Policy: development of EU Policy and strategy An important current document for describing the European Union’s strategy towards an accessible Europe is the “European Disability Strategy 2010-2020: a renewed commitment to a barrier-free Europe”. Based on the observations that there are not enough accessible goods and services in the European market, that fragmentation of markets must be removed through harmonisation, and that there are barriers for free movement of persons
• employment in the open labour market • inclusive education and training • social protection to combat poverty and social exclusion • ensuring equal access to health services and related facilities • external action including EU enlargement, neighbourhood and international development programmes.
The means: standardisation as a tool for accessibility
with disabilities, the European Disability Strategy
The European Commission makes use of mandates
aims to develop standards for particular sectors,
to the European standardisation bodies CEN,
improve the proper function of the internal
CENELEC and ETSI to develop standards that
market, use legislative and other instruments
play a vital role in making non-legal requirements
like standardisation, optimise the accessibility
of producers of goods and services, to ensure
of buildings, ICT and transport and finally to
the inclusion of accessibility aspects.
evaluate the efficiency of regulatory measures, based on the principles of smarter regulations to ensure accessibility, in particular through public procurement.
Main EU policy objectives The main areas for the EU’s actions will be first and foremost to ensure accessibility to goods and services. Related objectives are: • participation for persons with disabilities as equal citizens in Europe
Mandates This New Approach strategy on standardisation has resulted in a broad range of activities, concentrated in the following mandates: • Mandate 376: Accessibility requirements for public procurement of products and services in the ICT domain. The work has produced a draft European standard EN ETSI 301 549, which in 2013 is out for public consultation. In the field of websites,
• community-based services
the WCAG 2.0 guideline (ISO/IEC 40500)
• equality and combating discrimination
plays an important part.
Improving accessibility in Europe
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