MeAC – Measuring Progress of eAccessibility in Europe

Legislation/regulations

Legislation in relation to website accessibility was first established in Law 34/2002. This was later affirmed and expanded in the anti-discrimination Law 51/2003 and then affirmed again in relation to public websites in the Royal Decree 1494/2007 on accessibility to the information society, and in the public procurement Law 30/2007.

Law 34/2002 Final Disposition (Regulation) deals specifically with accessibility to information provided by electronic means, covering all the web pages of public authorities. It states that public authorities should adopt the required measures in order to have their internet content accessible for disabled or elderly people. It also states that the adoption of norms on accessibility will be promoted for the service providers and hardware/software producers in order to ease access to digital content for disabled or elderly people. The law includes an obligation to fulfil generally recognized accessibility criteria, without mentioning W3C, and although it does not oblige, it indicates that the application of the law should be based on a standard, in this case the Spanish Standard of Computer Accessibility that includes accessibility of the Web.

Article 8 of Law 34/2002 provides for the possibility of actions in a case where any service provider contravenes the principles of the legislation. Also, the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has established (by Royal Decreee) a new Arbitration Process for disabled people, adopting the existing model of the Consumption Arbitration System. The 2002 law fixed a deadline of 31st December 2005 for the accessibility of public websites.

Law 51/2003, the Law on Equal Opportunities, Non-Discrimination and Universal Accessibility for Persons with Disability, builds on Law 34/2002 and establishes the basic conditions of accessibility and non-discrimination for access and use of technologies, products and services related to the information society and social communications media. It extends the reach of Law 34/2002, and includes design for all as a consideration into all technologies, products and services from their conception to roll out on the market. The law establishes the “accessibility timeframe” for all environments, products and services, which would include public websites. Article 10 establishes the basic conditions for access and use of ICT technologies, products and services and of any means of public communication including public websites. One of the major changes from Law 34/2002 is the shift regarding the burden of proof – it is now the defendants who need to prove their innocence in case of alleged discrimination.

Also in progress is the First Draft for the Law on Electronic Access of Citizens to Public Administration. This law would ensure the right of every citizen to communicate with public authorities by electronic means. It is currently in the process of reaching consensus among Autonomous Communities and Municipalities. According to the draft, all of the channels of communication must adopt the current norm for accessibility (i.e. Law 34/2002, Law 51/2003 and related standards).

Article 5 of the Royal Decree 1494/2007 provides regulation related to Law 51/2003 by specifying a mandatory minimum level of accessibility for government websites of “priorities 1 and 2″ of the UNE Standard 139803:2004 (referring to WCAG Levels A and AA). Under this same article, eligibility for public funding for the design or maintenance of public websites will be dependent on compliance with the UNE standard. Government websites must also provide a complaints mechanism so that users can report difficulties with accessibility.

While there are no mandatory obligations on private websites, the Royal Decree 1494/2007 does make a commitment that the Government will promote measures to ensure that holders of other (non-governmental) websites gradually incorporate accessibility, particularly for websites which relate to goods and services available to the public or whose content involves education, health and social services.

Other initiatives

In 1998 Spain adopted the first norm / standard referring to the creation of accessible websites (UNE 139802:1998 EX). This was afterwards revised and extended (UNE 139802:2003; UNE 139803:2004). The norm refers to the requirements concerning computer software accessibility, and describes accessibility related problems separately for those that affect the operating system, the applications and the internet. As mentioned above, this standard has now become mandatory for government websites as a result of the Royal Decree 1494/2007, which also states that websites will be certified by a recognised certification body (Article 7).

AENOR (Spanish Association of Normalization and Certification) has developed a certification system according to the norm UNE 139803:2004, Computer applications for disabled people. It is acknowledged that for web content accessibility the European Union has agreed to use the WAI Guidelines as a de facto standard, and thus the Spanish UNE 139803:2004 is compatible with WCAG 1.0.
With regard to private websites, some companies and organizations are voluntarily complying with accessibility guidelines and pay attention to eAccessibility.

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