Internet Accessibility a principal European Policy

The European community is very interested in creating accessible internet resources. For this purpose special policy measures were undertaken to assure a greater accessibility for the disabled. The project which is financially supported by the European Commission is the “Web Accessibility Initiative”; it creates and promotes recommendations and guidelines for public internet access.

The short history of these measures consists of a line of initiatives for the past ten years. The “eEurope Action Plan 2002″ that started in June 2000, had as one of its objectives to create an internet community for the European citizens contributing to the apparition and use of internet in all areas of their lives. The Action Plan had as a main aim the improvement of internet access for persons that suffer from disabilities, and also it intended to implement the Web Accessibility Initiative project recommendations and results.

The Communication “eEurope 2002″ was adopted on 25 September, 2001, and aimed to increase the accessibility of the internet resources for the disabled and old people.

The European Council started in June 2002 the «eEurope 2005″ Action Plan, that had as a main aim to make real the participation of all people in the world wide informational resources.

The European Commission and disability movement declared and organized the “Year of People with Disabilities”, that had as a separate purpose to improve the internet access of the disabled persons.

In September 2005, was published a new European Counsel communication on web accessibility. The result was the preparation of a study that had to be implemented from 2005 to 2006 aimed to identify and analyze the actions that had to be implemented for better internet accessibility in the world and the EU.

The 2008 year has debuted with the “European Initiative on eInclusion”, also aimed to improve the access to the World Wide Web.

Even if good results have been realized, and some top EU resources have a very good accessibility, the European Commission works for better standards in its existing subsites.

The rule N.7 of the European Commission’s “Information Providers’ Guide”, describes in detail the specifications of accessible internet content for EU servers.

Some EU, most important and popular cites have a “Level A” conformance logo, which shows that the existing pages were created to have a better accessibility. Unfortunately a total “Level” A, compliance is not guaranteed even for these pages. The politics of Internet accessibility in EU is very progressive but yet, it has to improve, to assure better compliance for the future with the developing technology and the needs of the disabled persons.