By letter of 25 September 2001, the Commission forwarded to Parliament a communication on eEurope 2002: Accessibility of Public Web Sites and their Content (COM(2001) 529 – 2002/2032(COS)).

At the sitting of 27 February 2002 the President of Parliament announced that he had referred the communication to the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy as the committee responsible and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport for their opinions (C5‑0074/2002).

The Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy appointed Bastiaan Belder rapporteur at its meeting of 22 November 2001.

It considered the Commission communication and the draft report at its meetings of 26 March 2002 and 23 April 2002.

At the last meeting it adopted the motion for a resolution unanimously.

The following were present for the vote: Carlos Westendorp y Cabeza, chairman; Peter Michael Mombaur, Yves Piétrasanta and Jaime Valdivielso de Cué, vice-chairmen; Bastiaan Belder, rapporteur; Gordon J. Adam (for Harlem Désir), Nuala Ahern, Konstantinos Alyssandrakis, Sir Robert Atkins, Luis Berenguer Fuster, Guido Bodrato, Giles Bryan Chichester, Nicholas Clegg, Concepció Ferrer, Norbert Glante, Malcolm Harbour (for Werner Langen), Roger Helmer (for Michel Hansenne), Hans Karlsson, Bashir Khanbhai, Rolf Linkohr, Caroline Lucas, Marjo Matikainen-Kallström, Eryl Margaret McNally, Elizabeth Montfort, William Francis Newton Dunn (for Willy C.E.H. De Clercq), Giuseppe Nisticò (for Paolo Pastorelli), Josu Ortuondo Larrea (for Claude Turmes), Elly Plooij-van Gorsel, Samuli Pohjamo (for Colette Flesch), Godelieve Quisthoudt-Rowohl, Bernhard Rapkay (for Erika Mann), Daniela Raschhofer, Imelda Mary Read, Carlos Ripoll i Martínez Bedoya, Mechtild Rothe, Christian Foldberg Rovsing, Paul Rübig, Konrad K. Schwaiger, Esko Olavi Seppänen, Gary Titley, W.G. van Velzen, Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca, Dominique Vlasto and Olga Zrihen Zaari.

The Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Culture, Youth, Education, the Media and Sport decided on 23 October 2001 and 12 December 2001 not to deliver an opinion.

The report was tabled on 24 April 2002.

The deadline for tabling amendments will be indicated in the draft agenda for the relevant part-session.

European Parliament resolution on the Commission communication eEurope 2002: Accessibility of Public Web Sites and their Content (COM(2001) 529 – C5‑0074/2002 – 2002/2032(COS))

The European Parliament,

–   having regard to the Commission communication (COM(2001) 529 – C5‑0074/2002(1)),

–   having regard to the Conclusion of the European Council of Feira of 19 and 20 June 2000(2),

–   having regard to the Conclusions of the European Council of Nice of 7-8-9 December 2000(3),

–   having regard to Rule 47(1) of its Rules of Procedure,

–   having regard to the report of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy (A5-0147/2002),

A.   Whereas in June 2000 the European Council of Feira adopted the Action Plan "eEurope 2002" aiming to open the Information Society to all European citizens and recognised that "special attention should be given to disabled people and the fight against info-exclusion";

B.   Whereas, in December 2000, the European Council of Nice agreed on the need to fight against any form of exclusion, including those linked to disabilities and age;

C.   Whereas the Internet as a part of society is an instrument for society as a whole, so it is fundamental that technologically neutral access to public information is offered for all groups in society;

D.   Whereas Governments, due to their public responsibility, have to give an example to other public institutions as well as to the rest of society as on one hand they can influence the market as "launching customers" by buying web sites that respond to the needs of disabled and elderly people and, on the other hand, they can act as employers by hiring disabled people amongst their employees;

E.   Whereas access of disabled and elderly people to public WEB sites and their contents is an opportunity to improve their participation in society;

F.   Whereas the digital skills are less present among elderly people than among other age categories and acquiring these skills demands a considerably bigger effort from elderly than from younger people;

G.   Whereas it is not a person's disability that prevents them from using the web, but lack of awareness of the potential benefits and availability of the appropriate technology, training and support to allow them to exploit online services;

H.   Whereas a real need to participate to the Information Society has been expressed in the last decade by the organisations representing disabled and elderly people;

I.   Whereas specific problems in the access to web content exist for people with problems in reading or understanding text and therefore require not only alternative presentations, but also a modification of the text content into simple, easy-to-understand language;

