Update of the report on equivalent access and choice for disabled end-users

The draft BEREC Report on equivalent access and choice for disabled end-users was discussed and approved for public consultation at the BEREC Board of Regulators meeting in Riga on 1 October 2015. One of BEREC’s strategic priorities set out in its 2015 Work Programme is ‘Empowering and Protecting End-Users’.  Under this principle, BEREC recognises the need to take account of the interests of vulnerable consumers, including those with disabilities.

This document reviews the approaches currently taken to promote equivalent access and choice for disabled end-users of communications services and it seeks views and experience from stakeholders to contribute to the final report, planned for publication in December 2015.

The role of public consultation is to increase transparency and to provide BEREC with valuable feedback from the stakeholders. In accordance with the BEREC policy on public consultation, BEREC will publish a summary of all received contributions and an explanation as to how the views expressed by the stakeholders were taken into account in the final report, respecting any confidentiality requests.BEREC will publish all individual contributions on its website, taking into account any stakeholders’ explicit requests for confidentiality, which should be clearly indicated in the contributions submitted. It is also possible to send both a confidential and a public version.

The public consultation will run from 2 October to 30 October 2015.

Stakeholders are invited to send their contributions by 30 October 2015 to: [email protected]. Please provide your contribution in a Word document,preferably in English, in order to speed up the processing.