Digital technologies increasingly shape how people work, learn, communicate and use public services. When products and services are not accessible, they fail to be inclusive and persons with disabilities, children and senior people may be left out. Europe and China have both made digital accessibility a legal obligation, and both rely on technical standards to translate legal requirements in practical means to deliver accessibility. The value those standards offer is higher when they are aligned across borders: users meet a consistent level of accessibility, and manufacturers face consistent requirements in both markets. That shared ambition brought European and Chinese experts together on 28 October 2026 for the EU?China Workshop on Digital Accessibility for ICT Products and Services, organised by InDiCo-Global in collaboration with SESEC.<\/p>
The online event brought together representatives from standards organisations, policy, academia, civil society, testing and certification, as well as industry, across two time zones. Participants examined the regulatory frameworks in both regions ? the European Accessibility Act (EAA) and China\u2019s Barrier-Free Environment Construction Law ? and the related standards (including the European harmonized standard EN 301 549<\/a>) together with testing and conformity assessment, and the process by which legal requirements are turned into technical standards.<\/p> Eugenia Kypriotis (Martel Innovate) opened the workshop on behalf of the organisers. She noted that the European commitment is anchored in the EAA and supported by EN 301 549, developed by ETSI, CEN and CENELEC and recently revised to meet the requirements of the EEA revision, while China is strengthening its own legislation and standards for barrier-free environments. The two regions follow different regulatory paths towards a similar goal, which is why dialogue between them matters as it can enable a possible convergence. Xavier Piednoir (ETSI) moderated the sessions and the panel during this workshop that forms part of the EU-funded InDiCo-Global project, implemented together with CEN, CENELEC, Martel Innovate, Trust-IT, and COMMpla with the aim to strengthen international cooperation on ICT standardisation.<\/p> What emerged was a picture of two regions with distinct regulatory and legal approaches but with technical solutions building on a common technical foundation in WCAG, the internationally recognized Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and a shared recognition that standards only matter if they work for people in practice.<\/p> The first session set out the legal and policy frameworks in both regions, with presentations from an independent accessibility policy expert, the European Disability Forum, CAICT, Beijing Union University and T\u00dcV Rheinland Greater China. Both regions have moved from voluntary commitments to binding law, making it clear that inclusiveness is not an option. The routes differ, but the destination is the same.<\/p> Inmaculada Placencia Porrero, an independent accessibility and disability policy expert who led the drafting and negotiation of the EAA during her time at the European Commission, began with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Both the EU and China are bound by it, and it treats accessibility as a general principle running through every right, from education to access to justice.<\/p> Before the EU acted, national accessibility rules lacked harmonisation. Some covered only the built environment, others only websites, and many set aspirational goals without detailed requirements. The EAA and the European legislations before it gradually replaced this patchwork with common requirements for a defined set of products and services, including computers, telephones, ATMs, banking services, e-books, e-commerce and emergency communications. Products must comply before they are placed on the EU market, and importers carry the same obligations as EU manufacturers. The Web Accessibility Directive (WAD), a precursor to the EAA, covered public-sector websites and apps, and accessibility requirements also apply in public procurement and EU funding. Inmaculada Placencia Porrero concluded that accessibility legislation works when it combines clear responsibilities, realistic timeframes, standards grounded in users\u2019 needs, and enforcement mechanisms.<\/p> Alejandro Moledo, Deputy Director and Head of Policy at the European Disability Forum (EDF), explained why the community of persons with disabilities pushed for legislation. Political commitments, such as deadlines for making all public websites accessible, were repeatedly missed. EDF therefore pursued a twin track: dedicated (horizontal) accessibility laws, and accessibility requirements written into other (sectoral) EU legislation, including on artificial intelligence, the European Digital Identity Wallet and the digital euro.<\/p> The EAA\u2019s requirements are functional: they define outcomes rather than prescribe technical solutions, and harmonised standards give companies a practical way to demonstrate compliance. Under standardisation request M\/587, three existing standards are being revised: EN 301 549 on ICT accessibility, delivered in August 2026, EN 17161 on Design for All and EN 17210 on the built environment.