Making government websites accessible for people with disabilities in Czechia
Online communication with authorities should be accessible to everyone by law, but in practice, this is often not the case, as Klára Šimáčková Laurenčíková, the government's human rights commissioner, points out. She explains that people with visual or hearing impairments face various obstacles when using government websites and applications.
A data box or a request for a criminal record extract via the Citizen Portal is, for most people, an everyday convenience that makes life easier. But for people with visual or hearing impairments, such online services are often complicated or even completely inaccessible.
According to the 2019 Act on the Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications, authorities are required to ensure that these individuals can communicate online, but in practice this often does not happen.
Jan Šnyrych from the United Organization of the Blind and Visually Impaired of the Czech Republic, for example, tries to draw attention to these shortcomings. Like other people with visual impairments, he uses a special screen reader to operate his mobile phone or computer.
"The reader presents information to the user in a synthetic voice. For this to work, the website’s code must include the necessary elements that the reader can detect and convey to the user," explains Šnyrych.
He adds that every website has some kind of error. Recently, for example, he discovered a problem in the state eRecept application.
"There is a button here, but because the programmer did not add a text label to it, the reader cannot tell what the button is," Šnyrych demonstrates.
A blind person then has no choice but to use trial and error to find out what is hidden under such a button.
Room for improvement
People who communicate in Czech Sign Language encounter similar problems. Czech is a foreign language for them, so they may also have difficulty understanding written text, explains Milan Fritz from the Association of Organizations of the Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Their Friends.
The interview was interpreted by Jindřich Mareš from the non-profit organization Tichá linka (“Quiet Line”). With the help of the interpreter, Fritz describes:
"When there are videos on websites, for example, from ministry press conferences, they often lack subtitles, let alone interpretation into Czech Sign Language."
Like Jan Šnyrych, Fritz is also trying to draw the attention of state institutions to these shortcomings.
"We are trying to make it clear on websites that they are accessible to deaf people who use Czech Sign Language. We would like to see an icon with sign language hands, for example," Fritz says.
According to him, only a minority of government websites offer translations into sign language.
Klára Šimáčková Laurenčíková, the government's human rights commissioner, also draws attention to the obstacles faced by people with visual or hearing impairments.
"In practice, both small and large services are inaccessible, including those essential for people with disabilities, such as the Czech Social Security Administration website. Data boxes are also often inaccessible due to their connection with other systems. Accessibility is frequently even more difficult to achieve in the mobile versions of websites and applications."
However, she says the situation has been improving in recent years. For example, the Ministry of the Interior had its 72-hour crisis management manual translated into Czech Sign Language, and the Chamber of Deputies is also introducing interpretation at press conferences.
According to Šimáčková Laurenčíková, it would also be beneficial to have penalties for failing to comply with the law on website accessibility.
