Smart for all: beyond smart cities, building inclusive and digitally accessible environments and communities

This training course presents, in a holistic and easy to understand way, the key elements to be considered when building inclusive smart sustainable and digitally accessible environments and communities.

Topics

SDG
SDG11: Sustainable cities and communities
SDG17: Partnerships for the goals
SDG 17: Technology
Subject
Smart sustainable cities
Keywords
digital government
digital inclusion
environmental governance
resilient cities
smart cities

Cities, societies and communities are increasingly influenced by the evolution of technology. The term “smart” is frequently used to reflect technological progress. Additionally, the smart way to build our world is to ensure “Smart for all”. This means being digitally inclusive and accessible for all people and empowering everyone through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) regardless of their gender, age, ability or their context of use.

To successfully achieve this goal; smart cities, environments and communities need to be designed and developed according to digital accessibility requirements and standards.A universal design approach is commonly applied to physical environments. Nevertheless, the Universal design principles also need to be considered in all technological products and solutions to ensure that all potential end users can interact within a smart city, environment or community.

This training course presents, in a holistic and easy to understand way, the key elements to be considered when building inclusive smart sustainable and digitally accessible environments and communities.  Learners will gain an understanding of the need to mainstream digital accessibility from the design stage of building smart cities, environments and communities to ensure that no one is left behind.

This training course also includes further key information, good practices, tools and additional resources to support policy-makers and decision-makers’ efforts.

The main objective of this training course is to present to ITU members, stakeholders, policy-makers and decision-makers, the key elements to building smart sustainable cities, environments and communities from an inclusive perspective. This training course also provides a holistic vision of the topic. It explains the importance of meeting the needs and digital abilities of everyone so that all potential users can interact with technology within a smart city, environment or community. To reach this goal, the design, development and delivery of technologies should comply with accessibility requirements and standards, and the principles of universal design. This training course also offers valuable information on the key elements of digital inclusion. Relevant good practices, tools and resources aiming to increase capacity towards building inclusive and digitally accessible cities, environments and communities are also provided.

Target Audience

The target audience for this course is: all ITU members, policy-makers and decision-makers as well as any stakeholder or person interested in gaining knowledge on this topic. To ensure inclusive learning, this online self-paced training course has been designed and developed in digitally accessible formats and is, therefore, accessible to all people, including persons with disabilities, such as blind persons or persons with visual disabilities, deaf person and/or persons with hearing impairment.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this course, learners will:

  • Develop their understanding of the key role of ICT/digital accessibility to ensure that no one is left behind in the digital inclusion process.
  • Develop their understanding of how digital inclusion, encompassing accessibility requirements and standards, and the principles of universal design are fundamental in the process of building inclusive environments and communities.
  • Develop their understanding of the importance of the need to mainstream digital accessibility from the design stage when it comes to building smart cities, environments, and communities.
  • Develop their understanding of the difference between the key concepts within ICT accessibility, such as access, affordability, accessibility, appropriation and accessible ICTs.
  • Be informed about the existence of related best practices.
  • Know where to find the relevant tools and resources necessary to increase knowledge on how to build inclusive and digitally accessible environments and communities that empower all people.
  • Gain knowledge on how to implement inclusive smart cities, environments and communities.

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