Draft ECOWAS ICT Accessibility Policy (2018) v1 post Burkina Faso and Gambia Workshops (a) Putting in place measures to ensure that PwD have access, on an equal basis with others, to public ICT devices, services, applications and content in urban, suburban, and rural areas; (b) Promoting the procurement of accessible ICT devices and assistive technologies at an early stage of design and implementation of public access centres, so that they can be used by everyone and so that no additional costs are incurred to change the facilities after they have been opened. This will assist to promote the provision of low cost services. (c) Promoting affordability of public access services through smart partnerships, subsidies and incentives, where possible; and (d) Identifying and mitigating the barriers to a fully accessible ICT ecosystem. All buildings providing public access communication services, including public phone services, community Internet access kiosks and other publicly available ICT services and devices should be accessible. Where feasible, access ramps must be built to enable access to existing buildings hosting such services and elevators should be in place where facilities are not located on ground level: Public access phones whether stand-alone or in a public space, must be accessible. Accessible public access communication service devices shall include: (a) Hearing aid compatibility; (b) Volume control; (c) Tactile keys for phones with keypads (d) Gesture-based screen readers for touchscreen devices; (e) Wheelchair accessibility10; and (f) Allow use of relay services such as video relay, text relay and speech-tospeech relay when remote interaction with an operator is required. Public access computers and other devices that have screen access should: (a) Make use of universal icons; (b) Have screen reading software for blind users, where applicable; (c) Have an audio jack or audio device located in a private area if the information accessed needs to be confidential, such as in financial and voting transactions; (d) Have software that allows for visually impaired users to be able to increase font size and icon sizes; (e) Have voice synthesizing functionality to convert text to voice where such technology is available in the national or local language; (f) Allow for the use of alternative accessible input/output devices such as joysticks, switches or eye tracking using an integrated or attached camera 10 Providers of public access should put in place a reasonable percentage of public phone counters that must be lowered for accessibility to people using wheelchairs. A reasonable starting point is [30% achieved within a period of 2 years]. 24