Fighting for disabled people
The British Government is failing to fight for the rights of disabled people at a European level. Help to put pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to tell his ministers to fight for the rights of disabled people at home and across Europe. You can take action now as part of the joint Sense, RNIB, RNID, Radar and Leonard Cheshire Disability campaign.
If you want to support the campaign, go here.
February 16th, 2010 at 10:25 am
I’m split on this one. As a partly deaf person, I have suffered the limitations of being able to enjoy only films with subtitles when on aeroplanes and bleeps on electonic goods that are outside my range. But as a manufacturer, I’m worried about Europe’s heavy handed approach to such matters. We’ve already been put to a lot of unnecessary expense as a small producer of electronic goods (our main business is software) due to the WEEE regulations which were aimed at manufacturers of consumer electrical goods. I would be in favour of improved accessibility for any group of people provided it was properly and carefully applied.
February 18th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
I believe it is very important to support this campaign.
It is sometimes argued that imposing accessibility requirements on manufacturers would damage the economy by putting too much of an additional and expensive requirement on manufacturers. However, I believe that manufacturers would prefer a level playing field provided by regulation, notably where it is not clear to them that there is a business case for accessibility. Besides, if mainstream manufacturers built in accessibility they would sell products to people who otherwise wouldn’t buy them. For example, Apple now includes their speech package Outspoken for free on all Macs. In many cases this encourages people with a visual impairment to buy a Mac rather than a PC. Likewise many products designed with accessibility considerations in mind go on to have widespread appeal – just think about the BT big button telephone (one of BT’s best selling products) or the Blackberry (the inventor had deaf parents who he wanted to contact using mobile technology, just as other people do).
It is estimated that the annual spending power of disabled people in the UK is around £80 billion (Family Resources Survey 2006). Accessible design should be seen as an opportunity for industry to access some of this relatively untapped consumer market.
I believe EU legislation is necessary. At present, there is no obligation to make manufactured goods accessible and it is quite clear that manufacturers do not see accessibility as a priority so the market has clearly failed to deliver accessible goods to disabled people. A large and increasing number of washing machines, microwaves, but also ATMs, ticket machines, etc. now rely on touch screen technology and/or visual displays that have LCD screens to provide information about time and temperature. Touch screen technology is totally inaccessible to blind people and it is very hard for partially sighted people to read LCD screens. In fact, older style dials with clear markings were much easier to use. If accessibility requirements had been included when designing new touch sensitive controls/LCD screens, disabled people would still be able to use those goods without having to rely on others (paid or unpaid carers) to operate them. I could go on. Inaccessible goods and services lead to exclusion of many disabled people from everyday activities that other people take for granted.
EU-level legislation is necessary because national legislation cannot fully cover accessibility of manufactured products. By requiring all goods manufactured in or entering the EU to be accessible, EU-level legislation would overcome the questions of fragmented market demand and distortion of the Single Market. If the EU failed to address the issue of inclusive design in the Equal Treatment Directive, this would put EU manufacturers at a competitive disadvantage with the United States, as lawmakers there have recently been seeking to significantly strengthen their accessibility legislation ( see here). In a global market place, there is no doubt that, when it is passed, this type of legislation will be setting a new benchmark for industry. Ignoring this could jeopardise European exports to the US.
February 18th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
I feel Carine’s well argued comments actually re-inforce my point, in that she is talking exclusively about B2C manufactured goods ( i.e goods designed for purchase by consumers). Our business is exclusively B2B and in many cases the electronic items we produce do not even have human interfaces once installed by a specialist electronics engineer. To be forced to make such items comply with the same requirements as the goods she mentions would plainly be idiotic but it is just such a requirement that I fear could be introduced.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
Reading Janet’s post I realised I forgot to mention an important point: the Equal Treatment Directive is solely about non-discriminatory access to those goods and services ‘which are available to the public’, so the type of products that Janet refers to (B2B, highly specialised equipment or components, for example) are definitely outside the scope of the Directive.
This new legislation aims to remove barriers to access for everyday products purchased by consumers. It introduces the concept of ‘reasonable accommodation’, which is similar to that of ‘reasonable adjustment’ found in the UK Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) in relation to services. It is about ensuring that manufacturers would consider accessibility issues at the design stage, using ‘Design for all’ or ‘universal design’ principles (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_design). For example, an ATM manufacturer could comply by introducing speech output in new ATMs, a bottle would have to be designed so that it is easy to open for people who have arthritis, etc.
The Directive goes on to say that such changes should not impose a ‘disproportionate burden’ on manufacturers, and that factors such as the size and resources of the enterprise, its nature, the estimated cost and the possible benefits of increased access for persons with disabilities would have to be taken into account. So I feel that there are enough safeguards here to ensure that greater access is indeed achieved for disabled people without causing unnecessary burden for manufacturers.