Dr. D?nal Fitzpatrick:

I thank Dr. Craddock. The European Accessibility Act is currently undergoing transposition activities. It is a European directive that aims to provide a much more homogenised approach, or to resolve diversification and divergent accessibility standards across nation states and bring everything into one market with the objective of creating more widely available accessible products and services for people with disabilities and also affording businesses and organisations the facility to sell their products and services into a larger market. As noted, there are sanctions as part of the Act. They are not seen as the only solution but very much as an aid to inform and penalise under-performing organisations. The Act is clear that the sanctions need to be proportionate, and designed in such a way that they are not seen as an alternative by companies that decide they do not want to make a product or service accessible and will just pay the fine or take the hit. It is important to realise that, in any kind of accessible design, mindset is the key to making something accessible. If one can get across to the organisations that are providing services, designing services or products or manufacturing products that if they make the product or service accessible, that will greatly increase their market share, in addition to them having the moral obligation to do so, it plays to the strengths of organisations. The sanctions are in place and play a part but it is equally important to get that mindset right. There is a lot of cross-government and cross-departmental work, led by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, on this topic to identify appropriate sanctions and penalties and also to give appropriate guidance to organisations on how to make their products and services accessible and how to conform with the requirements of the Act, which will start to come into force in June 2025.