Estella Oncins V International Congress on Communication and Youth Online April 1-3, 2020 Full article
Abstract:
Last decade the Council of Europe signed and ratified the United Nations Convention of Rights of Persons with Disability CRPD (2006)[1]. This derived in three pieces of legislation: Web Accessibility Directive (2016)[2] Audiovisual Media Service Directive (2018) [3] and the European Accessibility Act (2019) [4] that should secure full and democratic participation of all citizens in the new Information Society. One of the basic pillars to develop media accessibility is to design any ICT product and service with a Universal Design [5] approach. Another important pillar for accessibility development is to think about it from the very start, what is called born accessible (Montagud and Orero forthcoming).
Adapting a Universal Design for All approach at the earliest stage of the design and development process of any ICT product or service, maximizes accessibility for all potential end-users. The recent adoption of laws and policies at EU and international levels put accessibility in the front line requiring that any software, web content, documents and hardware can be accessed in a way that all people regardless of their capabilities can use and interact with them. Both principles of born accessible and Universal Design should be taken into consideration when developing H2020 projects.
The presentation will first describe the CRPD, and specifically Article 9 where accessibility to digital media is gathered. It will then describe the principles of Universal Design applied to the media environment and social media. After a revision of the new EU legislation regarding the Information Society, the methodology used to generate an accessible born technology will be explained, to conclude with the application in all current TransMedia Catalonia H2020 projects (i.e EasyTV, iMac, Helios, So-Close and Traction).