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The importance of access for the disabled to information and communications technologies has been recognised in two major international documents:

• In 1993, the United Nations agreed on the UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. In the document it is stated: "The States must develop strategies to make the information services and the documentation accessible to different groups of disabled persons ".
• On the 8th December 1999, the initiative eEurope was launched in Europe, agreed on by the European Commission, with the aim of accelerating the diffusion of digital technologies and to ensure that all European citizens were put in the condition of being able to use them.

 

In Italy

On the 9 August 2005, the Official Journal published the decree drawn up by Lucio Stanca, minister for Innovation and Technology, with the technical requirements needed to implement the specific law on accessibility to new digital technology and information technology. On an initiative taken by the minister himself and by absorbing different parliamentary initiatives, the Parliamentary Houses unanimously approved the regulations at the end of 2003 to encourage disabled access to information technology tools. It became Act 4 from 9 January 2004, better known as the "Stanca Act". In particular, the decree sets out in detail the requirements that internet web sites and information technology tools (pc, operating environment, applications, etc.) must possess to make it easier for disabled people to use them. Public Administrations were given twelve months to come into line with the new law. Private companies can also adhere to the regulations. To make it easier to identify the update, a special logo has been created, a form of "approval sticker", with a series of asterisks that determine the different levels of quality in the service provided. Private companies wishing to receive the quality certification should register with the CNIPA-National Centre for Information Technology in the Public Administration Sector. The full text is available at: www.innovazione.gov.it

The Authority for Information Technology in Public Administration (l'AIPA), in July 2000, constituted a work group on Accessibility and Information Technologies in public administration, dedicated to gathering experiences and contributions from people engaged on these matters. It then decided to carry forward a project with the aim of constantly following all the problems of high accessibility.
Among the main points: the adaptation of the Authority's site (www.aipa.it), an Internet site model completely accessible to the disabled; the introduction, into training programmes for specialists held by the Authority, of contents dedicated to accessibility for disabled citizens and for disabled civil servants; the evaluation of the adaptation of feasibility studies, planning, creating, verifying and monitoring the Public Administration's information systems in terms of accessibility; AIPA membership to the World Wide Web Consortium. Lastly, a grant to draw up rulings on accessibility, also the subject of a bill in Parliament, for any type of disability (universal access).

On the 19th March 2001, within the sphere of E-government, a circular from the Minister of Public Functions, to be sent to all public administrations, was published in the Official Gazette. "The provision," the communication from the Ministry of Public Functions informed, "apart from giving indications regarding the organisation and the usability of Public Administration Web sites, contains prompt rules for guaranteeing accessibility to the disabled. The circular has been drawn up taking into account the indications of the World Wide Web Consortium and will permit also handicapped users to take advantage of the services and of the information that the public administrations publicise on the network, thus eliminating every possible form of isolation. With this provision the Italian government has taken an important step to further facilitate dialogue between administration and citizens. The circular continues to advance information technology as a force for development, modernisation and efficiency in public administrations, outlining plans for e-government. The prevision of technical standards of accessibility shows that an adequate use of Internet and of information technology can reduce inequalities, guaranteeing equal opportunities to all, also as regards relationships with the public administration. The issue of the circular puts Italy among the first Countries in Europe and in the World to adopt technical measures at an early stage aimed at guaranteeing democratic use of the new technologies, bringing them within the reach of everyone." (The complete text of the circular can be consulted at the site:
http://www.governo.it/sez_dossier/linee_web/index.html)

The Aipa work group then published a first draft of the document "Instruments for Improving Accessibility", with the aim of receiving contributions and indications on the Web and accessibility. (The complete document can be found at the address:
http://www.aipa.it/attivita[2/gruppi[18/accessibilita[3/bozza[1/strumenti.asp)

The document led to the issue of circular n. 32 of the 6/09/2001 on "Criteria and instruments to improve accessibility to web sites and of information technology applications for the disabled", addressed to all the administrations and published in the Official Gazette n. 240 of the 14th September 2001. The indications prepared are binding for public bodies and recommended to all companies in general. (The circular can be consulted at the address http://www.aipa.it/servizi[3/normativa[4/circolari[2/aipacr32.asp)

Lastly, as of the 6th January 2002 the new Aipa site on accessibility has become active. The Authority has started up the creation and management of the site www.pubbliaccesso.it, which intends to represent a reference point for accessibility themes and for the sharing and diffusion of the more interesting experiences and work carries out on accessibility.

On the 16th December 2002 in Venice, on the occasion of the convention "Internet un diritto per tutti" ("Internet everyone's right"), organised by IWA/HWG, the bill which was the initiative of the members of parliament Cesare Campa and Antonio Palmieri "Rules for the right of access to the public info-telematic services and resources and of public usefulness on the part of the disabled and for fostering their integration with the new technologies" was presented.
The bill recognises the recommendations from the W3C for the WAI project (Web Accessibility Initiative) and defines them as obligatory for public info-telematic services and resources and for public use. The bill, as indicated by the two members of Parliament, is a starting point for discussion at a parliamentary level to finally reach rulings that give the right of access and participation in web development and of its contents to all citizens.
The complete text can be found at the address:
http://www.iwa-italy.org/iniziative/pdl3486.asp

On the 4th April 2003 on the initiative of the Minister Lucio Stanca, a second bill was presented for removing the virtual barriers that the disabled meet in access to the web. The text states, among other things, that the Department for Innovation and Technology should "evaluate, at the request of private citizens, the accessibility of their Internet sites and of the material that they produce or distribute via Internet." Thus the concept of the "blue stamp", or accessibility certification, is introduced for the Internet sites of private firms. This proposal, once approved, will lead over a period of three years, according to what Minister Stanca ensures, to the attaining of the accessibility principles on the part of 100% of the sites for public use.