J.   Whereas buying a computer implies expenses that constitute a financial effort that is considerable for lower income groups; disabled people belong relatively often to the lower income groups; besides, the expenses they face when entering the Internet are high in absolute terms as well by virtue of the special apparatus they need; this is an even more pressing issue since most public internet facilities are unaccessible to them;

K.   Whereas the World Wide Web Consortium set up the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the latter has developed the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0 named "the Guidelines" nowadays considered to be the global standard for the designing of accessible Web sites; besides the W3C / WAI has developed a set of guidelines called Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 1.0 for software developers, that explains how to make a variety of authoring tools support the production of accessible Web content, and also how to make the software itself accessible;

L.   Whereas, besides the pure standards like (X)HTML and XML, some producers put some non-standard-elements in their software, or use formats like DHTML (that contains scripts that can not be handled by some screen readers or Macromedia Flash files) thus leading to difficulties of accessibility for people who out of an accessibility need make use of software which only can cope with the standards;

M.   Whereas the EU has already financed and promoted initiatives in order to facilitate the use of new technologies by disabled and elderly people;

N.   Whereas, if the access to a web site requires the installation of a browser from a specific producer, such a producer-dependent solution gives rise to concerns with regard to the competition and could raise accessibility barriers;

O.   Whereas differences exist among Member States in the promotion of accessibility for disabled people and elderly people to public Web sites and their contents;

P.   Whereas the eEurope Action Plan 2002 specifies that "public sector Web sites and their content in Member States and in the European institutions must be designed to be accessible to ensure that citizens with disabilities can access information and take full advantage of the potential for e-government" (COM(2000) 330 of 24 May 2000);

Q.   Whereas the future member States of the EU engaged themselves to make steps in order to promote an Information Society for all, thus enabling public access to governmental information and participation of disabled and elderly, as they are vulnerable groups in a period of transition and reform;

R.   Whereas the EU and the Member States were called to realise this objective through the adoption of the WAI Guidelines for public Web sites by the end of 2001;

S.   Whereas the EU and the Member States were called to review relevant legislation and standards to ensure conformity with accessibility principles at the end of 2002 and to ensure by then the establishment and networking of national centres of excellence in “design for all” and create recommendations for an European curriculum in “design for all” for designers and engineers;

T.   Whereas complying with "the Guidelines" will cause, if any, very little financial efforts to Web designers;

U.   Whereas the European Commission also proposes to achieve the accessibility of private Web sites in 2003 and to start with Web sites that receive public funding;

1.   Welcomes the Commission Communication on the accessibility of Public Web Sites and their Content;

2.   Reiterates the need to avoid any form of exclusion from society and therefore from the Information Society, and asks for the integration of disabled and elderly people in particular;

3.   Recognises that efficient initiatives have been promoted and financed at the European level in the field of access of disadvantaged categories of citizens to the Information Society, such as TIDE, and in the framework of the IV and the V Framework Research and Technological Development Programmes;

4.   Invites the EU Institutions and the Member States to fully comply with "the Guidelines" by 2003, European Year of Disabled people; besides, invites the EU Institutions and the Member States to comply with the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 1.0 by 2003 as well, in order to enable disabled people not only to read the webpages but also to enable them to manage the content of the webpages (content management);

5.   Agrees with the European Commission on the fact that also regional and local administrations should follow "the Guidelines" for the designing of their Web Sites;

6.   Invites the European Commission and the Member States to promote the dialogue with the representatives of disabled and elderly people in order to enable them to overcome barriers that hinder them from fully integrating into society, like being able to have access to new technologies;

7.   Welcomes the co-operation between the EU and the candidate countries and the adoption of eEurope+ 2003 action plan and recalls that the latter considers "accessibility to ICT and on-line information and services, taking particularly into account the needs of people with disabilities, as a precondition for ensuring an Information Society open to all";

8.   Asks the Commission to verify the cost-benefits achieved by compliance with “the Guidelines” for Web site designers and Web site providers; notes that incorporating accessibility criteria in the product-development phase is more cost-effective than re-designing Web sites and related technology afterwards; emphasises that compliance with the Guidelines could have positive commercial benefits as the service will thereby be accessible to a wider audience.

