Strasbourg, 26/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - MEPs say that all websites managed by public sector bodies should be made accessible to everyone, including the elderly, the partially-sighted and the disabled. On Wednesday 26 February, MEPs adopted a report by Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (ALDE, Germany) in first reading by 593 votes to 40 and 13 abstentions in this connection. Currently, there are over 761,000 public sector websites in the EU that offer access to information and services. However, only a third of them meet international web-accessibility standards, e.g. enabling the user to enlarge texts and images, enriching videos with sign language, underlining clickable links or making the website navigable with a keyboard alone. The MEPs therefore call on the member states to ensure that all public websites are fully accessible, not just in the twelve categories proposed by the Commission (which deal, for example, with social security benefits, personal documents or enrolment in higher education), but also the websites of private companies running public services, like utilities, child protection and healthcare. MEPs suggest giving member states one year to comply with the rules on new content and three years for all existing content, with a further two years for live audio content. The draft legislation will now be discussed with the EU Council of Ministers. (MD)