09-08-08

 

 

Status of eAccessibility in Europe

The "Measuring progress of eAccessibility in Europe" (MeAC) study was launched as part of the follow-up to the European Commission’s Communication on eAccessibility of 2005. Overall, the results show that there is only limited progress towards eAccessibility detected in Europe, and further EU-level measures need to be considered to stimulate progress in eAccessibility.

Three key findings underpin this conclusion: The eAccessibility ‘deficit’. People with disabilities in Europe continue to be confronted with many barriers to usage of the everyday ICT products and services that are now essential elements of social and economic life. Such eAccessibility deficits can be found across the spectrum of ICT products and services, for example telephony, TV, web and self-service terminals. The eAccessibility 'gap'. From a comparative perspective, the eAccessibility situation for people with disabilities across Europe as a whole, in terms of both eAccessibility status and eAccessibility policy, compares very unfavourably with that comparison countries examined in the MeAC study (AU, CA and US). The eAccessibility ‘patchwork’. Finally, the situation across Europe for both eAccessibility status and eAccessibility policy is very much a patchwork at present. The overall picture shows many important gaps, uneven attention across the spectrum of eAccessibility themes, and wide disparities across the Member States.

Related Information:

See also: MeAC study

The Internet Summit Austria 2008

2 October 2008, Vienna, Austria

"e-Inclusion" is the leading theme of the conference, which will be a meeting of minds of the leading thinkers and major architects of the internet and the digital society today. Their range of experience will cover all aspects of e-Inclusion like e-Accessibility, Ageing, e-Competences, Socio-Cultural e-Inclusion, Spatial e-Inclusion, Inclusive e-government and broadband for all. This event takes place in preparation for the European e-Inclusion Ministerial Conference 2008 in Vienna and is supported by the Federal Chancellery of Austria. The audience will consist of the top 300 CEOs, academics, administration and politicians of Austria and some European countries. ISPA (Internet Service Providers Austria) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to advance the usage of the Internet in Austria.

Get this document

EU clampdown on ring-tone scams

EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva today announced the results of an EU-wide investigation into websites offering mobile phone services such as ring-tones and wallpapers. The enquiry found that 80% of the sites checked need to be further investigated for suspected breaches of EU consumer rules. Many of the websites target children and young people. Problems found included: unclear price information where prices are incomplete did not include taxes or customers are unaware that they are signing up to a subscription. Other problems relate to misleading information where key information is hidden in very small print or hard to find on a website or the word "free" is used to mislead consumers into a long-term contracts.

Get this document

Related Information:

Commission Press Room: IP/08/1169

Commission proposes a legal framework for European Research Infrastructures

The European Commission today proposed a legal framework that will make it easier to set up European Research Infrastructures, such as observatories for environmental sciences, data banks in genomics or state of the art large super computers. The proposal was made in response to requests from Member States, who wish to jointly develop world-class research facilities in Europe.

Get this document

Related Information:

Commission Press Room: IP/08/1142

Commission prohibits practices which prevent European collecting societies offering choice to music authors and users

The European Commission has adopted an antitrust decision prohibiting 24 European collecting societies from restricting competition by limiting their ability to offer their services to authors and commercial users outside their domestic territory. However, the decision allows collecting societies to maintain their current system of bi-lateral agreements and to keep their right to set levels of royalty payments due within their domestic territory.

Get this document

Related Information:

Commission Press Room: IP/08/1165

Intellectual Property: Commission adopts forward-looking package

The European Commission today adopted two initiatives in the area of copyright. First, the Commission proposes to align the copyright term for performers with that applicable to authors, in this way bridging the income gap that performers face toward the end of their lives. Secondly, the Commission proposes to fully harmonise the copyright term that applies to co-written musical compositions. In parallel, the Commission also adopted a Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy. The consultation document focuses on topics that appear relevant for the development of a modern economy, driven by the rapid dissemination of knowledge and information. Both of these initiatives comprise a unique mix of social, economic and cultural measures aimed at maintaining Europe as a prime location for cultural creators in the entertainment and knowledge sectors.

