Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) GSC-15 DOCUMENT #: GSC15-PLEN-66 FOR: Information SOURCE: ETSI AGENDA ITEM: PLEN 10 CONTACT(S): Mike Pluke, TC HF Chair Accessibility in ETSI Source: Mike Pluke, acting TC HF Chair Global Standards Collaboration (GSC) GSC-15

ETSI’s Approach to Accessibility ETSI aims to help industry and operators to avoid creating technologies that exclude users from the information society It also aims to help them increase the quality and usability of products and services for everyone It addresses both these aims as part of an overall “Design for All” approach that assures accessibility The first manifestation of this approach was the Design for All guidelines document EG 202 116

Highlight of Current Activities Ongoing and near-future ETSI activities related to accessibility are Working with CEN to address a European Mandate (M/376) related to accessibility requirements in public procurement Looking at user-interaction technologies that may reach the mass-market in the next 10 years, anticipating inherent accessibility problems with the technologies and proposing how they can be avoided

Strategic Direction Addressing accessibility issues has been considered by some as an unwelcome obligation on industry However, today’s customers will all demand fully-featured products and services as they get older This can only be achieved if these products and services can be used by people with diminishing physical and mental abilities Therefore addressing accessibility is now becoming an important market-driven necessity

Challenges Commercial pressures dictate that product features benefit the widest range of customers ETSI’s approach to Personalization can allow every customer to have the personalized experience that they greatly value, whilst simultaneously providing support for a wide range of specialized accessibility solutions As more eHealth solutions are deployed, it will be necessary to achieve high levels of accessibility to ensure that clients with a very broad range of impairments can successfully use the systems

Next Steps/Actions Produce an ETSI Guide that helps industry to introduce innovative user-interaction technologies without creating new accessibility barriers Respond to European Commission Mandate M/376 on accessibility in public procurement in a way that helps industry to follow a common approach throughout the world e.g. similar to what is required today for the US market Identify emerging areas where special accessibility focus is needed e.g. eHealth

Supplementary Slides

Mandate M/376 (1) Standardization Mandate M/376 was proposed by the European Commission in support of European Accessibility requirements for public procurement of products and services in the ICT domain and was accepted by CEN, CENELEC and ETSI in December 2005.

Mandate M/376 (2) The main objectives of the Mandate are summarised as: to harmonise and facilitate the public procurement of accessible ICT products and services by identifying a set of functional European accessibility requirements for public procurement of products and services in the ICT domain, and to provide a mechanism through which the public procurers have access to an electronic toolkit, enabling them to make use of these harmonised requirements in procurement process.

Future User Interaction Technologies The work looking at future user interaction technologies, and accessibility issues associated with them is producing roadmaps of the predicted deployment of the user interaction technologies producing an analysis of each technology identifying its benefits to all users, potential problems for some users, and ways around the problems being undertaken by Specialist Task Force STF377: http://portal.etsi.org/stfs/STF_HomePages/STF377/STF377.asp

Personalization and User Profile Management ETSI work on Personalization and User Profile Management contained in: ES 202 746 Human Factors (HF); Personalization and User Profile Management; User Profile Preferences and Information describes the standardized elements of a user profile TS 102 747 Human Factors (HF); Personalization and User Profile Management; Architectural Framework specifies the personalization architecture EG 202 325 Human Factors (HF); User Profile Management an overview of the outline ideas behind the personalization approach