EN 301 549

Hello and welcome to the EN 301 549 appendix to the WCAG week here at CHAS.

This is basically to get you into the mindset of thinking about like, oh, there's other standards around as well.

And one of those standards is the EN 301 549, which is accessibility requirements for ICT products and services.

And this is basically the standard, the European norm that the European Accessibility Act is based on, which is the legal requirement for companies that came into effect on June 28th, 2025.

The current version is 3.2.1 from 2021 and the next version is scheduled to be published sometime in 2026.

So...

There will be major changes.

But yeah, that's just the general schedule, we don't yet know if that's going to hold.

There is currently version 4 that they claim is basically done, but there are a lot of

nibbles and quibbles and things that might improve.

So, DEN is published by the European Telecommunication Standards Institute, or ETSI, which is basically

the W3C for these European norms.

And it's an independent, not-for-profit standardization organization, and they do like technical standards,

basically like W3.

Not the most exciting thing, but they are responsible for putting the EN into existence.

And now you would think like, oh, we already have WCAG, now is the EN something completely different?

What's the deal?

And luckily enough, one thing that Etsy decided to do is to harmonize with WCAG.

Like, harmonization means that the EN-301-549 contains all of WCAG 2.1, but with some adaptations.

And I will not go into details, because, like, as I said, like, in 2026, there's probably a new version out.

So, going into details will probably just, like...

you know, might just give you information that is quickly outdated.

The other thing is, like, the core is WCAG,

and then there are other things around it,

and you just have to be aware what is around WCAG.

Okay.

Especially for web.

But that's one of the interesting things, is how the EN is actually structured.

So it has 14 chapters, which I would usually not put onto one slide, but it's easier this way to see them all.

So it starts with scope, what the EN is about, references like other documents,

3. The definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations.

So you get that at the front, WCAG is always at the bottom.

And then it goes into the real deal of the norm.

So you have your functional performance.

So this basically describes for different disability types what is required to do.

And it's basically a preamble to the rest of the standard.

It's quite interesting.

I don't think it's like super useful in practice.

It might be useful in user testing to look at these functional performance definitions.

Then you have generic requirements, which is basically like

Everything that doesn't fall into a specific category because what the EN does is they split up the technology into different sections.

Anything that's more general goes into generic requirements and then it goes with chapter 6 into ICT with two-way voice communication.

So this would be your online chat, your online doctor's appointment, stuff like that.

So...

That would fall under the ICT, but this is only for voice.

And then you have in chapter 7 ICT.

um with video cap capabilities so this is basically separated but then you get like okay

what is required for icd with video cap capabilities and now you will say like oh

but in regex we already have like captions and audio descriptions

stuff like that.

That is all about video capabilities.

And this is where this document goes a step beyond WCAG.

These are these additions that I mentioned.

So basically, they rely on WCAG to say you have to have captions.

ICT with video capabilities, chapter 7 says, how do you enable captions?

and how and it also says like if you're transforming from one format into another

the information has to be intact so stuff like that is is regulated with this en

then there's hardware so this is for all your your real life things like when you buy a product

making sure that it's you know

Haptic, you get haptic feedback.

This is also for like if you have a kiosk system or an ATM or something like that, that

you can actually like with a wheelchair roll up to it and you don't have like problems

with reaching controls and stuff like that.

That's all in hardware.

It's not super relevant for web,

but it's a super interesting chapter

to at least skim through

because it reflects a lot of needs

in the real world for a lot of people.

Then there's web, which is basically what WCAG is covering.

Then there are non-web documents and software in 9, 10 and 11.

And I put arrows next to them because this is where WCAG basically got put into and I

will show you in a moment how.

But basically for all the three chapters, WCAG is the basis of what you have to do.

And there are documentation and support services at 12.

13 is ICT providing relay or emergency service access.

And then 14 is conformance.

And like most of the time when you do like testing or like finding the requirements that apply to you,

you will go through this list and say like, oh, we don't have any like requirements.

software like apps, you don't have that, and then you will just ignore it, that section.

So that's how that goes.

Let's look at how they applied WCAG to this.

I have a couple of examples of these requirements.

like from generic requirements

we have this 5.3 biometrics

so this is for your authentication

using your fingerprint

or your face scan

or whatever you have

it says like where ICT uses

biological characteristics

it shall not rely on the use

of a particular biological characteristic

as the only means

of user identification

or for control of ICT

So basically they say like, okay, you have to provide an alternative for your biological characteristics because not everyone has a fingerprint, not everyone has like a good enough face scan or like a face scan that works with that biometric.

identification service.

And we saw that with Face ID from Apple, where they put in a specific setting that, you know,

if you are blind and you cannot focus your eyes or you cannot control your eye movement,

which is one of the...

One of the reasons why people have bad eyesight is because their muscles can't coordinate as people with healthy eyesight do.

They put in an option to say like, oh, ignore this awareness scan, which basically says like, oh, you have to look directly at the phone.

and they use the rest, and that makes it inherently less secure, but also usable.

