Social value

Promoted by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) and the O.N.C.E. Foundation, and with the support of UNE, a project has been initiated to draw up an international standard on Accessible Tourism in the technical committee ISO/TC 228 Tourism and related services. The future standard aims to become a unique, global and flexible tool for the tourist industry in a broad sense, including operators, destination managers and SMEs, etc.​​

At the national level, this work takes place in CTN 170/GT 5, "Accessible tourism"​.​​

Resulting from the work carried out by three European standards bodies, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, and with the backing of the European Commission, the new version v.2.1.2 of the Standard EN 301549, "Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services” has been approved. This document, drawn up based on the European Commission mandates M/376 and M/554, will be particularly relevant for the sector, given that it will provide presumption of conformity for the essential requirements of the Web Accessibility Directive (WAD), transposed in Spain through Royal Decree 1112/2018, of 7 September, on the accessibility of websites and applications for public sector mobile devices. For this purpose, requirements applicable to mobile applications have been specified, which are covered by the Directive, and the success criteria have been updated to the recently approved WCAG 2.1, also ensuring correlative numbering with the latter. Similarly, it is now also possible to improving accessibility by including an informative annexe covering AAA success criteria. UNE, as the Spanish standardisation body, is carrying out the necessary procedures to translate it into Spanish and adopt it on a national scale. This will cancel and replace the previous edition, UNE-EN 301549 V1.1.2:2015 which – whereby the 2018 review v.2.1.2 is not mentioned in the OJ – is established as a reference document to demonstrate that the accessibility requirements have been fulfilled.

The provisions of Royal Decree 1112/2018 are already in force for new websites (with exceptions regarding complaints and claims). They will be enforceable in September 2020 for existing websites and in June 2021 for mobile applications.

The CEN-CENELEC-ETSI JWG eAccessibility, in which UNE has the role of secretary, is currently working on the coming review, v.3.1.1, of the standard which is expected to improve user-friendliness, among other aspects.

Nobody questions the fact that, just because a historic building or town centre has cultural value, that does not mean we should not consider its accessibility. For this reason, the Working Group CTN 41/SC 7/GT 1 "Accessibility to immovable cultural heritage", promoted by CEAPAT, has developed the UNE 41531 IN Report with the aim of facilitating accessibility to immovable cultural heritage while respecting its values.

To do so, it has presented a series of architectural and construction criteria and a methodology, bearing in mind that accessibility is generally not achievable if these criteria are not supplemented by measures regarding use, management, organisation, awareness-raising and ICT tools, etc.

The report is a pioneer in its field and it has generated a lot of interest internationally. On 4 December, Nieves Peinado, coordinator of Technical Standardisation Committee 41/SC 7/GT 1, presented the document before the European Commission, and the possibility of converting it into an ISO document has already been proposed, having been well received by all the other countries.

A smart city or community is essentially an accessible city. For this reason, CTN 178, “Smart Cities”, under the impetus of the SESIAD (Spanish Secretary of State for Information Society and Digital Agenda), has developed the UNE 178105 Standard. ”Universal Access to Smart Cities”, under the leadership of CEAPAT (Spanish Centre of Reference for Personal Autonomy and Technical Support).

The aim of this project is to contribute to determining and establishing standardised indicators/criteria that enable an assessment to be made as to whether a smart city or community is accessible and to what degree. It is an effective instrument for establishing, implementing, maintaining and improving the universal access requirements of a smart city or community using technology as a significant instrument of support, and essence of the smart city concept.