EASIT: Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training
This is unit 1, Media accessibility;
element 4, What is media accessibility?;
video lecture "Media accessibility legislation".
I am Anna Matamala, from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
In this short lecture I will be talking
about the Audiovisual Media Services Directive
and the Web Accessibility Directive.
I invite you to watch the EASIT video lecture
on accessibility legislation,
in which I discuss the European Accessibility Act.
The Audiovisual Media Services Directive,
AVMSD for short,
was first adopted in 2010.
A new revision was adopted on 14 November 2018
and published on 20 November of the same year.
Its full name is: Directive (EU) 2018/1808
of the European Parliament
and of the Council of 14 November 2018
amending Directive 2010/13/EU
on the coordination of certain provisions
laid down by law, regulation
or administrative action in Member States
concerning the provision of audiovisual media services
(Audiovisual Media Services Directive)
in view of changing market realities.
After its publication in the official journal,
EU countries had 21 months
to transpose it into national legislation.
That is, they needed to change or adopt national laws
so that countries obey the Directive.
The deadline was 19 September 2020.
The Audiovisual Media Services Directive
establishes a European Union-level framework
to coordinate national legislation on all audiovisual media,
including traditional TV broadcasts,
but also on-demand services and commercial communications
such as TV ads.
It focuses on different aspects such as preserving cultural diversity,
protecting children and consumers, safeguarding media pluralism,
or combating racial and religious hatred.
The previous version of the Directive
did not place much emphasis on media accessibility.
The revised version includes improvements
in relation to the accessibility of audiovisual media services.
It also includes improvements in the prevention of discrimination
on the grounds of disability in commercial audiovisual services.
The "Toolkit for transposition",
prepared by the European association EDF,
European Disability Forum,
provides a thorough explanation of these aspects.
Article 7 of the AVMSD establishes that member states
shall ensure that, and I quote,
"services provided by media service providers
under their jurisdiction are made continuously and progressively
more accessible to persons with disabilities
through proportionate measures".
A critical element here is how this "continuously and progressively"
will be translated into specific percentages in the national laws.
The same article establishes the need for media service providers
to report to national regulatory authorities
on the implementation of the measures adopted
and encourages them to develop accessibility action plans
that should be communicated to the same regulatory authorities.
The access services that are mentioned
in the directive include:
sign language, subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing,
spoken subtitles, and audio description,
but the directive states that there may be more
("need not be limited to" is the phrasing used).
Another relevant European directive worth mentioning is Directive 2102,
which focuses on web and mobile applications.
The complete title is: Directive (EU) 2016/2012
of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016
on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications
of public sector bodies.
Member States had until 23 September 2018
to transpose this directive into national law
and you can actually consult all the national transposition measures
communicated by Member States on EUR-Lex.
I invite you to check the information about your country.
The Web Accessibility Directive covers
websites and apps of public sector bodies,
with a limited number of exceptions.
It refers to specific standards to make them more accessible
such as including a text description for images.
In fact, the harmonised standard that guides the implementation
of the directive is EN 301 549 V2.1.2
(2018-08),
which is in line with the most recent
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, WCAG 2.1.
There is a specific video on standards that I invite you to watch.
The Directive also requires
the publication of an accessibility statement
that indicates the level of accessibility
and requests that a mechanism
is put in place so that users can report any accessibility problems
or ask for information on non-accessible content.
Another important feature is that it expects regular monitoring
of public sector websites and apps
that need to be communicated to the Commission
and made public by 23 December 2021.
This general overview has given you
general information at European level.
The next step would be for you to check
your specific national legislation.
Even more interesting would be
to check if there are mechanisms in place
to guarantee compliance with the media accessibility regulations.
This video lecture has been prepared by Anna Matamala,
from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
You can reach me at anna.matamala@uab.cat.
The project EASIT has received funding
from the European Commission
under the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships
for Higher Education programme,
grant agreement 2018-1-ES01-KA203-05275.
The European Commission support for the production of this publication
does not constitute an endorsement of the contents,
which reflect the views only of the authors,
and the Commission cannot be held responsible
for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Partners of the EASIT project:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
Università degli Studi di Trieste,
Universidade de Vigo,
Stiftung Universität Hildesheim,
SDI München,
Dyslexiförbundet,
Radiotelevisija Slovenija,
Zavod Risa.
EASIT: Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training