9.   Looks forward to initiatives to improve the relative position of elderly people in terms of digital skills and calls on the Member States and the Commission to exchange best practices in this field;

10.   Points at the opportunity that access to Web sites might offer to disabled persons to reintegrate in the labour market and to participate in society and stresses that these matters are of vital importance especially in many candidate countries of the ex-communist block, since access to social services is complicated by the transition period in which the public facilities are subject to ongoing reform;

11.   Asks for an active exchange of best practices and a benchmarking process incorporating the needs of the candidate countries;

12.   Recalls that the availability of the special hard- and software and the compatibility of the information with the hard- and software (accessibility requirements) are not the only conditions to access for disabled and elderly : the skills of the user are of vital importance, therefore the information should be structured in such a way that it is user-friendly, particularly for those who are not familiar with IT ; information on social services for disabled children could, for example, be split up per age category; points at the desirability of training for people who offer information to people with cognitive disabilities, in order to enable them to deal with the characteristics of the instrument Internet and the possibilities and impossibilities of that instrument;

13.   Calls on the European Institutions and Governments to promote the principles of accessible design of all types of equipment that can be used to access the internet. This can be achieved through awareness raising campaigns on accessible design and measures such as the standardisation of equipment;

14.   Asks the European Commission and the member States to work in partnership with manufacturers to encourage the development and marketing of equipment that facilitates simple and cheap home internet access for people with disabilities;

15.   Calls on the Commission to place specific emphasis on the implementation of Guideline 14 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines that requires documents to be clear and simple and therefore easy to understand in order to counter the further exclusion of people with reading problems or intellectual disability from e-government and the web;

16.   Stresses the role that social and human relations play for disabled and elderly people in order to enable them to participate into society and considers that the accessibility of Public Web sites is an opportunity for them, but should not be the exclusive instrument to get access to public sector information;

17.   Considers that compliance with the present accessibility "Guidelines" is a step forward, but underlines the importance of further developing, adopting and implementing the new improvements (or new versions) of "the Guidelines" since the Internet sector is changing very rapidly;

18.   Notes that producer-dependent solutions in specific cases lead to accessibility problems after all; the public content should be saved and made available on a universally accessible data format; i.e. (X)HTML and XML; as other ‘standards’, - such as DHTML, - are only acceptable if a web site is available in at least these formats in their pure form, like (X)HTML or XML as such;

19.   Suggests that web sites should be designed to support multiple browsers and browser versions to enable people using assistive technology to access these sites;

20.   Asks Member States to set up an "information point" to suggest which actions should and could be taken in case of complaints on the lack of compliance with "the Guidelines";

21.   Gives its full support to further studies aimed at drawing up measurable criteria with a view to achieving compliance with ‘the Guidelines’ and implementing complaints procedures in accordance with the Web Accessibility Initiative;

22.   Calls on governments to make more effort to make disabled people aware of the benefits of getting online, and to encourage higher take-up of the internet amongst people with disabilities by making grants available for technology, training and support;

23.   Gives its full support to further research in accordance with the Web Accessibility Initiative and stresses the importance of research and development for special apparatus to serve people with functional handicaps;

24.   Notes that regarding private Web sites, products and tools the promotion of accessibility guidelines to the private sector should start as soon as possible and that those Web sites having a commercial function should be the first target, followed by those websites that have a social function;

25.   Proposes that both Member States and the European Commission request from projects, activities and organisations that receive public funding involving the design of websites, compliance with “the Guidelines”; besides calls on the Member States and the European Commission to strongly recommend implementation of “the Guidelines” to projects, activities and organisations that receive public funding which does not involve the design of websites itself;

26.   Reminds that European Institutions and the Governments in the Member States have a public responsibility and calls on them to make their Web sites accessible to elderly and disabled people and to procure accessible software exclusively, thus giving an example to all the other public institutions and to the rest of society;

27.   Notes that the EU Member States and other public bodies can specify compliance with accessibility guidelines in tenders for products or services;

28.   Considers that promotion of the quality rating and benchmarking system for web accessibility, would stimulate early improvements in design and technology; requests the Commission to strengthen its co-ordination role, while developing and enhancing these standards; also confirms that accessibility performance should be highlighted in eEurope benchmarking reports;

29.   Considers that public procurement policies of the EU must mandate accessibility by persons with disabilities which would prove to be a major influencing factor in promoting accessible information communication technology;

30.   Stresses the fact that for websites to be accessible it is essential that they are double-A compliant, that priority 2 of the WAI guidelines must be fully implemented;

31.   Notes that government initiatives that raise awareness of web accessibility and that incorporate web-accessibility in the training available for web designers are possible ways to encourage the private sector to make web-sites accessible;

32.   Calls on the Commission to inform the European Parliament about the progress made by the Member States and European Institutions in applying "the Guidelines" by the end of 2002;

33.   Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee, the Governments and Parliaments of the Members States and to the Governments and Parliaments of the candidate countries.

(1) OJ C not yet published (2) SN 200/1/2000 (3) SN 400/00

The communication aims to make public Web sites more accessible to the 37 million EU citizens with disabilities and to elderly people, whose number is steadily increasing. These groups risk being excluded from access to sites because of technical barriers most of which can be eliminated through specific site designing based on rules on site content, structure and coding.

