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Web Inclusion and Accessibility

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1st Network Meeting on TIC & Sociedade - September 23, 9h30

Centro de Congressos de Lisboa hosts the 1st Network Meeting on TIC & Sociedade. During the initiative the National Strategy on Estratégia Nacional para a Inclusão e Literacia Digitais, will be presented and participants will have the opportunity to know more about funding possibilities regarding the Social Inclusion and Employment Operational Programme ( PO ISE ). Participants will also have the opportunity to see presentation from the projects underway and the winners of the Inclusion and Digital Literacy Prize 2014.

Program | Registration

TIC e Sociedade

The network TIC & Sociedade, coordinated by FCT, has as mission to promote the Digital Inclusion and Literacy of Portuguese population, giving a particular attention to the most vulnerable groups to the info-exclusion, and contributing to individual empowerment and to a more understanding and inclusive society.

The latest aim of its action is to allow, by acquisition and/or development of digital skills (e-skills), that any citizen, regardless age or socio-economic condition, can exercise his citizenship rigth in a conscient manner, reducing by this way the digital divide, in general, and the intergenerational digital gap, by the approach of generations.

In the scope of its mission, the TIC & Sociedade team operates in the society through a set of action lines:

  • Development of Digital Inclusion and Literacy projects, via national and international partnerships;
  • Support to implementation of innovative ideas from any type of entity (public or private, collective or individual), specially from civil society (on a bottom-up logic);
  • Creation of working and thinking groups, in relevant thematics;
  • Stimulation to the digital inclusion of citizens through certification in Digital Skills with the "Basic Information Technology (IT) Skills Diploma", coordinated by FCT.

Unidade Acesso

In the scope of Digital Inclusion and Accessibility, the Unidade Acesso promotes the participation of disabled people, in society and via ICT potential, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (ratified in Portugal, in 2009). In Portugal, the reference to Information Society potential for the participation of disabled people in society goes back to "Green Paper on the Information Society in Portugal" (1997). It's important to note that 10% of Portuguese population has some kind of functional limitation.

In the Information and Communication area, technology allows its adaptation to users capacities, regardless their functional limitation, providing access, participation, interaction and more inclusion in the society.

Therefore, the assistive products, the assistive services and digital contents are defined as spheres of action, in the digital inclusion and accessibility field.

In the Assistive Products area, the intervention of FCT goes through to:

  • encourage the innovation of assistive products for augmentative and alternative communication area, TTS, voice recognition, communication systems with symbols, Simple Language, Portuguese Sign Language, Braille, characters magnified, high contrast, pointing devices, scanning systems,etc;
  • encourage the accessibility to software used in work context;
  • promote the existence of a Portuguese Catalogue of Assistive Products (following the current online catalogue [www.ajudastecnicas.gov.pt].

In the Assistive Services area:

  • improve the delivery of support resources Centres to students in Higher Education;
  • provide Internet Spaces with assistive products;
  • equip Public Libraries with assistive products to access to its collections.

In the Digital Contents area:

  • promote the web accessibility at a central and local Public Administration (PA) level. 2015 is the year in which all the Public Administration websites must be fully accessible (Digital Agenda of Europe 2020 Strategy);
  • promote the accessibility to Media contents (Television, Radio and Newspapers);
  • promote the accessibility to ebook, namely to the school etextbook;
  • improve the Open Library of Higher Education [baes.up.pt], started by UMIC in 2004, and presently accessible via e-U net to all disabled students that attend the Higher Education;
  • promote the accessibility to online digital repositories, mainly in the sphere of Secondary and Higher Education;
  • promote the accessibility to electronic commerce platforms with relevant public interest ebanking, big distribution, basic online communication tools, like electronic mail services, messaging,voice calls, video call, text processing, worksheets, etc);
  • promote sectoral studies about accessibility to web contents.

In the website specifically dedicated to Digital Inclusion and Accessibility, maintained by Department of Information Society [www.acessibilidade.gov.pt], the following resources are available: