The Government promotes access to DTT for people with disabilities

Presented in Madrid are the first STBs that seek to offer people with disabilities and the elderly an effective alternative to use DTT without barriers.

The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Commerce, Miguel Sebastián, participated today, together with the Minister of Health and Social Policy, Trinidad Jiménez, in the public presentation of the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) decoders accessible to people with disabilities and the elderly. The president of the National Organization of the Spanish Blind (ONCE), Miguel Carballeda, also participated in the event, and a demonstration of the operation of the receivers was carried out.

The decoders incorporate a pioneering operating system developed by the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce through the National Institute of Communication Technologies (INTECO), which allows companies to make the devices they manufacture accessible. In this way, Spain becomes the first country to have accessible DTT decoders, which will be available in stores in the coming weeks.

This project, which has a budget of 500,000 euros, aims to take advantage of the possibilities that DTT presents to guarantee access to this medium for people with disabilities and the elderly and thus offer them an effective alternative so that they can use DTT without barriers.

This measure will directly affect some 100,000 people with visual disabilities and their families and will also facilitate the use of devices for the more than 7,000,000 people who make up the elderly group.

In addition, it also seeks to energize and promote the industry by releasing the knowledge and results of the project for its adoption and use by companies in the creation of products that offer solutions to this type of groups, in a competitive market and guaranteeing compliance with the legislation.

In this sense, INTECO has signed two collaboration agreements with six manufacturers (Televés, Investrónica, FTE Maximal, Elias Interactive, Fagor and Fracarro Ibérica) for the marketing of accessible DTT receivers based on the results of the project, thereby guaranteeing the existence of a sufficient supply of accessible receivers in a free competitive market.

Lots of accessibility features

This software application for DTT receivers, called IDTVOS (INTECO Digital TV Operating System or INTECO Operating System for Digital Television), is compatible with several DTT decoders on the market, in such a way that its introduction turns the receiver into an accessible receiver, which incorporates a large number of accessibility functionalities such as voice navigation assistance, high contrast tones, font sizes and customizable voice speed,…

The Ministries of Industry, Tourism and Commerce and Health and Social Policy and the National Organization of the Spanish Blind (ONCE) have been involved in this project. Other associations have also joined, such as the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (CERMI), the CNSE Foundation, and the Spanish Confederation of Families of Deaf People (FIAPAS), among others.

Plan for groups at risk of exclusion

In addition to the development of this pioneering system, the Ministry of Industry has launched a plan that, with a financial allocation of 7.2 million euros, is allowing groups at risk of exclusion to benefit from DTT to the same extent as the rest of the population.

Thanks to this initiative, those over 65 years of age with high levels of dependency, those over 80 years of age who live alone or in the company of another person over 80 years of age, and people with recognized visual or hearing disabilities, have the right to the free transfer of a decoder.

As of today, the Ministry of Industry has already delivered more than 38,000 decoders of the 133,000 that are available. The equipment that is being transferred is, among those on the market, the ones that provide the best adaptation characteristics to people with hearing or visual disabilities.