Did you know that all digital services provided through the public sector in the European Union must be accessible by law? Since last year when the new EU legislation came into effect, many of us who deliver digital solutions to the public sector have worked hard to comply with the new directives.
A large part of the population has some kind of functional variation, and accessibility adaptation is a prerequisite for being able to share information in a democratic way. However, it is not only people with impairments that benefit from accessibility adaptation – making it easier for people to find and access information in a smooth and user-friendly way helps everyone, both you as the sender and the recipient of your information.
From this perspective, the new Web Directive has been established, a directive that covers all EU countries and states that websites, apps and other digital services used in the public sector must be accessibility adapted to level AA of The Web Accessibility Directive (WCAG 2.1). Parts of the directive have already entered into force, while others are being implemented. For us and our industry colleagues who develop mobile apps, we must meet the requirements by June 23, 2021, at the latest.
At MeetApp, we have worked hard to create a product that is democratic, user-friendly and accessible to everyone. We have adapted our solution to comply with the new directives, which means that we have, among other things, developed support for text-to-speech, created automatic text size adaptation and much more, which you can read about in our Accessibility statement.
At MeetApp, we will continue to develop our event app beyond the requirements, in order to help our customers create more effective and engaging meetings that are accessible to everyone.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are developed through the W3C process in collaboration with individuals and organizations around the world, with the goal of providing a common standard for web content accessibility that meets the needs of individuals, organizations and governments internationally. These recommendations also form the basis of the EU legislation which states that all websites and apps used by the public sector must be accessible, a law that will take effect gradually between 2019-2021. There are similar requirements in the US, specified in Title III of The Americans with Disabilities Act and section 508 of The Rehabilitation Act.
