EN Official Journal of the European Union CE 84/284

(2004/C 84 E/0330)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-4017/03

by Salvador Garriga Polledo (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(9 January 2004)

Subject: Publicisation of the EU among the blind in the Community

Publicisation of the Community's activities is vital in order to make its population aware that it is living in a community and that all the activities of the EU institutions affect each and every citizen of the Union.

There is, however, a group — one of the most sensitive groups among our citizens — which should not be excluded from this publicisation of the Community's activities, namely the blind.

Can the Commission state what action it is taking to ensure that this group, those affected by blindness, is made aware of the main lines of Community policy, both generally and on matters potentially affecting that group itself? Can it state what specialist publications exist at EU level for that group?

Answer given by Mr Prodi on behalf of the Commission

(24 February 2004)

The Commission publishes its documents on paper and in electronic form. Publications on paper usually follow a standard model which means they can be read individually by an optical character recognition (OCR) system. Nevertheless, the best way to give access to these documents is to make them available directly on electronic files. They can usually be transmitted on request to users' computers. The electronic files can then be printed in Braille, enlarged by a screen magnifying glass or read orally with a screen-reading device.

Publications on the web are coded in proprietary formats which, of course, are not easy to convert. But it is also possible to obtain electronic files which facilitate access.

The Commission has financed research in this area to contribute to the development of systems and tools giving blind and visually impaired people access to information. Research is geared not only to access to text but also to graphics

However, it can be said that the current trend is to publish information on the Internet. For over ten years the Commission has been financing several web accessibility projects, and the various research programmes have helped to satisfy the needs and expectations of the disabled by giving them access to documents and information on Community policies. The results of a pilot project on accessibility by the blind to the official texts of the treaties have been put on the web by the Publications Office (OOPEC).

Moreover, several projects financed by the Commission fall within the scope of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (1), which lays down guidelines and recommendations designed to give everybody access to the web. The WAI is part of the Consortium World Wide Web (W3C) (2), financed from several sources, in particular in Europe, the United States and Japan.

In June 2000, the Feira European Council adopted the ‘eEurope 2002’ action plan to create an information society which would put all aspects of European citizens' lives on line. It aims, in particular, to facilitate web access for the disabled and to apply the recommendations of the Web Accessibility Initiative. On 25 September 2001, the Commission adopted a communication (3) entitled ‘eEurope 2002: Accessibility to public web sites and their content’ (4), for the purpose of facilitating access to web sites for the elderly and the disabled.

With respect to the Europa server, the European Commission has decided to adopt level A (Priority 1) conformity for new and updated websites. Although several Europa first-level sites meet the conditions required for this elementary conformity level, the Commission is endeavouring to bring a large part of its existing pages into conformity.

The web sites and pages produced by the Commission mainly targeting the general public and the media as well as the Community law access service, Eur-Lex, have already been adapted to WAI standards.

The level A conformity logo on certain Europa pages means that those pages, as well as part of their secondary pages, have been set out with a view to accessibility. This policy applies to all new pages and to all updated pages on Europa. It will be reviewed at a later state and adapted to all new versions of the W3C guidelines relating to accessibility of the web content.

The Commission is conducting a survey of the institutions and the Member States as part of ‘eEurope’. The results should be available early 2004.

Lastly, where information specifically concerns the target population, the Commission has taken special measures to ensure that publications and documents are available in accessible formats, as was the case for the introduction of the euro and for the format of the coins and notes.

(1) http://www.w3.org/wai/

(2) http://www.w3.org/

(3) COM(2001) 529 final.

(4) http://europa/eu.int/information_society/topics/citizens/accessibility/web/wai_2002/cec_com_web_wai_2001/ index_en.htm