Important EU Actions and Milestones

  1. An EU 2017 Directive and a Regulation[41] was adopted to implement Marrakesh Treaty in EU law, which allows people blind, visually impaired, or print disabled to access more books and other print material in formats that are accessible to them with a mandatory exception to copyright and related rights.
  2. Switzerland Publishes Government Standard on Digital Accessibility eCH-0059 Accessibility Standard Version 03.0[42], which is based on the WCAG 2.1 guidelines and inspired by the e-accessibility directive of the EU.
  3. The UK on July 06, 2020 released the latest accessibility testing[43] of more than 800 UK local authority websites public sector sites in preparation for the adopting the newer version of e-accessibility guidelines to take effect as of September, 2020 for all official websites.
  4. The European Commission funding research and innovation actions for the development of new technologies to enhance the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities; and inspire independence and autonomous use of information technology. These technologies include AI based applications, sensor technologies, machine learning, 3D games and virtual reality[44] .

However, EU countries face a number of obstacles and challenges as a result of technological and quality issues. The existence of multiple standards, diverse platforms and services, even within a country, is a real challenge that hinders the adoption of common accessibility standard. Furthermore, the diversity of spoken languages makes implementation of audiovisual services for example very hard to achieve. Also, the high cost of technology in general is seen as a major obstacle facing the EU.

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