Telecoms
Legislation/regulations
The Electronic Communications Networks and Services (General) Regulations of 2004 transposed the EU Universal Service Directive. Section 29 of the Regulations specifies that the national regulatory authority can impose obligations to ensure access to and affordability of publicly available telephones services by people with disabilities that is equivalent to that enjoyed by other end users. In addition to fixed line services, the obligation includes access to emergency services, directory enquiry services and directories. This section also specifies that the regulatory authority can make terms and conditions to ensure that disabled end-users can take advantage of the choice of undertakings and service providers available to the majority of end-users.
In addition, there seems to be a requirement for the main mobile phone operator to provide mobile handsets that can be used by people with hearing difficulties.
The Equal Opportunities Act (Disabled Persons) of 2000 which prohibits discrimination also covers telecoms under the Goods and Services clauses.
Other initiatives
FITA administers the allocation of financial subsidies in relation to broadband internet for disabled persons and in relation to mobile telephony for disabled persons linked to the GoMobile telephony service.
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 telecoms equipment and services. 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.
