The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies supports and promotes evidence-based health policy-making through comprehensive and rigorous analysis of the dynamics of health care systems in Europe. The Observatory is a partnership between the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, the Governments of Belgium, Finland, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, the Veneto Region of Italy, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The Observatory is composed of a Steering Committee, core management team, research policy group and staff. The Observatory’s Secretariat is based in Brussels and has offices in London and Berlin.
Access for all to the Information Society is a key goal for the European Union. With increasing use of the World Wide Web – in particular for government information and services, it is essential to secure access for all citizens. Yet many people - especially those with a disability – meet barriers. Benchmarking can locate potential barriers and fuel the development towards Internet access for all. The European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) project has established a large scale accessibility benchmarking service. The distributed system consisting of 9 servers can process 100 web sites per day according to 26 of the automatable tests specified in Unified Web Evaluation Methodology (UWEM 1.2).