Specialist Task Force 600: Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services Revision of version 3.1.1 to align with EAA and WCAG 2.2

Who we are:

Team leader:	Mike Pluke, Castle Consulting Ltd, mike.pluke@castle-consult.com
Team Members:	Pär Lannerö, Metamatrix, par.lannero@metamatrix.se

What we do

The STF will investigate and setup processes and tools that will enable the collection of modification proposals for EN revision to be managed in way that supports discussion and agreement of ways in which the comments can be resolved and that allows the proposed changes to be agreed without the need to immediately create a new version of the standard to incorporate those changes. For more details, see our Terms of Reference.

Why we do it

ETSI EN 301 549 “Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services” was originally published in 2015, in response to Mandate 376, as a means to assess the accessibility of predominately publicly procured ICT products and services. Since then, it has become a core standard and has been updated to reflect changes in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and, most recently under Mandate 554, it has been updated to a Harmonised Standard to address the essential requirements of Directive 2016/2102 on “the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies”. Further updates to WCAG, potential internationalisation of the standard, and making it an applicable standard to support the European Accessibility Act, are likely to require new versions of EN 301 549 to be created. Streamlining the tools and processes will enable the consideration of potential future updates to be handled in a more agile way than the present method that involves traditional, slow processes based on the distribution of documents for comment. EN 301 549 is a triple-badged standard and a CEN/CENELEC/ETSI Joint Working Group eAccessibility (JWG eAcc) is responsible for approving the direction and content of all future updates. A core influence on the choice of tools and processes will be to enable and give greater visibility to and involvement of the JWG in how EN 301 549 evolves.

How we do it

Different tools and processes were considered, and ETSI’s GitLab environment was chosen as the tool for tracking and resolving issues with current and future versions of EN 301 549. A publicly viewable en301549 Gitlab project has been created. In addition to public visibility of the ongoing work, issues can be created and commented upon by ETSI Members and by members of the CEN/CENELEC/ETSI Joint Working Group eAccessibility (JWG eAcc) who request access.

Deliverables

The STF is expected to deliver progress reports to ETSI HF as well as proposals for potential changes needed for future versions of ETSI EN 301 549.

Time plan

The STF runs from March 2017 to January 2018. The following milestones have been agreed:

Code	Task / Milestone / Deliverable	Target date
A	Choice and initial testing of the technical environment (e.g. the issues/solutions repository) to be used by the STF experts Progress Report#1 to be approved by TC HF	15/03/2021
B	A list of changes required to align with the proposed W3C WCAG 2.2 update Progress report#2 with a list of changes needed to align EN 301 549 with WCAG 2.2 approved by TC HF	30/04/2021
C	Progress report#3 with a list of changes potential updates to EN 301 549 approved by TC HF	30/06/2021
D	Final report to be approved by TC HF STF closure	31/01/2022

How to contact us

To contact us, please send an email to stf600@groups.etsi.org