The “adoption of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines for public websites” has been a priority for the European Commission (EC) since the late 1990s, and first formally communicated as such in the eEurope 2002 Action Plan published in 2001. Many communications, resolutions, and actions from the European Council, Parliament, and Commission followed during these past two decades, leading to many efforts to promote digital accessibility across Europe. Most recently, these efforts included the following EU legislation:
• “Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies”, also referred to as the Web Accessibility Directive.
• “Directive (EU) 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on the accessibility requirements for products and services”, also referred to as European Accessibility Act.
In this context, the European Standard EN 301 549 is a critical resource. The first version “Accessibility requirements suitable for public procurement of ICT products and services in Europe” was published in 2014, and includes the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 for “Web”, “Non-web documents”, and “Software”. A later version “Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services” was published in 2018, and references WCAG 2.1. This approach aligns with the 2017 revised technical standards for Section 508 of the United States (US) Rehabilitation Act, which also references W3C’s WCAG2ICT technical note, which in turn maps applicability of WCAG to software and to web and mobile apps.
Common accessibility policies and a single, internationally harmonised, technical standard represents a major achievement for millions of people with disabilities in Europe and beyond. It helps strengthen the internal market for accessibility, enables cross-border development of technical solutions, capacities and skills, and employment opportunities. It also represents European leadership in cross-border cooperation, and provides exemplary models for neighbouring countries and potentially for other regions of the world.
Yet, despite these efforts, studies continued to show a lag in accessibility implementation due to a variety of reasons. More importantly, the studies continued to show significant discrepancies in implementations across different EU Member States, public sector bodies, and private entities. That is, despite the harmonisation of policies and standards on a pan-European level, there remains fragmentation in their application on a practical level.
WAI-CooP was designed to address root causes of this fragmentation, and thereby accelerate consistent implementation of accessibility across Europe and beyond. It follows a collaborative approach to help stakeholders involved in the ecosystem of accessibility implementation exchange best practices and make efficient use of existing technical solutions, as well as to provide authoritative interpretations of the international accessibility standards underlying the EU Web Accessibility Directive.
