The European Union - The eEurope 2002 Action Plan
What Does That Mean?
The European Union's Presidency, in 2007, following from the eEurope 2002 Action Plan, stressed the "objective to integrate everyone, particularly people with disabilities and older people into the information society" and "that lack of accessibility to the new communication media is a major obstacle to be removed if progress is to be made towards participation by everyone in the Information Society". The Council resolution of 2002 stresses the need for and encourages member states to take steps toward making the web and the content it offers accessible, and calls on member states to improve the accessibility of material available on the web.
Importantly, the resolution mentions that continual technological advancements allow material to be rendered accessible more and more easily.
Reasonable Accommodation Obligation
Furthermore, a thematic report was compiled in 2009 for the European Commission entitled "Disability and non-discrimination law in the European Union". While the report's primary focus is the disability provisions of the Employment Equality Directive, the second half focuses on strategies for tackling disability outside the context of employment, dealing with both direct and indirect discrimination.
The report takes the position that reactive and anticipatory reasonable accommodation duties are owed to disabled individuals: "A reasonable accommodation obligation requires duty-bearers to take positive steps to remove the disadvantage which a particular disabled person would otherwise experience because of some aspect of the duty- bearer’s operations or structure. It is a mandatory duty to react or respond to the circumstances of a particular disabled person and (subject to the limits of disproportionate burden) to take such steps as would be effective to remove the particular barriers that he or she faces. The need to find solutions appropriate for the particular individual concerned means that duty-bearers will need to engage in a process of consultation with the disabled person as to the likely effectiveness of possible accommodations."
The authors add that positive steps should be taken to promote disability equality and inclusion.
Look To Existing Legislation
The report particular mentions of the equality legislation of the United Kingdom which is represented as a good model for legislation.