EU-funded high-tech research makes a reality of legal requirements and policy initiatives that aim at unlocking truly equal opportunities and rights for disabled citizens
Besides offering smart solutions to empower persons with disabilities, digital technologies are becoming the more and more necessary, when not the default channel, to access services and exercise one’s basic rights. That is why giving to the 80 million Europeans with a disability the same access to ICT as all other citizens is imperative to counter the emergence of new digital divides and fully realise the EU’s commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which is celebrated today across the world.
The recent Digital Agenda for Europe and European Disability Strategy embrace a vision of ICT as the key to making the living environment, services and products personalised and adaptable to the abilities of people with disabilities, and not vice-versa. In addition, EU legislation on electronic communications and audiovisual media already stipulates equal rights for persons with disabilities when it comes to access and quality.
One of the first Digital Agenda actions that we can tick as 'complete' is the signature, on 14 September, of a Memorandum of Understanding on access to works by persons with print disabilities, for example dyslexia and visual impairment. The Memorandum will spur the production and facilitate the cross-border distribution of works published in alternative formats, like audio-books and Braille for example.
Policies and legislation are only one side of the European Union's commitment to the rights of people with disability. The European Union is also supporting research and development activities aimed at delivering e-accessibility, i.e. making sure that ICT is an opportunity and not a barrier.
Since 2007, the European Commission has earmarked more than 110 million euro for research into accessible and inclusive ICT. Thanks to such funding, pan-European teams of researchers, public authorities, disabled users and industry work together to deliver meaningful technology for disabled people in all life environments.
Research into accessible and inclusive ICT – some examples
Since 2002, EU telecom rules have required that the 112 emergency number is available free-of-charge everywhere in the EU. However, disabilities like for example hearing or speech impairments, can make access to the emergency services via the traditional voice telephony impossible, thus putting more lives at risk. The EU-funded pilot project REACH112 is validating – over several Member States - alternative modes of communication, may it be real-time text, sign language, lip reading, voice or any simultaneous combination of these modes, as per the Total Conversation concept, both for calling the emergency services but also for any telephone call. View a short (2:13) video with Gunnar Hellstrom from the leading Swedish pilot site.
The large-scale pilot project DTV4ALL aims at ensuring that everybody enjoys the benefits of the switch-over from analogue to digital television taking place in Europe and to be completed by 2012. It is estimated that 15% of Europeans have difficulties in accessing digital TV for various impairments reasons. At the same time, the switch-over, although theoretically offering more access possibilities, poses also technical challenges to the delivery of such access services as subtitling, deaf signing or audio description, that are valued by users with disabilities. The project aims at validating solutions and issuing recommendations to the electronic industry, broadcasters, and possibly standardisation bodies.
No comments:
Post a Comment