Get this document

Related Information:

Commission Press Room: IP/08/1156

Public consultation on web-accessibility and other e- accessibility issues

On 2 July 2008 the European Commission launched a public consultation to gather opinions on a common European approach for web accessibility and other aspects of eAccessibility, as well as possible action at European level. We invite you to reply to the public consultation at http://ec.europa.eu/einclusion and to send contributions to: einclusion@ec.europa.eu - before 27 August 2008.

Get this document

Related Information:

See also: "Your Voice in Europe" site

Contact:

einclusion@ec.europa.eu

ICT for Independent Living and Active Ageing at Home

22 July 2008, Brussels, Belgium

The objective of the event is to discuss the findings from the first round of national data gathering within the context of the ICT & Ageing study.

The workshop is to bring together around 20 experts and representatives of key stakeholder groups, including user organisations, reimbursers, service providers, technology providers, policy makers and the research community, as well as the representatives from Commission Services.

Participation is by invitation only and the entrance is free of charge.

Related Information:

Contact:

karsten.gareis@empirica.com

Web 2.0 Acquires Genuine Business Credentials

By Deborah Asbrand

 
Web 2.0 Business Credentials
 

Until now, Web 2.0 technologies were little more than a curiosity for enterprises. Popular, yes, but there was no clear business use. Today, more companies use blogs, Wikis, video, instant messaging, TelePresence, Web conferencing, and other Web 2.0 technologies to keep pace with rapid market changes.

Companies want easy and real-time connections to supply partners, consultants, design specialists, and-of course-customers. The new technologies have found a natural place amid that drive for collaboration.

Yet how to best determine the new tools' return on investment remains one of the frequently asked questions from business executives about Web 2.0 technologies, says Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research. To demystify Web 2.0's value, Owyang advocates a return to business basics. That is, do not try out the new technologies just because everyone else is, and because they seem relatively simple and inexpensive to implement. Have a plan.

"To a degree, pretty much every enterprise can leverage conferencing and collaboration."

— Ira Weinstein, Wainhouse Research

First, Know Your Objectives

"The first question is, what is your objective?" advises Owyang, a senior analyst at the Cambridge, Mass.-based company, in a recent video interview. "What are you trying to accomplish by launching the blog or the social network? Are you trying to connect with customers, reduce your sales cycle, or reduce your support costs?"

With specific goals in mind, companies can measure the tools' results against them. "If you're trying to reduce your support costs by letting your customers self-support each other, how many calls did not go into the call center because of this tool?" Owyang asks. "How much information was put in there by customers? How did they rate it?"

Taking a page from one of the Internet's most popular consumer sites can also help companies evaluate the new tools' value. "The 'most viewed' tab on YouTube can be applied to the enterprise, too," says Cisco Vice-President of Corporate Communications Architecture, Jim Grubb. "You can make assumptions about how valuable information is by how often it's accessed." A product brief that becomes the most read among employees, for example, can pinpoint where a company needs to deploy additional internal documentation or ease-of-use resources.

"When people join groups, it says something about the person and about the group," he says. "Groups have a tendency to maintain information because they're passionate about it." Grubb points to an enterprise Wiki created by Cisco employees who use Macintosh computers. "It's only 80 to 90 pages, but it tells you everything you need to know" about connecting a Mac to the Cisco internal network, he says. "Six thousand Macs on the Cisco network, and we're spending zero on IT to support it."

Such economics are convincing companies to expand their Web 2.0 investments. A 2007 survey conducted by New York-based consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that more than three-fourths of those executives plan to maintain or increase their investments in technology trends that encourage user collaboration, such as peer-to-peer networking, social networks, and Web services. The global survey, published in The McKinsey Quarterly, polled 2,847 executives, 44 percent of whom hold C-level positions.

Seventy percent of these execs reported using a combination of the technologies to communicate with their customers. Just over half of respondents use one or more Web 2.0 technologies to help manage knowledge internally. Just under half use the tools to design and develop new products, for example, setting up systems to gather and share ideas (see chart, "Collaboration Is Key".

Collaboration Is Key

Web 2.0 technologies help companies with communication, knowledge management, and product design and development.

