Social and Legal Aspects

Legislation, Policy, Lawsuits, …

European Union

2003 was the European Year of People with Disabilities. How much progress has the European Union made since then to make society more accessible to people with disabilities? (And how many of the European Union's own websites meet any accessibility standards?)

European Web Accessibility Directive

European Accessibility Act

CE Marking

For hardware products in the scope of the European Accessibiity Act, CE marking will depend on conformance to harmonised standards for this directive. Below are several resources about CE marking (not necessarily about accessibility).

Other Policies in the European Union

Harmonised Standards (EU)

The European Union's policy regarding harmonisation of standards has also influenced the development of accessibility standards. The following links are about harmonisation and have no direct relevance to accessibility.

Conformity Assessment and Presumption of Conformity (EU)

More about conformity assessment and the presumption of conformity:

Austria

Belgium

In Belgium, the European Union's Web Accessibility Directive was transposed into a law by means of a ream of decrees, one for each region or community. (Some of the links below refer to Etaamb. This is not an official publication of any of the public authorities in Belgium. Unfortunately, the search options of the Moniteur belge / Belgisch Staatsblad are unusable.)

Transposition of the European Accessibility Act in Belgium

Other documents relevant to the transposition of the European Accessibility Act in Belgium:

Anti-discrimination Legislation in Belgium

Note: the resources listed below are not in English.

Denmark

Finland

France

As of early December 2022, the European Accessibility Act has not been transposed into French law. On a few occasions, politicians have asked questions about the state of accessibility in the Assemblée nationale and the Sénat:

The European Accessibility Act was transposed into French law in March 2023. This transposition was done in two phases and modified several existing laws (rather than introducing a new one).

Germany

Ireland

Italy

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Portugal

The GDPR and Modal Dialogs

Some people seem to think that the GDPR prohibits the use of modal dialogs for cookie consent mechanism. This seems to stem from a confusion between user interface specifics and privacy policies.
A cookie wall is a mechanism that prevents access to the site if you don't give consent for non-essential cookies. Cookie walls are often implemented as modal dialogs, since is the strongest mechanism for blocking access to the underlying content until the user has interacted with the dialog. However, , the fact that the cookie consent widgets are modal is not the issue. What is illegal is only allowing access if users agree that you store their data and blocking access if they reject cookies. That is a web site policy issue rather than a user interface issue. Of course, implementing the cookie consent mechanism as a modal dialogs makes it easier to enforce consent, but the modal is not the policy. Modal dialogs that give access to the site if you only accept essential cookies are fine.

(Sidenote: If the site only uses essential cookies, i.e. cookies that are strictly necessary for the site to work properly, then consent will be the only option. Note that without essential cookies, the site can't even remember what the user's choice is.)

Europe Outside the European Union

Norway

Norway is a special case: the country is not part of the European Union but has transposed many European Union directives.

United Kingdom

Outside Europe

USA

Canada

Japan

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT)

don’t get me started on VPATs. They are not a way to report conformance. They are a way to avoid reporting conformance. In VPATs one never says that one meets an SC. Only that they ’support’ it. Which is carefully chosen and defined as NOT meaning that one conforms or meets the provision.

Gregg Vanderheiden on the w3c-wai-gl mailing list, 13.03.2023 in a discussion that was not about VPATs.

Other Self-declarations of Conformity

Statistics on Impairments or Disabilities

Etiquette

Studying with a Disability

The resources listed below focus mainly on higher education.

Studying with ADHD

Other Links