Since April 2021, the FACIL’ITI and KOENA companies, both active in the field of disability, have been involved in a dispute that has fuelled public and legal debate.
After discussions between the two companies’ directors, it became clear that the energy put into fighting each other would be better spent defending the inclusion of people with disabilities, each in its own field of expertise.
KOENA acknowledges that the use of the word “misleading” in the initial tweet which was the subject of the dispute implied an intention to deceive, which FACIL’ITI has always denied. The support given to KOENA in this case has sometimes taken a violent turn by individuals, and although KOENA is in no way responsible for this, it regrets and strongly condemns any violence.
For its part, FACIL’ITI recognizes that the technical and regulatory challenges of the Règlement Général d’Amélioration de l’Accessibilité (RGAA) can be misunderstood by the players concerned. That’s why we’ve always been transparent about the position of our solution in relation to the RGAA, and have worked to ensure complementarity.
In a positive approach, FACIL’ITI considers that the expression “digital inclusion solution” can replace “digital accessibility solution” to qualify its solution. It undertakes to use the term “digital inclusion” instead of “digital accessibility” on its communication media to designate the FACIL’ITI solution, with immediate effect on digital media, and over time on printed media.
KOENA declares that it undertakes to contact FACIL’ITI directly rather than mentioning it on social networks, and agrees to host FACIL’ITI during its training sessions, under privileged conditions for 12 months.
Each party recognizes that they are both players in the field of disability and digital inclusion: FACIL’ITI as a European pioneer of innovative assistive solutions for the disabled, and KOENA as a European research center and social enterprise whose mission is to democratize digital accessibility.
The inclusion of people with disabilities is too serious a subject to divide, and deserves to be brought together rather than divided. We hope that the story of this conflict and its resolution will help the disability sector as a whole to move the subject forward constructively, in particular by promoting scientific research and always remaining open to innovation as well as to current and future new technologies for global digital inclusion.
- Text by Armony ALTINIER
- Publication date: Thursday, September 18, 2024 at 9:00 am.
- Illustration created with Canva and Flaticon
