People with disabilities constitute about 15% of the EU’s population. Most of them encounter barriers when using products and services on the web. Even if making the benefits of the web available to the widest possible number of people is a social, ethical and political imperative in the EU, there are still many inaccessible web sites.

In this paper we give a comprehensible explanation of EU policy related to web accessibility.

Its aim is to serve as a starting point for further research. We approach the problem by defining the “European” model of web accessibility, explaining it’s underlying principle – non-discrimination, and discussing the actual EU policy and legislation.

We are going to show that different application of the EU provisions and lack of common standards still constitute a barrier towards acceptable level of web accessibility.

Djordje Djokic

Full Paper

Full paper