ICT WG

Public sector workshop: which authoring tool to procure for more accessible digital services?

One of the five future priorities for the EU is “Fair Europe” which centres on social inclusion, health, rule of law and fundamental rights. The promotion of social cohesion and inclusiveness and the health and well-being of its people are central aims of the European Union’s policies and programmes. With the European Pillar of Social Rights, the EU set the direction towards a fairer, inclusive and more social Europe for all European citizens based on a European social model that is fit for the challenges of the 21st century.

To continue delivering on this agenda and to safeguard shared values and mutual trust, it is important to support Member States in addressing social challenges and inequalities. Smart communities are increasingly using digital tools to facilitate citizens’ everyday life. Public authorities and other public bodies are responsible for providing accessible digital services. Think of public ministries’ information webpages, online tax declaration, official document claims, managing publicly-funded projects and submitting bids, fixing university exam dates, just to mention a few e-government services. With the new EU regulations, all these digital technologies must be accessible for all – a huge task for web authors in public sector! This is where built in accessibility support in web authoring tools used by web authors can truly help. To support public sector bodies comply with the regulations, an informative and free of charge workshop is organised in collaboration between ERRIN and Funka, market leader in web accessibility.

The workshop for public bodies will be held in Brussels on 16th October, kindly hosted by the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Slovenia to the European Union, rue du Commerce 44. The workshop is part of a EU-funded research project We4Authors, where the most popular authoring tools/Content Management Systems in the public sector throughout the EU have been tested when it comes to built-in accessibility features and support web authors to comply with the regulations. During the half day event (11:00 – 16:00), you will be presented to the results of this ground breaking research including draft guidelines produced by the project with public sector web authors in mind. You will also have the possibility to exchange experience with other regions about good practices and also failures. We would like to learn from public sector bodies about their needs and get important feed-back on Funka’s ideas about built-in accessibility features.

For the participants, the workshop will be a great possibility to understand how to better procure CMS that comply with the Web Accessibility Directive and also an opportunity to impact the end result of the project guidelines to fit their needs. For registration and more information, please consult the event page.  

Please note that three consecutive workshops will be organised (15-16 and 17/10) for three distinctive stakeholder groups. Make sure that you sign up to the right workshop on the right date!