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)
19
Embed
Geneva, 25 November 2011 Future Swiss and EU e-accessibility Visions for regulatory & policy communications aspects Nuno Encarnação OFCOM(CH) ITU-T Workshop.
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
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)
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
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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…
Geneva, 25 November 2011 14
Trends and visions future relay services evolution…
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
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…
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
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