Some guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG1.0) orientating future site designers’ activities have been created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)/Web Accessibility Initiative supported by the Commission’s Telematics Applications Research Programme. W3C develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to enable the Web to achieve its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding. WAI, in co-ordination with organisations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through five areas: technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, research and development.

WCAG 1.0 are recognised as a de facto global standard for accessible Web sites design. They have an impact on improved Web access throughout the public sector, particularly in eHealth, eGovernment, and eLearning, and are constantly discussed and developed within the W3C WAI.

EU members and Institutions should have adopted and implemented "the Guidelines" by 2001. EU members agreed to exchange information and benchmark their progress. An "eAccessibility Expert Group" monitors the progress on Web accessibility and best practice in the EU. The eEurope action Plan also foresaw that the EU and its Members should review relevant legislation and standards to comply with accessibility principles by 2002, ensure the establishment and networking of national centres of excellence in design for all and create recommendations for an EU curriculum in ´design for all`, for designers and engineers.

In June 2000 the Feira Summit adopted the Action Plan "eEurope 2002" aiming to make the Information Society accessible to all EU citizens: special attention should be given to disabled people and the fight against info-exclusion. In December 2000 the Nice Summit agreed to fight against any form of exclusion, including those linked to disabilities and age.

The rapporteur shares this political will and welcomes EU and national initiatives aiming to give disabled and elderly people the opportunity to fully participate into society: disabilities and age should not limit access to sources of public information.

Paying attention to users' needs offers insight into the obstacles for accessing web sites and the extent to which "the Guidelines" will be helpful in providing solutions. Complying with "the Guidelines" will improve access to public information. The Information society is not a goal in itself, but a tool to improve social participation. The Internet is an instrument for society as a whole: it is fundamental to provide technological neutral access to all citizens and particularly to give disadvantaged groups the opportunity to function normally in society.

Special hard- and software availability and the compatibility of the information with assistive soft- and hardware (accessibility requirements) are not the only access conditions for disabled and elderly people: user's skills are of vital importance. These do not only consist of technical knowledge. The logic governing a web site is a hidden obstacle: the information should be structured in such a way that it is user-friendly, particularly for those who are not familiar with ICT. Public information web sites concerning public services, and in particular the ones for disabled people or elderly people should be customer-oriented. For instance, information about public services in favour of disabled children could be structured such that it is immediately identifiable which services are provided, for which disability and for which age.

The rapporteur also stresses that purchasing a computer implies expenses that disadvantaged categories cannot always afford.

The rapporteur's major concern is the participation of disabled and elderly people in society. He invites the EU members and Institutions to a dialogue with the organisations representing disabled and elderly people to identify problems and eliminate barriers to their integration. Social and human relations that disabled persons or elderly people could foster in their lives should not be neglected. Access to the information society is an opportunity not to be missed, not a way to reduce social contacts. Therefore access to public web sites should not be used as an argument to make the Internet the exclusive instrument to access to public information.

The communication covers different categories of people and it is impossible to specify the obstacles for each one of them. However, some specific elements can be identified for the two target groups, elderly and disabled people.

Regarding elderly people, a gap exists between the younger and the older generation as far as computer skills are concerned. Compliance with "the Guidelines" is a precondition for the installation of software to be used by elderly people, e.g. software should offer the option for making flashes moving at a slower pace or the possibility to avoid them. The rapporteur looks forward to initiatives to improve the often disadvantageous position of elderly people in terms of digital skills and calls on the EU members and the Commission to exchange best practices in this field.

The digital skills gap between the disabled and non disabled persons is even greater than that between the younger and older generation. Disabled people have to make a considerably bigger effort to obtain these skills. They belong relatively often to lower income groups. The expenses they face when accessing the Internet are high in absolute terms as well, due to the special apparatus (assistive devices) they need. This is an even more pressing issue since most public Internet facilities are inaccessible to them.

The new developments in speech technology will possibly allow keyboards to be replaced by voice commands: this would be useful for people with visual or motor impairments. As long as voice command is not widely applied, they use other technologies. People with a visual impairment need hard and software to switch text to speech or Braille. People with a motor impairment can be helped with special keyboards. For people with hearing difficulties there is also technology available, for instance the caption of video and images.

Particularly as far as disabled people are concerned, the rapporteur considers that access to Web sites might offer them the opportunity to reintegrate into society through the labour market.

Governments play an important role in this respect because they have a steering influence in the market as ‘launching customers’ by ordering accessible web sites only.

