The EESC is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

This accessibility statement applies to the website https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/.

Body making the statement

European Economic and Social Committee

Rue Belliard/Belliardstraat 99

B-1040 Bruxelles/Brussel

Belgium

Contact: webeesc

Compliance status

This website is compliant with the WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 standards.

Results of testing

An audit of the site was carried out by an external company for the WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 criteria.

WCAG 2.0

The website audit found 100% overall compliance with the criteria of the WCAG 2.0 standard at the applicable A and AA levels, as follows:

• 100% compliance with A-level criteria
• 100% compliance with AA-level criteria

WCAG 2.1

The website audit found 100% overall compliance with the criteria of the WCAG 2.1 standard at the applicable A and AA levels, as follows:

• 100% compliance with the A-level criteria
• 100% compliance with the AA-level criteria

Non-accessible content

Third-party content

• Twitter timeline: on certain pages (such as the "EESC President” page), the EESC gives access to its Twitter timeline. The code displayed and its formatting cannot be altered by the EESC. This content is covered by the derogation for third-party content.
• YouTube videos are embedded within the site, and these may present certain shortcomings.

Site content

The content set out below is content published by the EESC which is not fully compliant with the accessibility rules.

Multimedia content

The EESC's website contains numerous videos. These videos are very often included for illustrative purposes to accompany articles. As they do not constitute the core content of the site, and given the large number of these videos, it was felt that making them accessible would constitute a disproportionate burden.

For some videos there are no subtitles, and in other cases the subtitles are embedded and cannot be disabled, or they are not in the language of the video.

However, a verbatim transcript is available for each of the videos included in the audit underpinning this statement, and the EESC is working to provide such transcripts in structured text for all published videos containing information, as a minimum.

Office automation documents

The EESC regularly produces a very large number of office automation documents. All such documents currently published are in certain ways non-compliant (although this does not block consultation of the information).

These include the documents available in the "Our work" section ("Opinions", "Information reports", etc.), as well as in other sections ("News", for example).

In view of the large number of documents already published, it was felt that making all of them accessible would be a disproportionate burden. However, the EESC is working on an accessible model to bring future publications into line.

Some of the PDFs (such as those published on the "About" page) are not accessible. These are publications regarded as archived at the time of the audit. As such, they are subject to derogation.

Right to compensation

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 27 September 2019.

An external company audited 30 pages of the website for all of the A and AA criteria under standard WCAG 2.0.

Pages of the site for which the verification of compliance was carried out

The audit covered a sample of 30 representative pages of the site. Only the English version of the pages was audited, although errors were corrected on the other versions of the site and on many pages of the site, not included in this sample.

1. Home
2. Navigation menu
3. About
4. EESC President
5. Organisational chart
6. Opinions (with filters)
7. Opinion
8. Publications (Advanced search included)
9. Policy
10. Search result
11. All events
12. Programme - ECI day 2018
13. Press release
14. EESCinfo July 2018
15. The EESC on Social media
16. Media library
17. Photo gallery
18. Video Civil society days 2018
19. Contact the press office
20. Presentation - Workers' Group
21. Organisation - Workers' Group
22. List of partners organisations
23. How to reach us
24. Site map
25. Jobs
26. CESlink
27. Speakers
28. Step by step procedure
29. EESC President Team
30. Video featuring president (embedded subtitles)

Technical information on site development and accessibility verification tests

Technologies used for site development

• HTML5
• CSS
• JavaScript

User agents and assistive technologies used to check content accessibility

Screen reader support tests for the rich components were carried out on the following combinations:

• Firefox 69.1 / NVDA 2019
• Internet Explorer 11 and JAWS 2018

Feedback and contact information

Please help us to improve content accessibility by using the contact address below to let us know of any problems you may experience or to request access to inaccessible information or documents. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Webeesc

Enforcement procedure

Should you encounter a problem with accessibility that prevents you from accessing content or a feature on the site, and should you inform us and not receive a satisfactory response from us within a reasonable timeframe, you are entitled to make a complaint to the European Ombudsman:

• by submitting a complaint online through the European Ombudsman's website;
• by sending a completed complaint form by post:

Jean-Pierre Villain, Managing Director of Access42