Webinar: Advocating for strong national adoption of the European Accessibility Act. September 2020



Watch here the complete webinar.

Download the transcription here.

On September 30th, the European Disability Forum (EDF) organised a webinar about the transposition of the European Accessibility Act at national level, this is to adapt or introduce laws in the country to comply with the European legislation. The Accessibility Act is a directive that aims to improve accessibility of products and services in the European internal market, as well as to complement accessibility obligations of other European legislation on Accessibility.

Haydn Hammersley is Social Policy Officer at EDF and he moderated the webinar. The EDF is an umbrella organisation which represents more than one hundred million people with disabilities in Europe.

Inmaculada Placencia Porrero is Senior Expert at the Disability and Inclusion unit, in DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission. She gave an in-depth overview of the content of the Act. “It is difficult to address accessibility at European level without having a common understanding of it”, she explained.

Alejandro Moledo, who is EDF Policy Coordinator, provided some ideas and recommendations to ensure the correct transposition of this directive as well as some advice to go beyond the scope of the Act. “We need to act now, we need to act as soon as possible”, stated Alejandro.

Mia Ahlgren works as Policy Officer in the Swedish Disability Rights Federation, one of the Swedish largest NGOs advocating for the rights of the Swedish disability movement. She spoke about the Swedish negotiation on the transposition of the Accessibility Act. “The awareness is very low, and when something is not known there is also a lot of fear that it will be an enormous burden”, said Mia.

The main objectives of the webinar were:

  • To explain the content of the European Accessibility Act
  • To know present EDF toolkit on the transposition of the European Accessibility Act.
  • To suggest ideas to get involved in the transposition process