Monitoring eAccessibility in Europe: 2011 Annual Report

Although the EU’s legacy of legislative measures to ensure accessibility has been increasing over the past ten years, and is set to expand further in diverse areas related to technology and social protection in the coming years, the reality is that, to date, only a limited subset of the range of sectors of society has been covered, and even then, often only to a limited extent. Strategies related to good practice are still very timid in nature, and there is much room for improvement in areas such as public procurement, which needs to be strengthened by a Europe-wide legal framework to counter pressures from industry and the technology enterprises. Structural funds may have fundamental role to play to that end.

A very frequently made error is to focus social, inclusive and anti-discrimination policies on a relatively limited sector of the population, such as disabled people. However, if effective policies are to be carried out in Europe, these should comprise all sectors of the population that have some kind of limitation, that is, not only people who have a certified disability. This includes the need to consider Europe’s older people, offering them more opportunities and better quality of life. The number of older people is increasing in all Member States, leading to an ageing Europe that, in part, overlaps with and is juxtaposed with, disability.

As life expectancy increases and the standard of living rises, it is foreseeable that older people will have more limitations or disabilities, and together with better care services this ever more active population will continue participating on the marketplace, and progressively more so, as consumers. Likewise, the availability of accessible technology solutions for those people who are currently outside the productive system means that they can, by living more independently and autonomously, become an active part of the economy and commerce. The market must be ready, and prepare itself by making automatic adjustments to demographic changes and adapt itself to the reality and the needs of the growing number of older citizens with disabilities and/or limitations.

This situation requires a European social policy that includes at least three lines of action:

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  Reformulation of the services and programmes that encourage independent living and participation in society;
  
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  Legislation to prevent discrimination, together with the development of a policy to prevent discriminatory attitudes, behaviour and stereotypes in both the public and private sectors;
  
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  Use of market regulation tools to create more room for diversity, including for disabled people.
  

It is reasonable to presume that this will lead to benefits for large sectors of the population. During their lifetimes, a growing number of people will have some kind of impairment. Formulas and solutions that lead to the full participation of all disabled people will need to be found, not only for moral, but also for economic reasons, as well as for the management of resources. Such formulas and solutions must, of course, be applied both at national and European levels, and at the level of international cooperation.

It is necessary to reflect adequately on one aspect. The technological sector is tremendously dynamic and agile, with a very high capacity for innovation and is continuously producing new technologies, year after year, at a rate that cannot be covered by legislation. This is due to the static nature of legislation, the slow-moving process of enacting laws and the rigidity of its mechanisms for change, indeed, all the opposite to the nature of technology. This often leads to situations in which the legislation which should guarantee the rights of disabled people in some sectors, and technology is a case in point, is practically obsolete by the time it is enacted.

It is therefore necessary to commence working towards legal mechanisms in Europe that, while avoiding loopholes, are less rigid, are flexible and can be adapted rapidly, and are drawn up to be forward-looking. It is essential to define a legal framework that is able to cover emerging technologies, such as the current case of Web 2.0, of Cloud, of augmented reality, digital television, NFC technologies, and interoperability.

Regarding the Web in the EU countries, on analysing all the data arising from the research, we find, once again, that the objectives set for 2010 have not been reached. Even more worryingly, we find that there is no clearly foreseeable future in which it is possible to state that suitable levels of accessibility and usability will have been reached. Moreover, it should be pointed out, at the risk of being repetitive, that many of the so-called eGovernment services offered by the public administrations are through Web portals, and the lack of accessibility and usability criteria is not only a clear and unacceptable discrimination, but also leads to a serious delay in implementing social, educational and employment policies. The average level of accessibility for 2011 is 41%, that is a medium level under 50%.

The involvement of national administrations is essential in complying with the objectives of acceptable levels of accessibility. When we look at the data for levels of accessibility and usability in certain countries, the differences between EU Member States is striking. Thus, while Hungary hardly reaches a global level of accessibility of 23%, the Netherlands reaches 49%. This situation is evidently related to the different levels of legal requirements of each country, but we also find there is a difference in the actual application of existing laws with the territories.

In 2011, for the EU Member States taken as a whole, only Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom passed the 50% mark, and then only by a small margin. The conclusion is that legal, and, above all, executive measures by the Member States are still necessary to strengthen existing regulations, in order to avoid reaching levels of discrimination which would be hard to overcome.

Given the substantial differences between the levels of accessibility and usability of assistive and inclusive technologies, it is clearly necessary to increase efforts in matching them. While both lead to a greater level of wellbeing among younger people with disabilities, and especially among people of working age, an age when a person’s activity should be encouraged, it is essential to implement effective accessibility and usability policies in areas such as telephony, IT products, audiovisual and interactive, and autonomy for the home environment.

The average percentage of accessibility among EU countries in assistive technologies is around 74%, while telephony accessibility is at 44%, IT products and services at 40%, the same as for accessibility to urban environments. The differences between such levels are too great, and require not only serious reflection, but also the definition of clear lines of action aimed at raising the levels of accessibility of conventional technologies.

The continuous appearance of the new technologies, or newer versions of existing ones, further complicates the panorama of accessibility and usability. Current legislation does not adequately cover developments that have appeared, for instance, in the past year and a half. Digital tablets, digital and 3D television, augmented reality and NFC technologies are hard to include in existing legislation, both at the level of the Member States and at the level of the EU itself. It is therefore urgently necessary to either update existing laws or to enact new, forward-looking laws that can cover these developments and, as far as possible, can be more easily adapted to cover future developments.

Although the data do not allow for generalisation, there is an observable trend that suggests that those countries whose legal frameworks are more developed have higher levels of accessibility of ITC goods, products and services. More robust and effective legislative measures have been achieved in those countries, such as Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, with relatively strong associations of disabled people. These findings are in line with those of other, non-EU countries such as USA and Canada, where the associations of people at risk of exclusion, or those who are especially vulnerable, such as disabled people, are better organised, leading to greater capacity for social pressure.

As set out in the first report, apart from strengthening the legal framework, it would be useful to design other kinds of support and monitoring measures that can lead to greater levels of ICT accessibility and usability. Thus, a permanent EU-wide eAccessibility Observatory could be set up to inform, alert and warn about new ICT applications and services and the influence these may have on disabled people.

It may be that one of the main conclusions to be drawn from the report is that of the overwhelming need for establishing mechanisms that lead to the progressive homogenisation of rights and the suitable levels of accessibility for ICTs and assistive technologies in the EU Member States, either through structural funds or analogous means.

However, once the data have been analysed, the main conclusion to be drawn from the two reports is that the situation is especially worrying given the rapid advance of ICTs and the slow adjustment or regulation of the corresponding rights. It is therefore necessary, due to the increasingly evident risk of people with specific ICT needs being excluded from the new social and economic systems arising within the information and communication society, to rapidly tackle this problem.