Site compliant with W3C accessibility guidelines level AAA

Symbol of compliance with level AAA of the W3C web content accessibility guidelines

This symbol declares the conformity of this page with the highest level (AAA) of WCAG 1.0 - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 of the WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative of W3C – World Wide Web Consortium, which were published on May 5, 1999. The document consists of a set of guidelines for accessibility of Internet pages to people with special needs. In 2003, WAI began preparing version 2.0 of the guidelines (WCAG 2.0 - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0) and they were approved on December 11, 2008.

Portugal was in 1999, the 1st European country and the 4th in the world to pass legislation aimed at ensuring the accessibility of central government sites on the Internet to people with special needs, by Resolution of the Council of Ministers N.º 97/99, of August 26, integrated in the National Initiative for Citizens with Disabilities adopted by the Council of Ministers Resolution N.º 96/99, of August 26. The Council of Ministers Resolution N.º 110/2003, of August 12, and the Council of Ministers Resolution N.º 9/2007, of January 17, continued, inter alia, the objective of improving the accessibility of sites in the Portuguese public administration.

Since 1999, following the publication of the Council of Ministers Resolution N.º 96/99 of August 26, the percentage of home pages of central government sites on the Internet meeting basic levels of accessibility to people with special needs in Portugal has been much higher than the average observed internationally (4 to 5 times higher), although most sites still did not meet in 2007 the basic levels of accessibility required. For this reason, the Government approved the Resolution of the Council of Ministers N.º 155/2007, of the 2nd of October, which sets guidelines for the accessibility to people with special needs of sites of the Government on the Internet. This resolution clearly defined the technical requirements that must be met by adopting the levels of compliance with the accessibility guidelines for Web content developed by the W3C. It became mandatory to assure compliance of all central government sites with the level A of the W3C accessibility guidelines within three months, and the compliance of sites involving the provision of transactional services with leval AA of the guidelines within six months after the Council of Ministers Resolution.