But also you can just opt into entering a PIN code or doing something else.

So you have different ways to do it, and that's what this requirement requires you to do.

And this is what happens with WCAG stuff.

So you have the box of WCAG, in this case, for the example, it's 2.1.1 keyboard.

And then this is put in and referenced in the web section in 9.2.1.1, so put a 9 in

front, it's for web.

Put a 10 in front, it's for documents, 10.2.1.1 keyboard, or it's for software, 11.2.1.1.1.

Thanks.

It's actually 1.1 too many in this graphic.

And then you see that in the software part, it actually, there is a 0.1 and a 0.2.

which basically requests you to do different things if it's open functionality,

so that means the software is based on an open system like your Windows or Mac or iOS or Android,

or if it's closed functionality, so that software only works with this particular hardware.

like an ATM or a ticket machine or something like that.

So they have split that up.

And so you have different keyboard requirements for software.

It's not a lot of things that get split up like that, but some do.

And then we all know and love our keyboard functionality requirement from WCAG.

Our functionality of the content is operable through a keyboard interface without requiring

specific timings for individual keystrokes except dot dot dot.

Not going into exceptions here.

And that's just the WCAG thing.

And then for 9.2.1.1.

It basically says like where ICT is a web page, it shall satisfy WCAG 2.1 success criteria

and 2.1.1 keyboard.

So you get this like, oh, if it's a web page, then do WCAG 2.1.

And the document one looks exactly the same.

Where ICT is a non-web document, it shall satisfy the WCAG 2.1 success criteria and

2.1.1 keyboard.

Pretty straightforward. And then we go into the software one which has these

two things. So for open functionality you actually want to satisfy the WCAG 2.1

success criterion 2.1.1 keyboard. And so

So this is basically where you say, okay, if it's an app on an open system, you install the app yourself, then it needs to basically work like any other app or like any other website and just take the keyboard from the systems.

It's non-web software that provides user interface which is close to keyboards or keyboard interface,

so you cannot put in your own keyboard.

Then it shall meet requirement 5.1.6.1 operation without keyboard interface closed functionality,

which is basically going back to the generic requirements.

And I didn't put 5.1.6.1 here, but we can look at the EN document, which is unfortunately

a PDF.

I don't like that it's a PDF, but that's what it is.

I will show you a way to access it in HTML form for more accessibility here.

And that was 5.1.6.1.

1.6.1 let's see how complicated that is. 5.1.6

1.6.1 close functionality. Let me zoom in a little bit. Not only for your sake but

mostly for mine. And we see that

It doesn't want me to move.

It doesn't want me to go away.

Come on.

There we go.

5.1.6.1, yes, that's what it is.

Close functionality.

Where ICT functionality is close to keyboard,

so keyboard interface all functionality

shall be operable without vision

as required by clause 5.1.3.

So, needs to be operable without vision,

and that is required by clause 5.1.3.

So, now we go back to 5.1.3,

which is a lot of fun stuff.

Scrolling here through, let's see if it is here.

There, 513.

513.

Here, non-visual access. And basically now you have to support all the things that are in here.

And you see that there are a couple of things: audio output of visual information,

audio output delivery including speech.

Then we have on the next page,

this is not the next page, this is the next page,

we have auditory output correlation,

we have speed output user control, we have speech output automatic interruption,

speech output for Nantex content, speech output for video information.

So there's a lot of requirements in 5.1.3.

There is no...

nothing about using keyboards specifically.

which is a choice, like, oh, now you choose to not have a keyboard,

like you only have a touchscreen or something like that,

then you have to make sure that all these criteria are met.

Okay.

And now I'm going to show you the link that I talked about.

So if you go to about.en301549.info, this is by Marcus Herrmann, really good web page,

basically URL shortener for the URL.

for the standard, so you can go to just en301549.info and you go directly to the pdf of the current

standard, which is what I showed you. You can also go to the next version by going to

which gets you onto a git type of issue and then you can download it.

The revised clean version is usually what you want.

So if you want to look into the future, you know you can.

I don't think you necessarily should, but you can.

Then you have a couple of versions back, if you're interested in that.

And then you have the slash HTML one that basically goes to the government of Canada.

Because Canada actually took it on to themselves to publish the standard version.

in HTML form. So you can go here to the table of contents and then you see here

generic requirements, 5.1.3, that's the most non-visual access we just looked at.

And then you have all the content in nice

HTML, you know, to copy and paste and edit and, you know, just use for your own stuff.

So really useful.

And I often use this to link to stuff because it's easier to link to it than to a PDF.

That's just a fact.

And so, yeah, thank you, Canada, for doing this.

And thank you, Markus Herrmann, for putting together the URLshorteneren301549.info, because I think it's super useful.

Yeah, and that's all for the EN. Take a look, like, it's not a requirement for the course.

We will mostly talk about WCAG, because it's such an integral part.

of what

web accessibility is

and like if you have WCAG as a

basis you're

very far into

like making it compliant to the

EN as well so

yeah

thank you very much for listening and

see you soon