Standards adherence and compliance

Universally accessible design aims to eliminate the barriers that standard design often presents to many groups in the world's population. in this Chapter, we look at how standards can promote universal access and design for the field of health telematics. We first discuss why standards are important and essential in the successful implementation of a universal access and design approach. Following this, the challenges that many application and system developers face in their attempts to apply standards to the design process are highlighted. The appropriate standards for the IS4ALL project are identified and a set of project standards for it are developed by selecting them from the larger group of identified standards and by tailoring them as needed. Strategies for implementing the project standard in a project will be described,, as will the outcomes of the process. Finally, we will illustrate how an audit can be organised to assess the compliance of a health telematic application using the project standard set.