Apriori World – the first regional agency with web page made withing guidelines of European Directive on the Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications
According to the Directive on the Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications, which will be put in to effect on September 23rd, 2018, the public sector will have to adjust to its guidelines, but the Directive will surely set a standard in private sector as well.
This Directive encompasses different target groups of people with special needs, including those with difficulties in reading (dyslexia). There is an estimated 400 thousand such people in Croatian and over 2 million in Slovenia, BiH, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, and Bulgaria. The directive is aimed at blind and nearsighted persons, who will, at the European level, participate as a part of a group in charge of checking and certifying the web pages, at the end confirming their accessibility.
Apriori World is the first consulting agency in the area of communication management which made a web page in accordance with the Directives guidelines and has been checked bi blind and nearsighted persons. According to the Directive, the WCAG standard (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) has to be reached in order for the page to have the A3C certificate.
Advantages and differences of certified pages were explained by certified developer, Josip Bukal: „ The web page made by WCAG standard means that it can be used by any blind or nearsighted person, every media content is described including the text itself so that screen reader can recognize it, it makes the use of keyboard through entire page possible, it is adjusted to all screen sizes and it is adjusted for all search engines and their tools for web accessibility.“
Directive opens the possibility of social entrepreneurship for blind and nearsighted persons. They will be checking and pointing out eventual mistakes after developers and programmers make new pages. Through that program of certification, which will be charged, they will be creating their own income.
In the project of developing www.aprioriworld.net, participated certified developers Nikola Ivančić and Josip Bukal, and it was checked by the members of the Association of blind persons Zagreb: Tea Turković, Fran Skračić, and Hrvoje Katić.