The Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT) launched today (26) a standard that establishes accessibility requirements for cell phones. Prepared by the entity’s Accessibility Study Commission for Digital Inclusion, with the collaboration of more than 90 specialists, Norm nº 17.060 aims to facilitate the access of people with special needs to virtual environments.
“This standard is a very important tool for people with disabilities to break down barriers and have broad access to communication”, said the association’s president, Mario William Esper, stating that the legal provisions that already established minimum accessibility criteria technology are often ignored.
“The country has many legal instruments that, unfortunately, are not complied with,” added Esper, referring to the so-called Accessibility Law (No. 10,098 in force since December 2000, and the Law of Inclusion of Persons with Disabilitiesof July 2015.
According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), about 17.3 million people from the age of two who lived in the country in 2019 have some type of disability. special need. Of these, about 6.9 million reported having some degree of visual impairment, seeing with great difficulty or not seeing anything at all.
The requirements stipulated in Norm 17.060 should facilitate the handling of digital technologies accessible to mobile telephony devices for people with limitations, not only for sight, but also for hearing, speech and mobility.
on sale at ABNT website, the Mobile Application Accessibility Technical Standard covers applications, operating systems, and web pages accessed with mobile devices. It contains 50 requirements divided into four categories (perception and understanding; control and interaction; media and coding) that establish what developers and manufacturers will have to offer to facilitate navigation, taking into account the need to guarantee access to people without vision or with limited vision; who do not differentiate colors, do not hear or hear poorly, do not speak, manipulate objects with difficulty, have limited cognition or suffer from photosensitive epilepsy.
In compliance with the technical standard, visual elements such as icons must contain alternative text that describes their meaning and usage guidelines. “We describe what needs to be done to comply with the standard, adding some usage examples. All guidance has its functional performance applied and each requirement has a technical reference so that everyone can achieve and implement what is being demanded”, said specialist Reinaldo Ferraz.
