3D. Domain Level

3D covers two kinds of laws at the level of domain: Domain-Specific Laws, and Procurement laws.

Domain-Specific Laws

There's six of them, three are American and three are of the EU.

21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)

Regulatory body: US Federal Communications Commission

Year: 2010

This applies to communications technology and broadcasting. Various accessibility legislations have been in place for these domains, but the laws were designed with older technology in mind. The 21st Century CVAA takes a lot of those early accessibility things and brings them in line to modern technology.

Air Carrier Access Act

Regulatory body: US Department of Transporation

Year: 1986

Applying to flights of US airlines and flights to and from the US by foreign airlines. It's an anti-discriminatory measure defining rights of Disabled passengers and obligations of airlines.

It's heartbreaking to read this just because of how horrible shit is right now for wheelchair users. Airlines break wheelchairs all the time and those things are so costly. It's like breaking people's legs. It's unacceptable, and there should be steep penalties, but those don't exist. Even with all these provisions, it's anedquate. It no wonder that there have been multiple moves to try to ammend this act. Such as the proposed ammendment below:

Air Carrier Access Amendments Act (Proposed)

Proposing body: US Congress

Year: Introduced 2017, never passed

The Body of Knowledge fucks up by never specifying that this act was never passed. It's misleading. The main thing for the Amendments act proposed was the introduction was to clarify several obligations and provide remedies that Disabled passenger could use to actually get some enforcement out of the act.

Let us now turn to the EU.

Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD)

Regulatory body: European Union

Year: 2010

Applies to traditional TV broadcasts,as well as on-demand services. This is not just an accessibility law, it also governs promotion of European works, hate speech and protection of minors. On the accessibility side, the AVMSD requires that these services are made progressively more accessible through proportionate measures.

European Electronics Communications Code

Regulatory body: European Union

Year: 2018

As the AVMSD wasn't a specifically accessibility-focused document, neither is the EECC. It applies to communication through traditional (calls, SMS), and web-based services. Relevant to our study is requires that services information are provided in accessible formats, and that emergency services, hotlines, missing children helplines, are all equally accessible to persons with disabilities.

Regulation on electronic identification and trust services (eIDAS)

Regulatory body: European Union

Year: 2014

This governs digital transctions that require electronic signatures. As with the other documents, this is a general regulation and not accessibility-specific, but it does have accessibility baked into it. These services are required to be accessible to people with disabilities.

Procurement Laws

We're going to be looking at accessibility-related procurement laws in the EU and the US today. Procurement law basically defines that services procured/purchased/contracted must meet certain requirements. Our focus is on accessibility-related requirements, but they don't have to be. In fact, both the EU Procurement Directive and the US Federal Acquisition Regulation are general procurement laws that encompass a variety of requirements of which accessibility is just a small part.

EU Procurement Directive

First of all, this is a directive. This means that each of the Member States implement the EU procurement directive into national legislation in their own way. It's not really procurement law in and of itself. Hence, reading the actual text of the document, the wording sometimes is a bit wishy-washy. It's leaving some room to interpretation for the member states to incorporate these into ways that are synchronous with their own legal systems.

But with that background aside, the Body of Knowledge draws our attention to three main points:

Service Requirements ('Technical Specifications')

In order to be considered as a candidate for procurement, the service must meet requirements outlined in 'technical specifications.' These 'technical specifications' must outline mandatory accessibility criteria. The mandatory accessibilty criteria is defined elsewhere is EU law.

Accessible Communications

Procurement documentation and communication in electronic forms must be accessible.

Contract Evaluation

Quality of accessibility may be used a strong consideration when comparing services who are competing for the same contract. In fact, if a service provider has a history of violating social obligations, it may be possible to exclude their proposal on that basis.

There are domain-specific procurement directives also implemented in the EU that mirror this structure. Domains include utilities, transportation, concessions.

US Federal Acquisition Regulation

In this absolute monster of a document, we find the relevant section tucked into a subpart of Part 39: Acquisition of Information Technology. This is the subpart that implements Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973).

The biggest thing here is in accquiring ICT, federal agencies basically agree that federal employees and members of the public seeking information from a federal agency will have comparable access and use to the information regardless of disability status.

If it turns out that access is NOT comparable, then there is penalties for the agency. Hence, agencies are incentivized to only acquire accessible products.