Online Citizen Participation - Accessible and Successful

The field of political participation for people with disabilities is of high priority after the Federal Government of Germany signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and prepared a National Action Plan. Moreover, barrier-free access to e-government websites was determined as a political aim in the National E-Government Strategy of 24 September 2010.

For determining type and extent of the remaining barriers for non-discrimatory political participation for all citizens in more detail, we will examine usability and acceptance of selected online participation offers. This is a precondition for being able to further reduce these barriers and take suitable measures.

This project will be carried out in close cooperation with the Digital Opportunities Foundation. Its aim is to get an overview over exemplary online citizen participation procedures in view of their accessibility according to BIT-V 2.0 and of their suitability to promote citizen participation and effect citizen polls in due consideration of the participation of people with disabilities.

The examples of good practice thus identified will be publicly presented so that they can serve as examples for other providers. Thus they will help to raise the number of accessible and acceptable online participation offers. A further aim of the project is to prepare guidelines for accessible online participation procedures.