<\/strong> Three new standards are also being developed, covering non-digital information (EN 18339), customer support services (EN 18340) and access to the 112 emergency number (EN <\/a>303 919<\/a>). For EDF, a priority in the revision of EN 301 549 was interoperability for real-time text, which transmits text as it is typed, so a deaf person can make a text call anywhere in Europe as easily as others make a voice call. He also flagged what EDF considers as barriers that disability organisations face in standardisation: membership costs, inaccessible systems and the predominant influence of industry.<\/p> Wang Li, Deputy Chief Engineer of the Institute of Industry and Planning, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), reported that nearly 500 million older people and persons with disabilities in China have limited access to digital products and services. He noted that while the urban?rural connectivity gap has narrowed considerably, the gap in actual use of ICT has widened.<\/p> China\u2019s response combines law, policy and standards. The Barrier-Free Environment Construction Law, adopted in September 2023, is the country\u2019s first dedicated accessibility law and includes a chapter on accessible information exchange. Since January 2021, a special campaign led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has adapted more than 3,000 websites and apps used by seniors and people with disabilities, adding features such as large fonts, voice prompts and full keyboard operation. Telecom operators have introduced dedicated services, and device manufacturers have expanded age-friendly and accessible hardware. China has also issued nearly 30 standards on age-friendly and accessible ICT.<\/p> Prof. Qu Xin, who served as Vice Dean of the College of Special Education, Beijing Union University, speaking in a personal capacity as an educator with 24 years of teaching blind and deaf students, asked what happens after a standard is published. Once a system goes live, can people actually use it? She called this \u201cthe second half of the standard\u201d.<\/p> Accessibility used to be built once: a ramp, a lift, a Braille textbook. Today, much of it is a service that has to keep running, from live captions and speech-to-text to screen readers and AI tools. In her experience, a system can stay online while its accessibility features quietly stop working, and it is often unclear who is responsible for restoring them. That makes maintenance and accountability as important as initial design. She closed with an image from one of her students: standards should not only check that the umbrella passed a test but also ensure that it is actually open every time someone needs it.<\/p> Eris Chen, Project Manager at T\u00dcV Rheinland Greater China, looked at both frameworks from the perspective of testing and certification. Under the EAA, manufacturers must assess conformity, prepare technical documentation and an EU declaration of conformity, and apply the CE marking before a product reaches the market. The recently published EN 301 549 V4.1.1 updates the requirements for web content, software and documents from WCAG 2.1 to WCAG 2.2, but until it is cited in the Official Journal of the EU, V3.2.1 remains the harmonised reference.<\/p> In China, accessibility is mandatory in areas such as construction, certain public facilities and self-service terminals, while for consumer electronics and mobile apps it is driven mainly by guidance. The new five-year plan for persons with disabilities, issued in July 2026, shifts the emphasis towards accessibility across the whole product lifecycle, including AI-enabled support. She illustrated what this means in design: packaging that opens with one hand, QR codes linking to accessible manuals, status signals that do not rely on colour alone, and a tactile dot on the number 5 key of self-service terminals.<\/p> The second session moved from policy to technical detail, with speakers from the European Standardisation Organisations (CEN, CENELEC, ETSI), Zhejiang University and vivo Communication Technology Co., Ltd., examining how legal requirements become testable criteria. In both regions, that process draws heavily on WCAG.<\/p> Susanna Laurin, Chair of the CEN\/CENELEC\/ETSI Joint Technical Body on e-Accessibility, started with a point she said is often misunderstood. The accessibility requirements are set out in the EAA itself, in its annex. EN 301 549 does not set them; it describes one way of meeting them. A product that conforms to the harmonised standard is presumed to conform to the law, but companies may use other solutions if they can justify them. Keeping requirements in law and technical detail in standards is deliberate: legislation moves slowly, while standards can be updated as technology evolves, including with AI.<\/p> She noted that EN 301 549 is still published as a PDF that many people with disabilities find hard to read. She highlighted on the other hand that Canada, one of the many adopters beyond the European Union borders, has published it in accessible HTML, together with a tool that helps procurers select the requirements relevant to what they are buying, and she expressed her strong desire for the EU to follow suit. Her favourite principle in the EAA, she said, is maximising foreseeable use: making sure as many people as possible can use a product or service.