Resolution no. 155/2007 of the Council of Ministers, published on 2 October, establishes guidelines on the accessibility of citizens with special needs to websites of the Government and of central administration services and bodies.
This Resolution aims to end technological barriers that restrain users with special needs from finding and making use of available information on these websites, and should thus be looked upon as a way for the Government to promote citizenship and inclusion.
Guidelines described are based wholly on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), dated 1999.
This international standard has been adopted by sites accessible to all users, not only those who have special needs but also those who use unconventional access devices or equipment, such as audio browsers.
With the adoption of this resolution, the purpose of the Government is for information contents of recipients' websites to conform to the minimum accessibility requirements (level ''A''), whereas transactional services, known as interactive electronic services, should conform to intermediate requirements (level ''double-A''). Time-limits laid down to achieve this goal are of respectively three and six months.
ANACOM joined this W3C initiative in 2001. W3C is an international consortium that aims to turn the Internet into a body of knowledge for all. In 2003, a step forward was given, both ensuring the full accessibility of contents and making also available a wide range of interactive electronic services conforming to level ''Triple-A'', which includes the most demanding requirements of recommendations of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
