The European Accessibility Center (AccessibleEU), Led by the ONCE Foundation, it has completed its first year of operation, meeting the set objectives, which have materialized in actions such as the organization of events and the creation of a community of experts and an online library.

In December 2022, the European Commission awarded a consortium of entities the implementation of AccessibleEU, as part of the commitments of the European Accessibility Strategy. In its first year of work, it has organized a total of 90 events, seven of them at European level, and made up of 25 networking events, 34 awareness-raising events and 31 workshops.

The creation of a community of accessibility experts has been possible thanks to the organized events. This makes it possible to connect all parties interested in the matter, create a single window of knowledge, develop a training program for professionals and promote technical standardization and the participation of people with disabilities in its mechanisms.

The ONCE Foundation highlights the impact of AccessibleEU at the national level thanks to the work of national accessibility experts and the cooperation with institutions such as the International Telecommunications Union, the World Tourism Organization and the Association for the Advancement of Information Technology. Assistance in Europe. All this has allowed the production of very useful support materials to promote accessibility.

To meet the objective of facilitating the practical application of EU accessibility legislation and thus improving the availability of more accessible products, services and infrastructure, an online accessibility library has been launched.

It has more than 150 good practices and direct access, through links, to the most relevant databases related to legislation, standards, documentation, products and assistive technologies.

As next goals, the AccessibleEU consortium has set itself the goal of offering guidelines for implementing disability policies in different sectors and ensuring compliance with standards and guidelines regarding accessibility. To do this, it aims to design an innovative methodology that allows the self-assessment of organizations in this field.

Source: ESMARTCITY