<\/p> Ulrike Haltrich, Chair of ETSI TC Human Factors, presented the committee\u2019s 2026 output. Alongside EN 301 549 V4.1.1, published by ETSI in August 2026, it has produced a technical report on applying EN 301 549 to televisions, set-top boxes and streaming devices, a standard on relay services, and a technical report on services for children. The TV report illustrates something several speakers returned to later: general standards are easier to apply when they are translated for a specific sector. Ongoing work covers cognitive accessibility, AI-based assistive technologies and the discoverability of accessibility features.<\/p> Shadi Abou-Zahra, accessibility expert involved in ETSI?s TC Human Factors, traced the standard from its first edition in 2014, developed for EU public procurement, through the 2018 update for the Web Accessibility Directive, to V4.1.1 for the EAA. Two features explain its reach. The functional performance criteria provide a fallback for new products that specific requirements do not yet cover. The clauses on web content, documents, and software are built on WCAG and remain compatible with earlier WCAG 2.x versions, so countries can adopt the standard while moving between versions at their own pace.<\/p> The result is broad international alignment. EN 301 549 is consistent with US Section 508 and has been adopted or referenced in countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Turkey and the United Kingdom. As Shadi put it, a person\u2019s disability does not change when they cross a border.<\/p> Wang Wei (Zhejiang University), a member of the W3C Advisory Committee, described how Chinese web accessibility standards have tracked WCAG: an industry standard referenced WCAG 1.0 for the Beijing 2008 Olympic websites, a 2012 edition adopted WCAG 2.0, and GB\/T 37668 became China\u2019s first national web content accessibility standard in 2019. Its revised edition, now in final approval, adopts ISO\/IEC 40500 (WCAG 2.2) and extends from websites to mobile apps and smart devices, with drafting organisations growing from 14 to 20, including Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO, vivo, Tencent and Ant Group.<\/p> Mobile is where the pressure is, with more than 1.25 billion monthly mobile internet users in China. The most common failures are basic: a button a screen reader can only announce as \u201cbutton\u201d, a keyboard trap, an illogical focus order. To find them at scale, his team developed an automated testing tool that combines a robotic arm, AI recognition of interface elements and review by users with disabilities. It has been used for services connected to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and the Hangzhou Asian Games. Noting that China and Europe share the same root in WCAG, he proposed four areas for cooperation: mapping GB\/T 37668 to EN 301 549, joint testing methods, joint research on AI and accessibility, and joint proposals in ISO\/IEC JTC 1 and W3C.<\/p> Wang Yazhong, Strategy Development Specialist at vivo Mobile Communication Co., Ltd and Vice Chair of CCSA TC619, showed how a device manufacturer is applying AI to accessibility. For deaf and hard-of-hearing users, vivo offers real-time speech-to-text, text-based phone calls, alerts for sounds such as alarms or a baby crying, and a sign language translator that recognises over 12,000 signs. For blind and partially sighted users, AI-based visual assistance reads text, QR codes and surroundings aloud.<\/p> vivo also contributes to national standards, including GB\/T 32632 on the accessibility of ICT terminal devices and GB\/T 47517 on sign language digital humans. The case for the latter is a capacity gap: China has more than 20 million deaf people but fewer than 10,000 qualified sign language interpreters. The underlying conviction, as he put it, is that accessibility must work on the devices people already carry.<\/p> Moderated by Xavier Piednoir (ETSI), the panel brought speakers from both sessions together to draw out the similarities, differences and opportunities that had run through the presentations. Five themes dominated.<\/p> Inmaculada Placencia Porrero saw more parallel development between the two regions than she had expected. The clearest difference is in the private sector: accessibility requirements for products and services are mandatory in the EU and largely voluntary in China. A level playing field, she argued, helps companies because they know the baseline and can compete on going beyond it. Legal cultures are hard to change, but technical bodies can create coherence by agreeing on technical solutions that work under different laws. The EU took this approach with the United States (Section 508) from 2005, and the international uptake of EN 301 549 shows the result. She named real-time text, total conversation and interoperability with assistive technologies as areas where common standards would directly benefit users.