 
Use a combination of Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with customers 70%
Use one or more Web 2.0 technologies to communicate with suppliers and partners 51%
Use Web 2.0 technologies to manage collaboration internally, including knowledge management and product design and development 75%
 

Source: The McKinsey Quarterly

Start Small

Partsearch Technologies is an example of a company that started small with Web 2.0 and is now an enthusiastic convert. The Manhattan-based inventory broker's successes with a customer-service chat room and a Wiki, as well as a forthcoming Web-services project, show off the new technologies at their best: harnessing the company's talents to forge tighter bonds with the service representatives and consumers who are its customers.

Through its online catalog, Partsearch tracks eight million spare parts for everything from kitchen appliances to pocket-sized MP3 players. In 2007, it had $60 million in revenues. Customer-service reps who have mastered the enormous system, recalling parts numbers and other details with ease, are invaluable to the company. They are also crucial resources to call-center operations.

An appreciation of that expertise led to a clever blend of human know-how and technology, and to Partsearch's Web 2.0 foray. To make the best use of their co-workers' experience, the call-center staff tweaked job descriptions to create "parts experts," representatives who, rather than handle incoming customer phone calls, instead receive instant-message inquiries from other call reps on obscure parts, tricky features, and any other challenging questions that customers dial in with.

Old-Fashioned Business Results

The new collaboration helped Partsearch leverage the knowledge it had developed among employees and disperse it throughout the call center. The form of collaboration may be modern, but the effect is old-fashioned business results: The increased efficiency earned Partsearch a five-percentage point increase in sales.

Glenn Laumeister, chief executive of the seven-year-old company, is the first to credit his staff for devising the grassroots solution. "I had no idea that it had started," he says. "It was an incremental evolution driven by the people who were using it."

With the newly refined call-center data in hand, employees continued to innovate. They created a homegrown knowledge base, or Wiki, tailored to Partsearch's business. Now, for example, when a customer inquires about the safety of a lithium ion laptop battery, the call-center rep can turn for answers to the knowledge database's section on battery chemistry.

Laumeister estimates that knowledge-management software would have cost $100,000. "We did this without having to buy any software," he says. "What's great about it is that it was the employees' idea. They built it." That makes it the antidote to a common enterprise problem. "Too often," says Laumeister, "someone in corporate gets an idea for someone in the call center to use a new technology. They buy and deploy it-and no one uses it."

Next, the company expects to deploy an integrated Web-services system that Laumeister says will allow repair companies to connect directly with Partsearch's inventory database.

TelePresence and Web Conferencing

Customer demand for innovative products and services is fueling the investment in the new Web 2.0 technologies, including high-definition TelePresence and Web conferencing. Nearly 30 percent of companies polled in a 2008 survey by Cisco point to buyer demand as their motivation for exploring video and other Web 2.0 tools.

Visual collaboration tools like TelePresence are helping companies save millions of dollars in travel costs, claim the new productivity that results from reduced travel, and boost their business performance with such advantages as getting new hires up to speed more quickly.

"To a degree, pretty much every enterprise can leverage conferencing and collaboration," Ira Weinstein, a senior analyst at Wainhouse Research in Duxbury, Mass., said in a video interview. He says one consulting client reports that videoconferencing allows it to interview five times more candidates while slashing interviewing costs by 70 percent.

Weinstein says most large companies have enough bandwidth to run videoconferencing, TelePresence, and Web 2.0 tools. They are also adapting video delivery based on network capabilities and embracing high-performance videoconferencing among branch offices, a lower level of performance among smaller offices, and desktop conferencing to home users.

"The realization is that they're going to expand the network and strengthen the infrastructure over time to enable this," says Weinstein, "but they don't want to miss out on the benefits today."

 
Deborah Asbrand is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass.
http://newsroom.cisco.com/
 

Web page counters

OSCAR geom. BOSCARO

Cell. +39/340/8915887

Firefox 2    Ultimo aggiornamento: 09-08-08    Firefox 2

Telefoni NokiaCreative Commons Licensesegnala sito gratis in directoryGooglerank, pagerank di Google