Roxana Widmer-Iliescu from ITU’s Development Bureau kicked off with some impressive numbers: 2.1 billion people aged 60 and above predicted by 2050 (UN Report on World Population Aging 2017). "An age-related disability is a reality for all of us”, Roxana said. Hand in hand with the number of the ageing population, we all know that according to WHO, over 1 billion people are or will be affected by a disability in their lifetime (UN WHO Report 2015). And a third shocking number indicates that 1.1 billion youth are at risk of hearing loss due to unsafe listening devices (as per U.N. WHO-ITU Making Listening Safe Initiative on-going since 2015).
ITU Members identified at the last World Telecommunication Development Conference (2017) that ICT accessibility is a priority and development of public websites accessible to ALL a key topic to work on in the next 4 years (2018-2021). For this reason, ITU-D has developed a National Program on Web Accessibility “Internet for @ll” that includes a political buy-in session to raise awareness among government representatives and national stakeholders on the need and benefit of providing accessible websites and digital content to all public to enable everyone, including persons with disabilities and older users to access information, study and work and participate in the social and economic life.
This program developed face to face in country over one week, provides “train-the trainers” trainings on development of accessible digital content and in the design and development of accessible websites to government's key personnel in communications and web development. Furthermore, ITU advices that this program is also followed by a National Tech University that will be then empowered with this capacity and related trainings curriculum to further replicate it throughout the country. To ensure that the knowledge process is completed, the program also proposes a self-sustainable model based on in-country certification. So while the country develops national capacities by creating a pool of trainers in ICT accessibility, it also creates a fund to enable development of digital training for end users on how to use accessible websites.
Last but not least this model aiming at encouraging governments to “lead by example” to make information accessible and available to all its citizens, also seeks to create opportunities for inclusion of persons with disabilities in the country workplace, thus contributing to their social and economic empowerment as well as to country development as a whole.
Accessible Europe - An event to look forward to
During the forum, ITU also announced plans to organise its 1st Accessible Europe event in December 2018, following the successful Accessible Americas event series organised over the past 5 years in Latin America. To best respond to the region's concerns and needs the participants in the forum were asked about what kind of questions and topics they would like to see discussed at such an event in Europe, and five key issues emerged:
- We have a lot of tools today for promoting and advancing mobile and digital accessibility, yet they are only used by a small number of organisations. Let’s ask a wide range of stakeholders about what is preventing them from using the tools available today and how we can help them.
- We need to clarify definition of ICT accessibility across all sectors and understand its applications in terms of technical requirements. How can we achieve this? Which is the role of universal design?
- It would be interesting to mainstream accessibility and explore the link between accessible and assistive technologies..
- We should look at the whole customer journey in the delivery of accessible digital services. It would be helpful to get inspiration from best practices around the world.
- We should include a panel with entrepreneurs who all create great solutions for society but might not have ever heard about accessibility.
Another great event on accessibility to look forward to in 2018!
ITU National Program on Web Accessibility “Internet for @ll”
Zero Project Conference 2018: https://conference.zeroproject.org