Open Consultations on Internet and Accessibility "Access to the Internet for Persons with Disabilities and specific needs“ February 15 th 2016 Andrea J saks International Telecommunications Specialist for the Deaf Chairman ITU JCA-AHF (Joint Coordinating Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors) Coordinator IGF DCAD (Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability ) Accessibility Awareness

Technical Guidelines We already have: – IUT-T Accessibility Checklist – W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and other guidelines These guidelines provide information on accessible designs for Web (and Internet)

Policies Many Governments have adopted policies to make websites and the internet accessible using these Guidelines. W3C WCAG has been adopted world wide

Question ? Yet there are many website that are not Accessible WHY?

Education and Awareness We need more awareness of Accessibility Awareness training on how the web is used by persons with disabilities is imperative Training in schools, classes and especially for web developers and designers.

Basic Barriers in Accessing Information No captioning for Videos and too few signed Videos Not enough use of ICONs or pictograms for persons with illiteracy or who lack the skills of the language Screen readers need labels on photos not blank squares that can’t be identified Layout that is beautiful but is not logical for searching for content is hard for everyone. A website should not be too full or not well structured and could need a table of contents

Persons who have difficulties Need More Audio description: videos need audio description San serif Fonts and the abilities to increase font size web pages with clear headings All pictures and photo especially those with links need description labels in text for screen readers Clear uncluttered websites that help navigation No moving targets to access links Or a link to an accessible page for the same information.

Design Verses Accessibility Designers can create websites for the masses and take accessibility into account They need to remember all people may not have a written language Remember timing issues make it hard to select in time Too many hyperlinks and unidentified pictures make hard for screen readers to help Videos without captioning or audio description leave many people out the information society.

Some New Recommendations FSTP-ACC-RemPart - Guidelines for supporting remote participation in meetings for all FSTP-AM - Guidelines for accessible meetings ITU-T F.791 (11/2015) Accessibility terms and definitions ITU-T H.702 (11/2015) Accessibility profiles for IPTV systems