Websites
Legislation/regulations
There is no direct legislation on accessibility of public websites, however the Act on Electronic Services and Communication in the Public Sector (13/2003, 24.1.2003) requires that authorities shall aim to use equipment and software that is technically as compatible as possible with Assistive Technology (AT) tools and, from their customer’s point of view, as user-friendly as possible. This legislation, by extension, requires authorities to seek to offer web services so that they can be used with the most common AT tools.
Other initiatives
The JHS 129 Guidelines for designing web services in public administrations provides public authorities with guidelines on how to plan, implement and purchase online services. The guidelines contain a set of accessibility requirements based on WCAG. The guidelines also recommend accessibility and usability testing of public websites. As a recommendation by the Ministry of Interior, the guidelines are a “soft law” measure and addressed to all state and municipal (local) administrations.
Also, the Towards Barrier-Free Communication Action Programme is an initiative of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Two commitments within it address public internet accessibility:
- The design and planning of accessible online services to be adopted as a general objective of the public sector
- All public sector tenders for website design to include accessibility requirements
Special attention has been paid to usability in the Finnish public sector portal (www.suomi.fi). WAI Guidelines 1.0 with priority AA have been applied in the text version of the portal and usually also in the graphical version. There are also now several guidelines for users and designers on web accessibility, for example guidelines prepared by the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired (www.nkl.fi).
Learn. Share. Contribute.
We are interested in receiving any corrections and/or additional information that may help us to update or improve our understanding of the current state of affairs in this country concerning the accessibility of web sites. This may concern information on relevant legislation, other policies and/or the level of accessibility actually achieved. Please enter your contribution in the “Leave a Reply” box below or send an e-mail to meac at empirica dot com.
- To avoid SPAM-abuse of the e-mail address the ‘@’ sign was written as ‘a t’ and each dot ‘.’ as ‘d o t’.
Please change the recipient address of your message accordingly. We apologize for this inconvenience.
