For employees of the Zgierz City Hall, a training in digital accessibility was organized, conducted by experts from the Association of Polish Cities. Discussed – and practiced in useful exercises – were all aspects of combating the digital accessibility limitations in local government materials sharing.
The City Hall of Zgierz, like all entities performing public tasks, has a legal obligation to ensure the availability of the content of its own Internet resources for all recipients, especially people at risk of digital exclusion: the elderly, people with disabilities (e.g. blind and visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing, people with mobility disabilities, speech disorders, hypersensitivity to light, people with multiple disabilities), people with learning difficulties and cognitive limitations, without access to broadband Internet.
The principles of ensuring digital accessibility were discussed by the participants of the training (Zgierz, 09/02/2023) – Joanna Ganowicz, Krzysztof Początek and Wojciech Zarzycki, experienced experts in the presented issues. The presentations concerned not only the planning of universal solutions (creating a friendly reality) in order to achieve accessibility standards, but also the proper communication of own activities so that people with special needs know that the office is digitally friendly to them.
In the series of practical exercises, the speakers emphasized the need to “empathize” with the needs of such people, show appropriate empathy and sensitivity to their situation. The use of appropriate solutions is precisely placed in Polish law (including the 2019 Act on ensuring accessibility for people with special needs and the Digital Accessibility Act) created in accordance with the European Union guidelines (WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). The speakers talked about that too.
The accessibility training was conducted as part of the project “Zgierz – a modern city after hours” co-financed by the EEA Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 under the “Local Development” program.
