessibility policy

http://e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/toolkit/developing_policy3 components:• 1. Five steps necessary for Identifying Priorities:

2. What are the Disability Policy Approaches:

accessibility policies, mainstreaming ICT policies, and policies in support of civil society or non-government organizations.

• 3. Policy Making for successful implementation:

Process to identify the “owners” of each category of legislative and regulatory initiative. Establish Consensus and Foster Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation. Cooperation between government and the private sector.

Examples of ‘what works’ from home and around the world

Conclusions• E-accessibility regulation in general suffers from a lack of legitimacy• Regulatory interventions to date have by in large not been successful• It is likely that issues exist with how e-accessibility regulation in general engages with

the domain• While e-accessibility regulation may match up with ideals such as societal values

around fair treatment and anti-discrimination, it is perhaps not understood by policy makers as being of significant importance

• The use of technology to monitor, detect, reporting of compliance and taking of corrective action is underutilized

• Many avenues and modalities of regulation open to policy makers yet to be explored