May 03, 2012

The TRA is responsible for facilitating the access of disabled persons to Telecommunications Services as per its duties mentioned in Telecom law 431/2002, specifically Article 5. As part of its prerogative in protecting telecom consumers, the TRA has developed and implemented an audio feature in its Consumers web section which gives accessibility to the vision-impaired to inform them of their rights in the telecommunications field.

Internet access, coupled with graphical user interfaces and browsers, has become common in education, businesses, and at home. However, due to the widespread use of GUIs, the so-called enabling technologies for sighted have become disabling technologies for the visually-impaired.

Visually-impaired users are less and less able to benefit from the enormous wealth of archived digital multimedia that is offered over Internet.

It is estimated that many people that are vision-impaired access the net every day, and for them audio features are definitely services that they look forward to. The website that has audio features increases the value of the pages for the visitors. It has the potential to draw a better and meaningful traffic on the website and the audio feature is an important element of the multimedia resources.

The TRA has been encouraging all Lebanese telecom providers to constantly make efforts in providing accessibility to the disabled as per the Authority’s previous roundtables and communication efforts and within the context of this latest effort, the TRA urges Service Providers to do the same and enhance their websites accordingly.