Exploratory workshop on Evaluating and Reporting Accessibility of Web-sites
18th december 2006, Brussels, 10.00h - 17.00h
Short description
The Exploratory Workshop is in the context of the IST Priority (e-Inclusion strategic objective[1]) of the 6th EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (2002-2006). The presentations can be downloaded through the links in the right column. The documents are PDF documents, if you need alternative formats, please contact the Cluster coordinator.
EC hosted this Exploratory Workshop in order to compare state of the art leading European governmental initiatives in the field of web accessibility with the work of the EC supported research cluster, namely its prototype of a European Internet Accessibility Observatory and a supporting collection of advanced test modules and test suites for tools.
Agenda
10:00 - Welcome by Paul Timmers, head of unit DG INFSO.
10:30 - Presentation sessions round 1
Roundtable presentations followed by short questions and answers session.
- Web Accessibility, guidelines and the EU situation: eEurope, i2010, ESOmandate, CIP & MS - Francois Junique, EC;
- Harmonization of Web Accessibility Evaluation in Europe: WAB cluster and Unified Web Evaluation Methodology - Eric Velleman;
- European observatory for accessibility (EIAO): deployment & collection of URL for public websites - Mikael Snaprud;
- Best practice: Norwegian benchmarking of public content - Frank Fardal, Norge.no.
- Best practice: The total framework for control and monitoring of the quality and accessibility of government websites - Raph de Rooy, Advies Overheid.nl;
- Presentation of the tool to monitor quality and accessibility of websites for single sites and large scale monitoring in the Netherlands - Stephen Hay, Cinnamon Interactive.
12:30 - Lunch
14:00 - Presentation sessions round 2
Roundtable presentations followed by short questions and answers session.
- Overview of eAccessibility actions by the French government - Pierre Pecastaings. Direction Générale de la Modernisation de l'Etat (DGME) Ministère de l'Economie des Finances et de l'Industrie;
- Industrial Quality Assurance Management Tools for the Web - Dr. Carlos A.Velasco, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT);
- Current harmonisation following the Unified Web Evaluation Methodology in France - Dominique Burger, president of the Braillenet association and coordinator of the EC Support-EAM project, proposing a European eAccessibility Mark;
- Open source solutions for the development of tools to monitor quality and accessibility of websites – Bruce Perens;
16:00 - Networking round
16.30 - Discussion, conclusions and next steps
Invitation information
This exploratory workshop allows the projects and initiatives to discuss coherence of the various approaches and possible interoperability issues, to allow comparison of the future data collected [2]. For the European Commission the results of this exploratory workshop will be a valuable input to the EU i2010 e-Inclusion initiative, in particular for inclusive e-Government. Next steps could be starting formal harmonisation discussion of accessibility monitoring in the context of the relevant working group of the i2010 committees, in view of a possible corresponding indicator in the future. The starting EC mandate to European Standardisation Organisations to support public procurement of accessible ICT goods & services will also be concerned with some aspects of this.
The workshop was intended for Government agencies and companies working for these agencies who are preparing tools for benchmarking quality and accessibility of websites, in order to exchange ideas and optimise efforts. The presentation that where submitted can be found in the left column (or when linearizing this page at the bottom).
[1] Projects list on http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/einclusion/projects.htm
[2] As requested by Council Decision of 25 March 2002
