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#EuropeanParliament approves rules to help elderly and disabled people

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wheelchair-1230101_960_720The European Parliament today (26 October) approved new legislation to ensure that public sector bodies websites are consistently accessible to disabled people. Until now, many websites and applications lack adequately adapted content for the blind, the deaf as well as for those with functional disabilities.

With this new Directive, visually impaired people will for example hear descriptions of images when using a screen reader and people with hearing-impairments will see written captions for audio files if they access websites of public sector bodies within the EU.

Moreover, all parts of these websites can be explored via keyboards as well as a computer mouse.  Rapporteur and ALDE MEP Dita Charanzová commented after the vote: “More than 167 million EU citizens live with disabilities – medical or due to age. In the digital age we live in, it cannot be possible that they are still cut off from the internet when it comes to information or services provided by public institutions. The fight for equality should not stop at the Digital doorstep. E-government must serve all citizens, including those with disabilities.

“Web accessibility will now be the law of the land in Europe with every government website, and perhaps more importantly every government app, being made accessible for all citizens. This new Directive requires high accessibility standards across Europe. Today, we solved the public side of web accessibility. But I hope that as a next step, we will be able to swiftly adopt the European Accessibility Act which will affect private services as well.”

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