<\/p> A shared technical foundation does not mean identical standards. Prof. Qu Xin stressed that cultural differences and user habits require local adaptation. Eris Chen pointed to Chinese mini-programs and character input, which do not map neatly onto test methods written for Latin scripts, and noted that different legal systems make mutual recognition impossible for now. Her advice to manufacturers was to design once for both markets and check compliance separately in each. Shadi Abou-Zahra added that some requirements, such as text size and colour contrast, rest on research into Latin scripts and may not transfer to Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. W3C is addressing this in its work on WCAG 3.0, but he was clear that it can only be solved with the direct participation of the language communities affected.<\/p> Asked whether today\u2019s standards are enough, Susanna Laurin answered yes for the law and no for practice. Accessibility depends on active user organisations, skilled professionals and, above all, developers and designers with at least basic knowledge. Ulrike Haltrich called for more sector-specific guidance and for help in turning requirements into procurement specifications. Shadi Abou-Zahra noted that awareness of accessibility has grown faster than practical capability, and that it is still largely missing from IT curricula.<\/p> Wang Yazhong described the Chinese situation. Because most accessibility standards there are recommended rather than mandatory, awareness largely decides whether they are used. Large companies tend to know them; smaller companies, public procurers and end users often do not, and many users are unaware that their phones already have the features they need. He proposed targeted training for developers in smaller companies, procurement staff, public service organisations such as hospitals and transport operators, and user organisations, run jointly by industry, standards bodies and government.<\/p> Susanna Laurin welcomed the fact that accessibility requirements are now being written into EU standards on cybersecurity and AI, so that accessibility is not treated as a separate silo added at the end. Inmaculada Placencia Porrero urged standards organisations to flag missing accessibility requirements whenever the European Commission consults on new standardisation requests, pointing to mandate M\/473 as earlier work to build on. The moderator proposed that accessibility by design become a guiding principle for standardisation, alongside security and privacy by design.<\/p> Responding to questions from the audience about mutual recognition, the moderator distinguished between the technical and political layers. Technical organisations, including ETSI, CEN, CENELEC, W3C and CCSA, can work towards technical alignment now. That alignment can then serve as a foundation for policymakers to consider mutual recognition. Even before that point, it reduces technical barriers to trade and gives persons with disabilities a more consistent experience. He also noted that ETSI\u2019s membership model allows Chinese organisations to contribute directly to its technical committees, and that ETSI has a cooperation agreement with CCSA.<\/p> Three main findings stood out from the workshop.<\/p> The technical foundation is already shared. The EU and China are both bound by the UN CRPD, both have dedicated accessibility legislation, and their core standards, EN 301 549 and GB\/T 37668, both build on WCAG 2.2. The legal approaches differ, particularly in how far obligations extend to private-sector products and services, but the technical questions are the same: how to make interfaces perceivable and operable, how to test them, and how to keep them working. That common root is the practical basis for cooperation.<\/p> The gap that needs closing is technical and practical before it is political. Mapping the two sets of standards, aligning test methods, and accounting for scripts, local platforms and assistive technologies are all work that technical bodies can start now. Mutual recognition remains a decision for policymakers, but technical alignment is a necessary foundation on which a potential mutual recognition builds.<\/p> And standards are only a part of the job. Speakers from both regions agreed that standards need training, awareness, procurement guidance, user participation and long-term maintenance to deliver accessibility in practice. They noted that more cooperation would be welcome on all these aspects, and not only the development of the standards. As the moderator observed, accessibility, like cybersecurity, is never finished: each new technology, including AI, can either narrow the digital divide or widen it.<\/p> The full recording can be accessed \u5728\u8fd9\u91cc<\/a>.<\/p> Presentation slides can be downloaded from \u5728\u8fd9\u91cc<\/a>.<\/p>Session 1: Policy and regulatory initiatives in Europe and China<\/h2>
Europe: from fragmentation to common rules<\/h3>
Why binding rules matter<\/h3>
China\u2019s legal and policy push<\/h3>
The second half of the standard<\/h3>
From regulation to conformity<\/h3>
Session 2: Translating policy and regulation into technical standards<\/h2>
Requirements in law, solutions in standards<\/h3>
Sector guidance from ETSI TC Human Factors<\/h3>
EN 301 549 as a global reference<\/h3>
China\u2019s path to WCAG 2.2<\/h3>
Accessibility in the pocket<\/h3>
Panel discussion: Convergence, gaps and cooperation<\/h2>
Common foundations, different legal cultures<\/h3>
Localisation is not optional<\/h3>
Standards are necessary, but not sufficient<\/h3>
Mainstreaming accessibility by design<\/h3>
Technical alignment first<\/h3>
Conclusions<\/h2>