Italian Web Law 'Pulls Down Barriers'.

The Italian government has passed new legislation designed to give people with disabilities greater access to online services. The so-called 'Stanca law', which forces all Italian government agencies to make their web sites fully accessible and will develop non-compulsory access standards for private sector sites, was unanimously approved by the country's Parliament in December.

According to a statement by Lucio Stanca, the Italian Minister for Innovation and Technologies, the new requirements will "help to pull down digital barriers and create opportunities for more than three million Italian disabled people to study, work and actively participate in society." He said that lack of ICT access for Italy's disabled people caused social marginalisation and democratic and economic disadvantage.

In 1999, an Italian government circular was sent out encouraging local and central government agencies to ensure their web services were accessible. But the new law has gone much further by introducing disciplinary sanctions for public sector managers who don't comply. The law also provides for the cancellation of web site contracts if they fail to meet the Stanca requirements, in an echo of the US government web accessibility law known as 'section 508.'

The Italian government now plans to draft regulations defining the new accessibility criteria by March 2004 in co-operation with disability organisations and technology suppliers

States in the USA Demand Accessible ICT Products and Services

Forty-six State Governments in the USA have implemented laws, standards or policies requiring accessible ICT products and services.

All of these governments have requirements for accessible web and online services. Thirteen have accessibility requirements relating to software and applications and three have standards for accessible public hardware.

Nineteen US State Governments have formal procurement rules requiring the purchase of accessible products and services.

An Overview of State Accessibility Laws, Policies, Standards and Other Resources is available from the Information Technology Technical Assistance and Training Centre (ITTATC) at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Flash Movies can be more Accessible

The Checkpoints from the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can be applied to movies created with the Flash MX multimedia development platform.
A paper written by staff from the IT-Test Consortium shows how this can be done. This paper was presented at the AusWeb03 Conference

The Paper "Multimedia Accessibility - Flash and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines" is available from the Resources Page of the IT-Test website.