Russian accessibility laws

Russia

There is a Russian governement law that stipulates that people with
disabilities are entitled to live their life to full potential and that
special means for achieving this goal should be developed  (Federal
Government law 24.11.1995 #181-fz).  It is very general without any
reference to the web accessibility.

There are no specific Russian government of industry standards for web
accessibility.

http://www.disability.ru is the portal that is designed for people with
disabilities providing various kind of information re government
regulations, policies and everything related to this topic.  It was fo
founded and developed by Pavel Lapin.

Pavel has created his portal, gathered information regarding best practices
and best devices for disabled developed world wide. Portal has been
developed specifically for screen readers.
He was able to solve the main problem: lack of communication between people
with disabilities and lack of any organization for them.
He created chat that is accessible by blind people. He claims that this is
the only chat that is accessible in Russia and, as far as he knows, in the
world. At this moment, he is working on a new version of chat with the
virtual keyboard.
Additional links to his sites:Sites:  http://flash.polarcom.ru
Book1:  http://www.piter.com/book_about.phtml?id=978531800621
Book2:  http://www.piter.com/book_about.phtml?id=978594723484
 
__________________
Below is some information re state of Internet and web accessibility in
Russia that can be of interest to you
_______________________________--
Some Russian stats:

At the begining of 2003 year we have following results of interent metrics
in Russia (there was calculation of people older then 10 years).
1) Regular audience of internet in Russian is 5.1 mln users. It's 3.9% of
all Russian population.
2) Large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have 3.6 mln audience. It's
6% of their population.
3) 78% of internet users visit web sites.
4) 72% use e-mails.
5) 21% communicate using ICQ.
6) 51% use other internet services.
7) In November & December 2002 average time of using internet by one user
was 474 minutes per week. It's 10% more then in the begining of 2002 year.

List of most popular web sites in Russia:
- Yandex (search system & directory with useful free services www.yandex.ru)
have audience of 48.9% of total internet users.
- Rambler (search system & directory www.rambler.ru) with 39.8%
- Mail.ru (free e-mail www.mail.ru) with 31.7%
- Mult.ru (cartoon flash film "Masyanya" www.mult.ru) with 9.9%
- Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) with 8.6%
- Russia-Online (internet provider & portal with services www.rol.ru) with
7.6%
- Lenta.ru (hot news, online magazine www.lenta.ru) with 6.9%
- AltaVista (www.altavista.com) with 5.7%
- Google (www.google.com) with 5.6%
- Auto.ru (forum for car drivers www.auto.ru) with 5.3%

The number of internet users in Russia are swiftly growing from year to
year. 


"In fact, there is a problem in Russia to create normal web site for common
users :)
Only 3...5 agencies can do normal web sites. So picture of web industry in
Russia is:
- 7...15 (may be a bit more) web sites which more or less comply
accessibility standards
- 100...150 web sites have normal/good usability 
- all other web sites have problems with usability & accessibility"

Received on Friday, 14 February 2003 10:03:01 UTC