Draft ECOWAS ICT Accessibility Policy (2018) v1 post Burkina Faso and Gambia Workshops (d) Universal design ; (e) Sustainability. 7.3.3 Objectives and Measures ECOWAS Member States will put in place measures to provide an enabling framework to support the development of a culture and practice of ICT accessibility; in particular mobile communications accessibility. Access to mobile services, whether basic voice and SMS, or more advanced broadband services delivered over a smartphone, is central to people’s active participation in society. This will be achieved through each Member State: (a) Conducting baseline research on PWD’s access to ICTs in their countries (b) Identifying and mitigating the identified leading barriers to a fully accessible mobile ecosystem in their countries; (c) Putting in place measures to ensure that PwD have access, on an equal basis with others, to mobile networks, devices, services, applications, and content provided to the public in urban, suburban and rural areas; (d) Promoting accessible ICTs and universal design, development, production and distribution of accessible mobile devices and services at an early stage of development, so that they become available with accessibility features at a low cost; (e) Promoting affordability of accessible mobile devices and services through requirements for non-discrimination, subsidies and incentives, where possible; and through encouraging the design of tariff plans that meet the needs of PwD (f) Promoting the availability and awareness of accessible devices by ensuring that mobile operators include accessible handsets in their offers and train their staff to demonstrate accessible features to consumers. (g) Promoting the development of assistive technologies that can be used with mobile devices (h) Identifying relevant standards applicable in their countries, periodically. (i) Promote awareness on the availability of assistive functionalities in mainstream smartphones and tablets 7.3.4 Implementation Recognizing that the mobile industry has in depth knowledge of its own products, services and strategies, in particular the commercial availability of handsets and other mobile devices with embedded accessibility features, Member States will encourage the mobile industry to take measures to promote mobile accessibility, and will encourage the mobile industry to develop a self or co-regulatory Code of Conduct on Mobile Communications Accessibility for PwD in line with the objectives and measures identified in 7.3.3 above. Where no such code is developed, the National Regulatory Authority will make regulations to give effect to this policy. 13