ACCESSIBLE - Applications Design and Development

Ouestionnaire User Needs

Project Description

Project acronym: ACCESSIBLE

Project name: Accessibility Assessment Simulation Environment for New Applications Design and Development

Contract number: 224145

Priority component: Accessible and Inclusive ICT

Project Beneficiaries:

• P1: Centre for Research and Technology Hellas / Informatics and Telematics Institute and Hellenic Institute of Transport
• P2: Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Institute of Computer Science
• P3: Sun Microsystems
• P4: University of Stuttgart, Institute for Human Factors and Technology Management
• P5: ALCATEL-LUCENT DEUTSCHLAND AG
• P6: Fundação da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa
• P7: Softeco Sismat SpA
• P8: Netscouts gGmbH
• P9: Marie Curie Association
• P10:CONCEPT SWISS
• P11: SOLINET GmbH

Project Outline:

It is important to realise that disabled people are not just a tiny minority of the population of the European Union. The lowest estimate, based on the extremes of currently defined disablement categories, puts their total number at around 40 Million persons (nearly 11% of the population of the EU). Designing for the disabled is becoming an increasingly important topic for a variety of reasons, especially due to the recent legislation in many countries promoting the rights of disabled people. Consequently, even if people with disabilities want to be independent and do things for themselves by themselves, unfortunately, most Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applications and systems are not fully accessible today.

ACCESSIBLE is an EU FP7 project spanning over 36 months, start date 1st September 2008, with the aim of improving the accessibility of software development products, by introducing an harmonised accessibility methodology into accessible software development processes, using significantly better measurement strategies, methodologies, etc. The envisaged improvement will enable large organisations, SMEs or individuals (developers, designers, etc.) to produce software products of superior accessibility and usability, accompanied with appropriate measures, technologies and tools that improve their overall quality.

Typically, accessibility evaluation is considered late in the development process and is often conducted by outside experts, after the application is delivered and content is produced. This leads to issues being reported to developers late in the project, at a time when changes cost more. In order to make accessibility development efforts more efficient, the ACCESSIBLE can support the integration and assessment of accessibility into all stages of an application development process, with as much automation as possible. Thus, ACCESSIBLE project focuses on the developer phase of the project and helps developers, with little or no accessibility knowledge, make sure that their created applications or services are fully accessible from persons with disabilities.

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