For people with cognitive disabilities the information-ergonomic is crucial. It is practically impossible to come up with a single and universal recommendation on making the text understandable to everyone. Therefore it would be desirable that those who provide information to people with cognitive disabilities receive training on how to deal with the characteristics of the instrument Internet and the possibilities and impossibilities of that instrument.

The rapporteur welcomes the definition of "the Guidelines" and the engagement of EU members and Institutions to comply with them. The present accessibility standards are a step forward, but developments are needed in this field since the Internet sector is changing very rapidly.

Nevertheless, accessibility does not depend on the compliance with the WAI-guidelines only.

Firstly, the standards (X)HTML and XML are used in all web sites, but are not applied in a consequent and correct way. The result can be that the web sites are not accessible for everybody. That is particularly problematic for disabled with special navigation apparatus. Consequent and correct application of the standard codes should be stressed.

By now, the standards are well developed, but improper application of the standards by web-designers and principals makes many sites inaccessible.

Moreover, accessibility is not optimally integrated into the building web sites process. The programmes and tools used for making Internet pages do not result per definition in accessible sites. For example the programmes do not ask automatically for related text when a picture is placed on the web page, thus causing problems for disabled people. Improvements might be possible here. For example, the W3C/WAI has developed a set of guidelines called Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 for software developers, that explains how to make a variety of authoring tools support the production of accessible Web content, and also how to make the software itself accessible.

Some web sites require the installation of a newer version of a browser before access to the site can be obtained. This is particularly problematic for disabled people. Blind people, for example, use a package of special hard- and software, which will be renewed after a certain period of time. Therefore they have good reasons not to renew their software in the meantime. This leads to accessibility problems for them. It would be worthwhile to explore whether in the future it will be possible to realise accessibility of web sites contents independently from the type of browser.

Moreover, if the access to a web site requires the installation of a browser from a specific producer, such a producer-dependent solution might influence fair competition.

If the requirements for accessible web sites are incorporated in the web site development from the beginning, they will hardly imply additional costs.

In order to reach the goal of the eEurope Action Plan 2002 the EU and its members had to adopt "the Guidelines" for their Web sites by 2001. The rapporteur endorses the intentions from the EU members and Institutions, as well as the wish that regional and local administrations should also comply with "the Guidelines". Regarding the goal of achieving full compliance with "the Guidelines" at the latest by 2003, European Year of Disabled people, including private web sites, considerable efforts are required. Web sites having a social function or being of special importance for disabled and elderly people should be the first to comply with "the Guidelines".

Consultation with Web site designers and providers has shown that complying with "the Guidelines" will not involve any financial effort: if any, it will be so little that it will result in an only marginal increase in development costs. Incorporating accessibility criteria regarding disabled and elderly people in the product-development is more cost-effective than re-designing Web sites and related technology afterwards. Nevertheless, the rapporteur asks the Commission to verify the economic affordability of the compliance to "the Guidelines", since that will constitute a relevant factor for the private sector as well.

With EU support, the candidate countries engaged themselves to make steps to promote an Information Society for all through the adoption of "eEurope+2003 Programme". The programme is also based on the principle that accessibility to ICT and on-line information and services, particularly taking into account the needs of people with disabilities, is a precondition for ensuring an Information Society open to all.

The rapporteur welcomes the commitment to relieve the situation of disabled and elderly people living in the candidate countries of the ex-communist block. Disadvantaged citizens of those countries face more obstacles than EU citizens. In this costly and difficult transition period this candidate countries’ initiative is remarkable and the position of these vulnerable groups deserves due attention. This new beginning, as a stimulus for social cohesion, is necessary and shows that public access to governmental information and participation of disabled and elderly people is taken into account seriously. Therefore the rapporteur would welcome an active exchange of best practices and a benchmarking process incorporating the needs of the candidate countries.

The rapporteur acknowledges the initiatives promoted and financed by the EU in the field of access of disadvantaged categories of citizens to the Information Society, such as TIDE, and in the framework of the IV and the V FRTD Programmes. These initiatives provided steps forward in the participation of disabled and elderly citizens into society and have been managed with the involvement of organisations representing these categories.

He also points at the importance of further research in accordance with the WAI and research and development in the field of special apparatus (assistive technology) responding to the needs of people with functional disabilities.

Finally, he asks the Member States and European Institutions for the creation of independent "info points" within the EU Member States, to be set up by the public and private bodies concerned. Their main task should be to suggest the actions to be taken in case of complaints on the lack of compliance with "the Guidelines" in public Websites of Member States and / or European Institutions.