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Productos y servicios más accesibles para los ciudadanos de la UE

What the EU is doing to make products and services more accessible for EU citizens and why these measures are important.

More accessible products and services for EU citizens

Why?

The demand for accessible products and services is already high and the number of citizens with disabilities will increase significantly with the ageing of the EU's population.

1 in 6 people

or 80 million people in the EU have some form of disability

by 2020

around 120 million persons in the EU will have multiple or minor disabilities

80%

of disabilities are not visible

Steps

These are the first steps on a long path to make the EU more accessible:

More products and services become more accessible

The related directive makes digital products and services accessible to all users by:

  • establishing technical standards
  • introducing a conformity check
  • setting up a monitoring mechanism

Four principles of web accessibility:

  1. perceivability - users have to be able to perceive the information and interface
  2. operability - user interface components and navigation must be operable
  3. understandability - information and the operation of the user interface must be understandable
  4. robustness - different users must be able to interpret the content reliably

The directive's provisions start applying on three different dates, depending on the website's creation and whether it is a website or an application:

  • September 2019 - new website accessible
  • January 2020 - member states start monitoring
  • September 2020 - all websites accessible
  • September 2021 - all mobile apps accessible
  • December 2021 - first member states monitoring report to the European Commission

Para obtener más información sobre la accesibilidad, consulte:

Temas