Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-257"
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"en.20040210.10.2-257"2
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".
Mr President, the Commission shares Mr Paasilinna’s concern that in Europe the number of public sector websites that are currently accessible without difficulty is too limited. After the eEurope action plan adopted in 2000 the Commission recommended in its communication that all public websites should follow the web content accessibility guidelines developed in the World Wide Web Consortium’s web accessibility initiative. Parliament took a positive view of this, as is evident from Bastiaan Belder’s report and the resolution taken on it. In resolutions by the Council and Parliament the Commission was asked to monitor progress in order to obtain comparable data.
The Commission has followed these recommendations and in the next few weeks will publish a report explaining what has been achieved. The Member States and the institutions of the EU are revising systems so that they harmonise with the guidelines. This has mainly been agreed within the context of voluntary eEurope cooperation. It has nevertheless to be borne in mind that unhindered access to public sector websites will be a long process, as there are a lot of them. It is also to be hoped that organisations for people with disabilities will be actively involved in this. When the time came for me to give our instructions I received 26 emails on the same day saying that Commissioner Liikanen’s website did not meet the agreed conditions. Pressure like this makes it easier to bring about change.
At the same time the Commission will naturally look into whether Community non-discrimination policy law needs to be expanded in the future. As a result, this spring the Commission is to begin a public hearing on a Green Paper on future strategy to combat discrimination. The Green Paper will map out the Community’s progress in practising a non-discrimination policy and raise questions to do with policy development. They will include addressing the new challenges that enlargement of the Union will bring with it and laying down policy on action to promote equality in the Union for the next five years."@en1
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