Although Croatia has made significant progress in developing public e-services, some segments of populations such as people with disabilities and aging population are not consulted along the process. Consequently, some services are not adjusted to the needs of people with disabilities that could have considerably benefited from e-services. Digital divide within the country is not addressed as well although there is an initiative of the Ministry of Economy to establish cyber cafes for SMEs in rural areas of Croatia. Computer literacy is an integral part of school curriculum but senior population is not covered. E-learning is getting more momentum within the University of Zagreb but students with special needs did not benefit from it so far.

Preparatory work

Due to the short time available for the project execution, workshop was conceived as working session with emphasis on accessibility of e-services for persons with special needs/disabilities.  Original list of attendees was much larger than the final one but some organisations (associations of persons with disabilities) had no interest or resources to participate.

 

The Central state office for eCroatia was very supportive and suggested speakers and provided contacts with other public institutions. The deputy state secretary for eCroatia, Ms Šimić confirmed her participation promptly encouraging other participants to attend the workshop as well.
Preliminary data on availability of e-services were available since the Office for eCroatia regularly commissions research following the EU methodology.  Data on accessibility of e-services are missing.  A short survey on use of ICT for inclusion in Croatia, commissioned by ZaMirNET did not generate many useful information confirming thus that use of ICT for people with special needs in Croatia in rather limited. Even the web sites of public institutions, with few exceptions, are not accessible.

Workshop

Working session was smooth and, according to the participants, very useful. The opportunity was used for information exchange about new initiatives of public institutions that are not made known to the wider audience. It is rather unclear whether media did not show interest in providing satisfactory coverage or institutions themselves did not pay much attention to providing information about their work. It may be the case as well that those initiatives are interpreted as very specific and of interest to the smaller group of experts in the field and therefore kept out of attention of wider audience.  Accordingly, specific interest groups or stakeholders did not have their opportunities for suggestions that may contribute to improved initiatives.

Diana Šimić of eCroatia provided an overview of the activities related to the eCroatia Programme and commented that an input from the organisations of people with disabilities is necessary to improve current e-services.  The last project of the Office, a portal www.mojauprava.hr was developed in line accessibility guidelines of W3C initiative. In general, Croatia is investing in development of e-services and the achievements are considerable. Jelena Manic presented status of e-services in Serbia and Mr. Bardhyl Jashari presented the status of e-services in Macedonia. In both cases there is lack of attention paid to the accessibility of services. Aleksandar Ugrinoski of Agency for state servants of Macedonia presented an application for recruiting and selecting employees for public service. That example was found very interesting by the audience that was interested in reaplicability of the initiative.

Vlado Pribolšan of CARNet presented activities related to the e-learning academy – ELA and noted that unfortunately, no attention was given to the accessibility so far although their magazine Edupoint casted few articles on the subject.  Sandra Kučina Softić of SRCE presented the project of new Centre for e-learning of the University of Zagreb.  It is a rather complex initiative that involves many stakeholders and there is probability that accessibility will be addressed. She also presented an E-learning Strategy of the University of Zagreb that, unfortunately, contains no reference to the inclusion of the students with special needs.

 

Tomislav Juzbašić of the Association of blind and visually impaired gave a critique of the university services that are not adjusted for the students with special needs. He commented that organisations of persons with disabilities have very limited resources and it is difficult to digitalise all books needed for blind and visually impaired students. He pointed out that all students materials could have already been made available at the facultys’ web sites in an accessible form.Danijela Babic of ZaMirNET provided a brief presentation of situation with accessibility of public and commercial services in EU and gave some suggestions related to international cooperation.

Eventually, representatives of the business sector (IT education and publishing) offered collaboration on the project involving ICT and persons with special needs.  Representatives of the Croatian Employment Services stated their openness for collaboration as well. Representatives of the Association of retired persons said that they were not previously involved in such ICT related policies and activities but they found this subject very important for the ageing population.

Conclusions

Although Croatia has made significant progress in developing public e-services, some segments of populations such as people with disabilities and aging population are not consulted along the process. Consequently, some services are not adjusted to the needs of people with disabilities that could have considerably benefited from e-services. Digital divide within the country is not addressed as well although there is an initiative of the Ministry of Economy to establish cyber cafes for SMEs in rural areas of Croatia. Computer literacy is an integral part of school curriculum but senior population is not covered. E-learning is getting more momentum within the University of Zagreb but students with special needs did not benefit from it so far.
It is confirmed by the Office for eCroatia that there is lack of IT engineers that can support initiatives aimed at people with special needs. There is a gap in curriculum of Computer Engineering Faculty.

However, there are opportunities for cross sectoral collaboration and international collaboration on the projects related to e-government and inclusion.  Several organisations and institutions at the meeting express their interest for further collaboration. There is a need to develop ECDL textbook in Braille, to adjust e-learning platforms to the needs of persons with disabilities, to improve commercial services introducing i.e. talking bankomat, adjust the web site of the Croatian Employment Service to the guidelines of W3C etc. The Office for eCroatia even suggested a project of education and sensibilisation of public servants and an international conference on the subject.

Report prepared by Danijela Babić