Directive 2019/882 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on Accessibility Requirements for Products and

Ser-vices

At least 135 million people in the EU have a disability and this figure is increasing due to the progressive ageing of the population. To address the rights of these people, as outlined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disa-bilities, the EU has adopted the EU Web Accessibility Directive and the Euro-pean Accessibility Act (EAA). The EAA applies to private companies (or public organisations offering the type of products/services listed below), whereas the EU Directive applies to public organisations and the third-party providers they employ. In addition, the EAA applies to hardware, software and web, while the EU Directive applies to web and apps. The EU Directive specifically refers to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, while the EAA does not refer to any specific compliance standard. The deadlines for each regulation are also different. The ways in which the regulations are implemented are the same: Member States are responsible for enforcement, imposing fines and reporting the current status to the European Commission. Accessibility is a cross-cutting discipline with far-reaching anthro-pological, social and economic objectives. Improved accessibility corresponds to a more widespread perception of social comfort and a substantial reduction in the sources of danger and situations of discomfort and fatigue that are at the

root of the phenomena of marginalisation, exclusion or social self-exclusion of people with disabilities. In behavioural psychology (but also in business organi-sation) accessibility is studied as a condition for the creation of a more extensive

‘comfort zone’, which is defined as “the mental condition in which the person acts in a state of absence of anxiety, with a constant level of performance and without perceiving a sense of risk” (⁵). The European Commission has recog-nised the issue of accessibility of products and services as central to the social inclusion of people with disabilities. The Act in question aims to “improve the functioning of the internal market for accessible products and services by break-ing down barriers created by divergent standards in Member States”. Under the previous EU legal framework, characterised by a vacuum juris in this area, each EU Member State defined its own accessibility standards for products and ser-vices, the effect of which was a reduced internal choice, higher prices for con-sumers and restricted markets with few incentives for companies operating in them. Under the EAA, EU Member States were given common accessibility rules to follow. The goal of harmonising rules by setting standards for accessi-bility results in products that are ‘designed for all’ (this is also referred to as ‘uni-versal design’). According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, this approach means that “the design of products, en-vironments, programmes and services should be usable by all persons, to the fullest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design”.

Apps and websites should be made accessible, keeping in mind the four princi-ples of accessibility (POUR): perceivable, usable, understandable and robust.

These principles are based on the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guide-lines), which are the universal standard for web accessibility. The Act covers hardware, software, web and services: computers and operating systems, ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines, smartphones and tablets, television equipment related to digital television services, telephony services and related equipment, access to audio-visual media services such as television broadcasting and related consumer equipment, services related to passenger transport by air, bus, rail and waterway (websites, apps, ticketing services, etc.), banking services, e-books and e-readers, emergency numbers, e-commerce websites and apps.

The new legislation was adopted by the EU in June 2019. By June 2022, EU Member States must translate and adopt the Directive into their national laws.

Finally, by July 2025, the transposing law must be fully implemented. There is an application exception for ‘disproportionate burden’, i.e., if the nature of the prod-uct/service changes or the company is financially overburdened. There is also an (⁵) The concept of the ‘comfort zone’ did not originate in psychology, but in a business context. In 2009, this term was first used by Alasdair A.K. White (‘Comfort Zone Theory’), a business management theorist who defined it as the area around which employees could maximise performance and profits. In psychology, the definition does not differ much from the corporate concept.

exception for micro-enterprises (with fewer than 10 employees and an annual turnover of less than two million euros). The supplementary part on effective-ness and sanctions is interesting as well: Member States are in charge of applying their own sanctions for non-compliance, which should be “effective, propor-tionate and dissuasive”. In addition, each Member State must allow consumers to report non-compliance to the courts or to the enforcement body in that coun-try.

The EU regulatory framework should, according to the legislator’s intentions, create more employment opportunities for disabled people through guaranteed accessibility of goods and/or services. Probably the strong need for a standard-ised level of accessibility will also have a ‘Brussels effect’, which will virtuously attract other countries to adopt the same standards, in a purely marketplace per-spective within the European perimeter. If this is the expected effect, people with disabilities will consequently enjoy greater freedom of movement between Member States and benefit from more accessible services and devices. According to the European legislator, this should also be sufficient to guarantee, albeit in-directly, more employment or at least new specific job opportunities for disad-vantaged people. But the question is: why should this happen? It seems to us that the concept of ‘inclusion’ adopted by the EU legislator is fundamentally flawed. Social inclusion, the objective of the Social Pillar, is not to be intended as referring only to civil society as a whole, but also, and specifically, to the world of business: Above all, it also concerns places of production and work, which today appear to be naturally impermeable to this need of civil society and are, even today, areas of progressive marginalisation and social exclusion, through the more pervasive scientification of production processes imposed by digitali-sation and the growing selective drive exerted by the tight mesh of ‘commercial’

human resources management, obsessed with the quest for excellence in indi-vidual performance. Entering into the mechanisms of selection, enhancement and management of staff with disabilities is therefore not a matter to be left ex-clusively to good intentions and corporate initiatives, because there is no ‘invisi-ble hand’ capa‘invisi-ble of providentially guiding these processes in an anthropocentric sense.

The Accessibility Act has a commendable effect on some unfavourable condi-tions of the labour market, with the aim of removing them, but it is based on a value premise which is superficial and partial (if not wrong): the fact that the disabled person is assimilated and reducible to the status of a consumer, rather than the status of a European citizen-worker. This premise must be overturned and the workplace must be reconsidered as a social environment necessary for the development of the personality. In this sense, no company producing goods or services, whether public or private, can shirk this social function. The ‘pass’

of a European company, authorised to operate within the Community, and the

‘green’ certification should require the provision of precise social guarantees!

Because people are not things, and they are not just subjects of consumption.

Businesses do not live a life of their own and are not just about producing profits for shareholders, but must ‘serve’ people as such, i.e., consider them an end, not just a means. The right to community citizenship of people with disabilities is expressed in the form of inclusive participation in every aspect of civil society, including employment. From this point of view, the EAA only deals with acces-sibility requirements for the marketing of products and services. In practice, the benefits for the employment of workers with disabilities are only indirect: mar-kets are regulated, not enterprises; it is the logic of the common market, not the one of common labour rights.

1.9. Autonomous Framework Agreement between the European Social