Background
In December of 1999, the European Union launched the first step of its eEurope initiative. It was later followed in June of 2000 by the eEurope 2002 Action Plan. Finally, in September of 2001 the Communication 'eEurope 2002: Accessibility of Public Web Sites and their Content' was adopted.
Among other goals, the eEurope initiative clearly states that 1:
One of the action plan's specific targets is to improve access to the Web for people with disabilities: this is the subject of this Communication and its recommendations.
To achive this goal, the communication states:
This action is to be executed by the European Institutions and the 15 European Union Member States through:
Adoption of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines for public Web sites by the end of 2001.
On the 10th of May 2002, the Swedish Agency for Public Management issued a recommendation stating:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 should be applied ...
They went on to disclaim this slightly by saying:
Developers must follow checkpoints with priority 1.
Developers should follow checkpoints of priority 2.
Developers may follow checkpoints of priority 3.
These statements reflect the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines themselves. However, it should be added that:
For websites which have many visitors and are aimed at large sections of the population, it is exceptionally important to prevent groups of citizens from being excluded. For these [sites] one should aim at following all the WCAG checkpoints.
In September 2002, the National Audit Office initiated an investigating into how well Swedish government websites comply with the recommendations by the European Union and the Swedish Agency for Public Management.
1
It is ironic that much information on the European Union websites have
been published only in PDF
and/or Microsoft Word formats.
