ITALIAN WEB LAW 'PULLS DOWN BARRIERS'.
Some info for you guys:
ITALIAN WEB LAW 'PULLS DOWN BARRIERS'.
The Italian government has passed new legislation designed to give people with disabilities greater access to online services. The so-called 'Stanca law', which forces all Italian government agencies to make their web sites fully accessible and will develop non-compulsory access standards for private sector sites, was unanimously approved by the country's Parliament in December. According to a statement by Lucio Stanca, the Italian Minister for Innovation and Technologies, the new requirements will "help to pull down digital barriers and create opportunities for more than three million Italian disabled people to study, work and actively participate in society." He said that lack of ICT access for Italy's disabled people caused social marginalisation and democratic and economic disadvantage. In 1999, an Italian government circular was sent out encouraging local and central government agencies to ensure their web services were accessible. But the new law has gone much further by introducing disciplinary sanctions for public sector managers who don't comply. The law also provides for the cancellation of web site contracts if they fail to meet the Stanca requirements, in an echo of the US government web accessibility law known as 'section 508.' Citizens groups have welcomed the law, while expressing regret that its provisions are non-mandatory for private firms. "The law represents a real turning point," said a spokeswoman for the Citizens Defence Movement (Movimento Difesa del Citadino - http://www.mdc.it). "However, it should be followed up with economic incentives for private web sites to be made fully accessible." The Italian government now plans to draft regulations defining the new accessibility criteria by March 2004 in co-operation with disability organisations and technology suppliers.
Lets hop that mor cuntrys start doing this!
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| The so-called 'Stanca law', which forces all Italian government agencies to make their web sites fully accessible and will develop non-compulsory access standards for private sector sites, |
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| But the new law has gone much further by introducing disciplinary sanctions for public sector managers who don't comply. |
Disability legislation with bite - that's good.
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| The Italian government now plans to draft regulations defining the new accessibility criteria by March 2004 in co-operation with disability organisations and technology suppliers. |
Drafting their own accessibility criteria - hmmm. (Reminds me of the words "wheel" and "reinvention" - hopefully the end result isn't a square wheel).
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The economic incentive aspect is a little fuzzy because I could go create a personal website retrofit it to be accessible and get paid so I am sure there must be a catch.};-) http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/
WVYFC chose the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as the main charity to fund raise for in 2006
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Disability legislation with bite - that's good. |
As italian and knowing a little the other international situation, i can sadly say that there are no other ways to make a law be respected than this:(
The italian legal sistem deeply differs from the Uk /USA sistems and we could really hardly have such case history like AOL's, Tesco's, Olimpic games (HREOC 2000, 2002) when a single disabled person sues a big society or agency and create such a rumor... in Italy everything would be silent after such a sue and maybe in 5 years some legal and tribunal would take into consideration the sue. So we DO NEED to provide punishments for the ones who doesn't respect the law, we can't do as UK or other countries do,where it's so obvious to respect a law, unfortunately:(
BTW, the law have some lacks and chiefly doesn't refer at all to all the public services, just to gov sites, which are a minority, private sector are still free of doing whatever they wish. So, booking a hotel, a train, a plane, read a newspaper online, do the weekly shopping and all those useful services online can - by law - be still inaccessible.
I really don't agree much with this policy, but something, at least, have been done:)
Pat
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| Isofarro wrote: |
| Drafting their own accessibility criteria - hmmm. (Reminds me of the words "wheel" and "reinvention" - hopefully the end result isn't a square wheel). |
It's not much different than section 508. I know that at least one person helping to define the guidelines for the Italian government is from the WCAG working group, so I imagine it will be inline with best practice and lessons learnt from WCAG. It's a petty that the UK doesn't have more explicit guidelines, or at least officially adopt WCAG 1.0 to at least Level "AA".
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