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Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper)Â Accessibility, the possibility to take public transport, move freely in the city, look for information online or find a place to live in, is the very basis of every independent life.
Sadly, persons with disabilities are too often deprived of this right and therefore forced into isolation.Â
As a person with disability myself, it makes me angry to see how we daily have to fight against barriers that should not be there. Who would like to take the risk of being stuck in a metro station, not having the possibility to go to the toilet or being unable to find the way back home? The solution cannot be isolation but must be adaptation – from the society.
More than 10 years after the ratification of the UN Convention on rights of persons with disabilities, Member States are still failing at implementing the human right of accessibility.
In recent years, the EU has approved several laws and technical standards setting up a new ecosystem for accessibility, such as the European Accessibility Act, the Web Accessibility Directive, Directives on Audiovisual Media Services and Electronic Communications and technical specifications for railway stations and vehicles. Moreover, when allocating EU funds and in public procurement, accessibility requirements have to be taken into account.
Nevertheless, the implementation of this crucial set of laws at national level has not yet been satisfactory.
Normally, you should think that it would be given, that every new building, public transport, website, toilet, cash machine, product in general, is automatically thought and build in an accessible way, for the largest possible number of people, but it simply isn’t.
Often because of a lack of political will, but even more often because of a lack of consideration, knowledge, and expertise.
One problem is the lack of qualified accessibility experts at national level, both in public administrations and among economic operators, who would be able to implement highly technical accessibility provisions contained in legislation, but also in standards.
This expertise should now be given by the New Accessible EU center that is one project among the new EU Disability Strategy 21-30.
As rapporteur for the establishment of this center in the IMCO Committee, it was very important to me that the European Parliament comes up with strong demands and a future vision for this center.
In my report we ask for a strong center with high resources, that puts experts, national actors and especially persons with disabilities together.
We demand, a well-funded, physical center, composed of a Secretariat, a Forum and a number of sub-groups of subject matter experts, acting as an effective tool to finally implement accessibility in coherent manner.
The emphasize here lies on “coherent”, meaning that we have to harmonize accessibility throughout of the EU. Because there is no European freedom of movement for persons with disabilities if every platform in different Member States have a different height and train designs. Therefore, a core task of the center should be the definition of common standards.
The Centre should deal with specific challenges posed by particular domains of accessibility policies. The more specialised the Centre gets on the different areas, the better the outcome that will be produced. Specialised sub-groups of subject-matter experts should be established in areas such as built environment, public procurement, digital technologies, media and culture, transportation, emerging technologies and assistive technologies, products and services open to the public.
In order directly reach the Member States, “Mirror groups” of subject matter experts should be created in each Member State. The establishment of such groups would help filling the knowledge and competences gap and would help finding suitable accessibility solutions that take into account the specificities of national contexts, with the primary goal of increasing employment levels of persons with disabilities.
The Forum and the sub-groups of experts should also provide policy recommendations for updating existing laws and developing new ones, and should generate valuable knowledge on accessibility through the use of research and studies to both the Commission and the Member States.
The establishment of the new Accessible should pave the way for the EU to set up a regulatory agency aiming at boosting accessibility for persons with disabilities in all areas of life.
We achieved to politically agree that after 5 years after the creation of the Centre, the Commission should evaluate its effectiveness and added value in enhancing accessibility policies within the EU. If the objectives have not been reached, the Commission should take appropriate steps to update and improve the Centre, including an evaluation of the possible establishment of an agency.
We cannot lose any time on symbolic actions for accessibility anymore. This must be the start of an ambitious implementation of EU accessibility and lead to a permanent European agency that should stay over time. Because as society, infrastructure and products evolve we will always need to think them in an accessible, coherent European way together with those who are concerned. As we say: “Nothing about us without us”.
