Users of telecommunications and information technology have a varied capability
of handling information and the controls for its presentation. The
source of this variation lies in cultural and educational backgrounds as
well as on age-related functional limitations, in disabilities, and in
other natural causes.
The entire community can benefit from the accessibility
standardization work as people can be permanently or temporarily
disabled due to physical, environmental (e.g. a phone call in a noisy
environment) or cultural (e.g. spoken language diversity) conditions.
Moreover, we will all grow old and lose abilities that we take for
granted now, thus enlarging the part of the population that would
benefit from accessible communication. And in these cases the concept of
"Total Conversation"
is especially important because it caters for the non-signing deaf or
hard of hearing community with the incorporation of real time text
communication.
Standardization makes it possible on a global scale, to connect
equipment and services from different manufacturers. The most important
goal of ITU-T’s accessibility activities is to make sure that newly
developed standards contain the necessary elements to make services and
features usable for people with as broad range of capabilities as
possible. Standards describe how equipment interacts and defines the
quality necessary for media to be usable for all. Standards should also
describe suitable methods of media delivery for people with
disabilities, and are therefore essential for the provision of services
accessible for all.
ITU-T Study Group 16’s role
As the Lead Study Group on Ubiquity and on Multimedia Terminals,
Systems and Applications, the ITU-T SG 16
effort in accessibility standardization promotes the concept of Total
Conversation and aims to ensure that all sectors of the global community
have equal access to communications and online information. This effort
is centered in Question 26/16
"Accessibility to Multimedia Systems and Services", which continues the
ITU-T international standardization work on accessibility, pioneered in
the 1990s with V.18 (an ITU-T Recommendation on a multi-function text
telephone).
Read more on accessibility
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