Council Resolution of 25 March 2002 on the eEurope
Action Plan 2002: accessibility of public websites and their content
(2002/C 86/02)
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,
Having regard to the eEurope 2002 Action Plan adopted by the Santa Maria da
Feira European Council in June 2000 to enable all citizens to participate in the
opportunities provided by the Information Society,
Whereas
(1) The Commission, in its communication of 25 September 2001, focused on one of
the specific objectives of the eEurope Action Plan 2002: improving access to the
Web for the 37 million people with disabilities in Europe and for the growing
number of older persons, who may be unable to access the information and
services offered by the new media.
(2) The Web Accessibility Initiative by the World Wide Web Consortium has
developed a series of guidelines including the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines(1) (hereinafter referred to as "the Guidelines") which have
become a de facto standard used worldwide for the creation of accessible
websites.
(3) The abovementioned Commission communication draws, inter alia, the following
conclusions:
- national administrations should seek constantly to improve the accessibility
of their web pages and explore new and better ways to deliver web content and
services as new technologies and new versions of the Guidelines are developed,
- the eEurope website will present the progress towards adoption and
implementation of the Guidelines by the European Institutions and the Member
States,
- measures for awareness-raising, dissemination, education and especially
training in Web accessibility should be promoted in both the European
institutions and the Member States,
- within the framework of the eEurope Action Plan, Member States should
encourage not only national public websites but also local and regional public
websites to comply with the Guidelines,
- there should be a major initiative devoted to achieving overall accessibility
of both public and private websites during the year 2003, the European Year of
Disabled People.
(4) The Transport/Telecommunications Council of 15 October 2001 took note of the
Commission communication.
(5) The Employment and Social Policy Council of 8 October 2001 adopted a
resolution on e-inclusion - exploiting the opportunities of the Information
Society for social inclusion.
(6) The conclusions drawn up by the Presidency regarding the results of the
informal conference on new technologies and disability, which was held in Madrid
on 6 and 7 February 2002, stressed inter alia, the need for measures to
encourage web accessibility in the Union.
Bearing in mind:
(1) the European objective to integrate everyone, particularly people with
disabilities and older people into the information society, as expressed in the
eEurope 2002 Action Plan;
(2) that lack of accessibility to the new communication media is a major
obstacle to be removed if progress is to be made towards participation by
everyone in the Information Society;
(3) that there are examples of good practice in some Member States as regards
training and support for those responsible for web pages and awareness-raising
for information officers and managers, as well as for content creators,
regarding the Guidelines and their objectives;
(4) that, though progress has been made by the Member States regarding the
specific eEurope Action of adopting the Guidelines, work should continue on the
implementation of those Guidelines in order to achieve the underlying eEurope
objective of ensuring that all public websites are accessible;
(5) that accessibility to the Web is an integral part of public information
policy in some countries within and outside the Union and, in such cases,
legislation or other policy instruments can provide valuable incentives for
websites to be accessible;
(6) that technological progress is making it easier to implement the Guidelines
and to validate the compliance of websites with the Guidelines.
Therefore:
1. STRESSES the need to increase efforts to speed up accessibility to the Web
and the content it offers;
2. ENCOURAGES the Member States to implement specific and adequately-resourced
measures to achieve the underlying objective of the eEurope 2002 Action Plan for
accessibility of public websites at all levels of government;
3. INVITES the High Level Group on the Employment and Social Dimension of the
Information Society (ESDIS) to monitor progress in the adoption and
implementation of the Guidelines and to develop common methodologies and
comparable data so as to facilitate the evaluation of progress;
4. ENCOURAGES the Member States and the Commission to take account of the need
for digital content to be accessible, for example by, when funding development
of websites, requiring those websites to implement the Guidelines;
5. CALLS on the Member States and the Commission to participate in the European
Year of People with Disabilities in 2003 and to improve Web accessibility,
awareness and training, and on the Commission to submit in the first half of
2004 a report giving an overview of progress made;
6. URGES the Member States and the Commission to further develop a permanent
dialogue with representative organisations of people with disabilities and
organisations representing older persons, so that their reactions to these
matters may be taken into account.
(1) Http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
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