Since the European Accessibility Act (EAA) became applicable last year, service providers have been responsible for ensuring that public areas where they offer a covered service are accessible. To support the one in four EU adults with a disability, the European Commission has relied on European Standardization as a clear path for organizations providing those services to demonstrate conformity with this key requirement.
Due to this, the European Commission and EFTA funded Phase 1 of the revision of EN 17210:2021, which covers standardization activities until the end of the Enquiry stage. This milestone has now been accomplished, following which an advanced draft has already been produced. CEN/CLC/JTC 11 ‘Accessibility in the built environment’ will finalize the drafting of the document by the end of 2026 in order to publish the final European Standard in autumn next year.
What is changing in prEN 17210 and what is not?
EN 17210 is the European Standard on accessibility of the built environment. It is highly related to ISO 21542, but its main body contains functional requirements instead of values. That approach does not change much in relation to its main body, but as the European Commission intends to cite the document in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), which will make EN 17210 a harmonized standard, it has been important to ensure that the requirements that provide presumption of conformity with the EAA are objectively verifiable. This goal has been achieved without compromising the functional requirements approach of the main body of the document. How? The basic accessibility requirements for the provision of the affected services have been identified in a new Annex A and complemented with specific values or ranges of values where relevant.
This has not been an easy task. A small Task Group of experts made it possible, and a new Working Group 1 within CEN/CLC/JTC 11 was created to review their outcomes. Now that Phase 1 has ended, the Task Group members have integrated into CEN/CLC/JTC 11/WG 1, which is intensely working on building consensus and preparing the next draft.
When the new EN 17210 is published, this effort of so many European experts will improve the lives of 90 million people with disabilities in the EU, and it will also significantly increase certainty regarding compliance with EEA for service providers.
