City of Buenos Aires Passes Web Accessibility Law

Law 6698 establishes that the City of Buenos Aires—including its three government branches, decentralised and autonomous bodies, non-state public entities, and state-owned companies—must facilitate access to their content for all people with disabilities, in accordance with standards and accessibility requirements of information. These should be applied to the design of their web pages, tools, technologies, and apps.

The Law defines “web accessibility” as the ability of people with disabilities and users who have diverse configurations in their equipment or programs to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the information on a web page and/or application.

In addition to complying with the IT regulatory framework and the Development Standards established by the City’s Information Systems Agency, the City may also use as a reference the accessibility standards and requirements established by ONTI, through the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0,” approved by Disposition 6/2019 (find more information here). These may also be considered for those administrative processes of purchases or contracts that the City carries out for technological services (including equipment, programs, technical services, among others).

Finally, the Law also establishes a deadline of 18 months to be applied, prioritizing those web pages, tools, technologies, and apps that are related to public and informative services.