Access For All

The BRAID Project is developing a holistic roadmap that covers all areas of a person’s life. The roadmap is focused on four different perspectives, the “Life Settings”: Independent Living; Health and Care in Life; Occupation in Life; and Recreation in Life.

These settings correspond to the main areas of life of a person in general, and will need to be supported as we are ageing. The settings stand for priorities in life, and are not location-based or mutually exclusive. In principle, not all elderly citizens may need equal support in all of the above areas. However, the significance of defining these four settings is that they comprehensively cover the main aspects related to active ageing and well being of the elderly.

This booklet presents a collection of illustrative scenarios for the different life settings.

The International Road Transport Union (IRU) and the European Disability Forum (EDF) have jointly developed an Accessibility Checklist including recommendations to help taxi drivers improve the quality of the services they provide to customers with disabilities and reduced mobility.
Based on the existing detailed voluntary IRU Guidelines, the checklist contains recommendations for taxi drivers offering services to people who are blind or partially sighted, including customers with assistance dogs, are hard of hearing or have speech impairments, have mobility impairments, including customers using wheelchairs or have hidden disabilities.
“In order to guarantee the equal right to transport for persons with disabilities, and their increased possibilities for participation and social inclusion, EDF also calls for future developments of taxi services to ensure they become increasingly accessible. In Europe, taxi services are the most important means for ensuring spontaneous transport for many persons with disabilities or reduced mobility,” highlighted Stig Langvad, EDF executive member and the chairman of the EDF transport expert group, in a joint IRU and EDF press release
The Taxi Accessibility checklist can be downloaded in English, French and German.
Read more on IRU taxi accessibility policy.
Source: AGE Platform newsletter April 2011

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Communication Enhancement (AAC-RERC) offers a white paper as a means for raising issues related to mobile technologies and AAC Apps and to encourage discussion and collaboration among AAC stakeholders. In order to gather information in a timely manner, they interviewed more than 25 AAC “thought leaders” between January and March, 2011, representing multiple stakeholder groups. Interviews were conducted by phone, e-mail and Skype.
This white paper is available as a downloadable pdf.

Equal access to public information and services for all is an essential part of the United Nations (UN) Declaration of Human Rights. Today, the Web plays an important role in providing information and services to citizens. Unfortunately, many government Web sites are poorly designed and have accessibility barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using them.
The article Global Web Accessibility Analysis of National Government Portals and Ministry Web Sites (Morten Goodwin; Deniz Susar; Annika Nietzio; Mikael Snaprud; Christian S. Jensen) combines current Web accessibility benchmarking methodologies with a sound strategy for comparing Web accessibility among countries and continents. Furthermore, the article presents the first global analysis of the Web accessibility of 192 United Nation Member States made publicly available.
The article also identifies common properties of Member States that have accessible and inaccessible Web sites and shows that implementing antidisability discrimination laws is highly beneficial for the accessibility of Web sites, while signing the UN Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities has had no such effect yet. The article demonstrates that, despite the commonly held assumption to the contrary, mature, high-quality Web sites are more accessible than lower quality ones. Moreover, Web accessibility conformance claims by Web site owners are generally exaggerated.

Details:
Global Web Accessibility Analysis of National Government Portals and Ministry Web Sites
Morten Goodwin; Deniz Susar; Annika Nietzio; Mikael Snaprud; Christian S. Jensen
Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 1933-169X, Volume 8, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 41 – 67

The Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange (CIRRIE) organises a conference on the World Report on Disability, which is being released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank on 9 June, 2011. The two-day symposium on September 12 & 13, 2011 at the DoubleTree Hotel Crystal City, Arlington, VA (USA) will be conducted in cooperation with WHO, the Pan American Health Organization, the World Bank, the Interagency Committee on Disability Research, and the United States International Council on Disabilities. For more information, please see the conference’s website.

The EU eAccess+ thematic network is developing a range of support systems for co-ordinating, supporting and improving the implementation of eAccessibility throughout Europe. The network has a special focus on three topics within eAccessibility (Web accessibility, Accessible convergent communications and accessible digital audio-visual systems, Self-service terminals (SSTs) and devices for banking and financial services, public transport, tourism and cultural heritage, e-government).

The network will involve all stakeholder groups (including legislators, regulators, policy makers, commissioners, owners and deployers of systems, developers of hardware and software, user organizations, researchers, accessibility and usability experts, educators), analyse the state of the art on eAccessibility, and analyse the obstacles and missing links hindering the uptake of eAccessibility

To address the current problems of improving eAccessibility, the network will develop online resources such as a website, wikis, and podcasts to address key eAccessibility topics, gather and review relevant information such as standards and guidelines, seek out examples of good practice and relevant case studies, and provide initial advice and links to appropriate more detailed advice services when needed.
More information on the project website.