future swiss and eu e-accessibility visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

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Geneva, 25 November 2011 Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects Nuno Encarnação OFCOM(CH) ITU-T Workshop on “Telecommunications relay services for persons with disabilities ” (Geneva, 25 November 2011)

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ITU-T Workshop on “ Telecommunications relay services for persons with disabilities ” (Geneva, 25 November 2011). Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects. Nuno Encarnação OFCOM(CH). Swiss & EU regulatory and policy basics. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011

Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy

communications aspects

Nuno Encarnação OFCOM(CH)

ITU-T Workshop on“Telecommunications relay services for persons

with disabilities ”

(Geneva, 25 November 2011)

Page 2: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 2

Swiss & EU regulatory and policy basics

EU directives on e-communications networks and services underline

user’s rights, incl. accessibility for all citizens

EU policy in e-inclusion and e-accessibility is well known and active in several fronts

A report on ensuring equivalence in access and choice for disabled end-users is published and Its public consultation results are available

Swiss law is independent but evolves in general taking in account EU regulatory and policy concepts developments

Page 3: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 3

Swiss & EU regulatory and policy examples

‘reach112’,

EU emergency services for all citizens

Monitoring ‘e-accessibility’ progress, to monitor the status and progress, best practices, bench marking…

Standardization work and particularly mandates, like the one on accessibility requirements for public procurement of ICT products and services

Page 4: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 4

Swiss casegeneral aspects

The Swiss Disability Discrimination Act

establishes general principles applicable to all sectors, incl. public transport, telecom, TV and others

The Federal Bureau for Equality of People with Disabilities, FBED

may suggest improvements in particular sectors and facilitate measures, including financing of innovative projects to improve equality of persons with disabilities

Page 5: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 5

Swiss casegeneral aspects, some measuresSwiss administration and those fulfilling public tasks of the Confederation (Post, Railways…) have tighter accessibility rules

Swiss administration publishes guidance

e.g. for barrier-free websites, mobility for disabled, useful contacts in Switzerland

The organization ’access for all’, co-financed by OFCOM, analyzes some 100 Swiss web sites accessibility

results will be published in November 2011

Page 6: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 6

Swiss case telephony relay services [RS]

Free telephony relay services [RS] are in telecom Universal Service [US] (Telecom Act and legislation); they are financed from the overall income of this sector

Swisscom is the US licensed provider and

Procom is the organization to whom relay services are subcontractedService providers offer free access to RS

Page 7: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 7

Swiss case relay services [RS], some statistics (1)

RS Clients are some 1’000 to 3’000 of the 7’000 estimated potential users

RS are available 24h/day and 7days/week 35 operators work normally in 4h sessions

80% of the calls are handled in 3…5sec,

but users may wait for an available operatoranswering calls takes 15sec (average)

Operators transmit 80words/minute (average)

A trial video telephony is starting (2011)

Page 8: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 8

Swiss case relay services [RS], some statistics (2)

RS usage decreased last decade [2009]Due to increasing usage of sms, Internet video telephony and text exchange via Internet,

but new services and new interfaces are bringing clients back

Sources of information: French Authorities organized an evaluation of the needs for telephony services of hearing impaired persons in different countries

Swiss Authorities studied the statistical characterization of social impact of the handicap

Page 9: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 9

Swiss case telecom accessibility, other measures

Part of the telecom US are also Accessible public payphones

Accessible directories for blind and mobility impaired

SMS – relay services for deaf and hard of hearing people

Page 10: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 10

Swiss caseTV

Radio and Television Act (RTVA) requires relevant content providers to support

Captioning/ Subtitling

Sign language

Audio description

relevant telecom providers must distribute above services (RTVA requirement)

SRG/SSR ensures national public service

Also here the costs of accessibility are covered by all citizens using the services

Page 11: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 11

Trends and visionsconvergence effects

Convergence(s) broadcast-telecom and fixed-mobile services create synergies and

Facilitate quicker and wider availability of new interesting devices, features and services

Broadcast functions may easily be useful to telephony services and vice versa

‘Fixed network’ services are now easily available to citizens with mobility impairments

Investments on accessibility features can be shared by a wider range of usages…

…Convergence is pushing prices downwards

Page 12: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 12

Trends and visionstotal communication for all

Total communication for all may mean

video-telephony associated to

captioning/ subtitling and

other metadata (e.g. sign language , audio description and other data)

It could imply the ‘Universal Service’ (ensured by law to all) to include…

synchronized transmission of audio/ voice, video, text and other data for

conversational/ interactive services like videotelephony, TV and Internet access

Page 13: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 13

Trends and visionsfuture relay services [RS]

Video telephony could be included in the RS provided in the context of the universal service of electronic communications

If so, synergies will be created between policy/ regulation for content (TV, VoD) distribution and telephony services

… and captioning/ sub-titling for TV would be comparable to relay services for telephony…

Page 14: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 14

Trends and visions future relay services evolution…

Page 15: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 15

Trends and visions captioning and automatic translation

Captioning and automatic translation (incl. to the sign languages) is likely to have very positive impact

on content distribution/ broadcast

and on the future (video) telephony

Human intervention in RS would still be necessary for higher performing services

but such automated RS (probably lower performing, at least in the beginning)

would be possible 24h/ 24h, virtually for all, probably at lower costs

Page 16: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 16

Trends and visionsmobility

Increased mobility and enhancements of ICT terminals

are already benefitting a very wide population

e.g. impaired people, incl. with mobility impairments

Mobile terminals may also in the future be a complement for a TV or other services,

building hybrid systems adding information,

e.g. blogs on the going TV program, audio description of the emission…

Page 17: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 17

Trends and visionsadvantages of being inclusive

People with specific disabilities are often minorities

Including ageing and multicultural population (particularly people having mother languages different from local ones) may facilitate the development of new devices and services

A wider population base may justify some new developments, at least it facilitates business cases and may stimulate economical reasoning behind the social and legal justifications

Page 18: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 18

Trends and visionsincreasing complexity

Above trends look promising for all but

We need a careful observation of the evolution to ensure all citizens their essential rights and prevent undue developments

Tracking e-accessibility environment evolution, particularly in ICT sector,

will be a hard task due to complexity, wideness of the scope and the evolution rate

This requires a permanent surveillance

standardization offers an excellent environment to study solutions to e-accessibility issues

Page 19: Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects

Geneva, 25 November 2011 19

Questions?

Thank you for your attention

[email protected]