IGF 2019 WS #114 Political & technical challenges to web accessibility

Relevance to Theme: Currently, the Web reaches a broad field of social activities including ​​education, work, commerce, public services, among others. As the Web assumes a role of increasing relevance to social life, accessibility becomes a pillar to support the autonomy of people with disabilities. E-commerce systems are good examples of how the Internet may support autonomy to people with disabilities. An accessible supermarket Website allow wheelchair users staying home to do the shopping permitting them to choose whether they go or not to physical stores.

More than one billion people around the world have some kind of disability, being that 8% of them live in developing countries according to the World Health Organization. These people cannot be prevented from having full access to applications and services available in the Web.

In Brazil a study conducted by the Center for Studies on Web Technologies (CEWEB.br) shows that 95% of the government sites on the ".gov.br" second level domain are not adherent to accessibility standards. What does this people do when services of public interest are no longer physically available because they are offered exclusively through the Internet? In other sectors the problem also persists. Another survey conducted by the CEWEB.br investigated the situation of e-commerce sites in Brazil. The results verified a wide lack of adherence to W3C accessibility standards in these sites. For example, users of screen readers have identified that in only 25% of the cases tested it was possible to identify and understand the image using a screen reader without the visual reference. This represent a great barrier of access for people with visual disability. Other example, in only 7% of the sites was found a way to consume content in LIBRAS, that is the Brazilian language of Signals, for deaf people.

Applications with access barriers may prevent citizens from exercising their rights online, participating in the digital public sphere, complying with their obligations to the State and society and be autonomous to carry out simple daily tasks. The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, location, or ability. A Website accessible allows user with any king of limitation, be it motor, visual or auditory, to fully use it. Despite all the discussion and efforts made to disseminate accessibility standards, the adherence of Websites in different sectors and countries is still a persistent problem. The Workshop aims to debating the political and technical challenges for the effective adoption of Accessibility Standards in Websites.

Relevance to Internet Governance: Digital inclusion has been one of the central Internet Governance issues. After the World Summit on Information Society (2003 and 2005), Internet Access has been globally associated to the human development in areas such as freedom of expression, access to knowledge and information, education, political engagement and so on. In 2011 the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression affirmed that disconnecting people from the Internet is a human rights violation and against international law.

People with disabilities is an specific social group that have been systematically prevented benefiting from the Internet development potential. The inclusion of people with disabilities in the web is fundamental not only to overcome the digital divide allowing them to accomplish their social duties but also to give them opportunities and voice contributing to build an open and democratic public sphere. In addition, access barriers in web applications can reinforce social inequalities.

This topic is also important to ensure all kind of people, including those with disabilities, to be heard in Internet governance forum where diversity is so much encouraged. In this sense, it is of great importance that the Internet Governance Community debate urgently the challenges of accessibility and take position to avoid that any web application keep their access barriers this social group and others.