 

In Europe

The European Commission has started up Europe - An information society for everyone.

The aims of the project are:

1) to bring every citizen, house, school, company, and authority into the Information Society and on-line;

2) to create a Europe that is digitally literate and supported by a business culture willing to finance new ideas;

3) to make the process socially inclusive, winning consumers' confidence and reinforcing social unity.

The initiative was presented on the 8th December 1999, after having been adopted by the European Commission, in order to accelerate the affirmation of digital technologies in the European Union and to ensure that all citizens would be capable of using them.

One of the priority areas is the participation of disabled persons in the Information Technology Society. The targets are:

• Within the end of 2000 the European Commission and the Member States had to re-examine the legislation and the elaboration programmes for rulings linked to the Information Society, to guarantee conformity to the principles of accessibility and to accelerate the normalisation programmes.
• Within the end of 2001 the European Commission and the Member States should have made accessible to the disabled the structure and the content of all public Web sites. Expiry has been postponed to the end of 2003.
• During 2002 the European Commission supported the creation of a network of excellence centres, at least one in each member Sate, with the duty of developing a course of European project studies for all, destined for the formation of project planners and engineers.

The Portuguese presidency started up a site, http://www.egroups.com/group/eeurope-pwd, to foster discussion on the theme of the Information Society and Disability.

The European institutions and the member States should have to apply the guide lines of the World Wide Web Consortium in order to render both the configuration and the contents of all public sites accessible to the disabled.

In the World

Australia: from the 1st December all new Internet sites must follow the W3C rulings and indications. A special body, the Human rights and equal opportunity commission, has the task of controlling application of the rule.

Canada: in May 2000 the Government established that all government sites and those of federal organisations have to adapt to level 1 and 2 of the W3C, within the 31st December 2002. The guarantor organ is the Government.

Japan; it has been dealing with the web and high accessibility since 1999. Within 2000 all Ministerial Internet sites and those of the public sector had conformed to the W3C norms.

United States: apart from the W3C norms, also the Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards (colloquially known as Section 508) are followed. Within the 21st June 2002 all public utility Internet sites had to conform to the norms.

 

The World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, is the body that establishes the rules on the creation of Internet pages. It has issued standards and suggestions to widen the possibility of access to sites of public administrations and institutions of the whole world. In Italy the site of the House of Representatives (http://www.camera.it) was one of the first to use the new technologies to allow the blind and almost blind to read the texts published.

The guidelines of the Web Consortium explain how to make the Web contents accessible to the disabled, both for the developers of Web contents (Web page authors and Web site creators) and for the developers of reading instruments.

In English
http://www.w3.org/wai

The WC3 has a validation system for Web pages, available at the address
http://validator.w3.org/

The rules of the World Wide Web Consortium are translated into Italian at the site
http://www.aib.it/aib/cwai/WAI-trad.htm

 

Indications for the construction of a WWW site according to the Trace standard

The rules of the Trace R and D Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Founded in 1971, Trace was in the lead as regards the use of new technologies at the service of the disabled.

These norms intend to give advice on how to create a WWW site, with the aim of achieving maximum visibility for the disabled.

Often a WWW site is made accessible by placing beside the "full" page, that is a page with all the characteristics, a page of text only, from which the images have been removed. These solutions do not satisfy the Trace rules: the correct philosophy, when creating the pages, is that the disabled person must be able to perceive everything on the page, not only the parts maintained as important by the person constructing the site.

The Internet pages that bear the symbol "D" have the characteristic of being able to be "visited" with any type of programme, also those limited only to the text interface, in respect of the norms proposed in the Trace Project. The content of the pages is structured so that a textual reading of the images is always possible (not perceived by the blind), and the text can be converted into an audible form with a voice synthesizer. However, to guarantee maximum clarity and to eliminate ambiguity, the images have beside them a small symbol, a capital "D". This means "description" and indicates the possibility of receiving an extra text that describes the appearance and the sense of the image.

In English

http://www.tracecenter.org

http://trace.wisc.edu/TEXT/GUIDELNS/HTMLGIDE/htmlgide.html

Bobby

Bobby is an instrument that analyses Web pages and checks the accessibility level. It takes into consideration only sight disabilities.

It is sufficient to write the address of the page to be checked and Bobby, in a short time, shows all the accessibility mistakes.

http://www.cast.org/bobby

LynxIT

LynxIT visualises the site, as it is seen with a browser in text only mode. It is an excellent method for quickly checking accessibility, but it deals only with visual disabilities. At the site http://lynx.browser.org you can download the text browser studied for the blind.