I have selected NEC, a major company in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry in Japan.

(Note: The information I used for the review is the one posted at the company’s web site in February, 2011.)

NEC has a solid tradition in integrating CSR in its corporate vision. When evaluated against the fifteen benchmarks used at the course work, the report was found to fulfill most of criteria to be transparent and responsible.

Next challenge of CSR for NEC would be to involve stakeholders in its overseas operations. This may neccesitate to include in the stake holders NGOs working on various social values, such as human rights and the environment.

Globalisation of corporate activities inevitably requires CSR professionals to assess how much and in what ways the spirit of CSR is exercised outside the home country. This is a challenge even to those companies with best CSR practice. I would expect too see what new history of CSR would NEC create outside Japan.

My presentation at the CSR course is available here.

Key words

Web accessibility, the Web, WCAG, Information Society, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), the elderly, people with disabilities, aging of society, Europe, Japan, voluntary standards

Abstract

Ongoing changes in society towards the Information Society have given rise to new challenges with reference to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).  This paper focuses on web accessibility as a responsibility of corporations and discusses practical ways to ensure that websites, “the Web” hereafter, be made accessible to all the readers, including the elderly and people with disabilities.

The United Nations (the UN) recognises Web access as a basic human right in the Information Society, and Governments in major economies endorse it.  On the technical side, a set of high quality voluntary standards has been established by a group of experts.  Despite this backing, implementation of web accessibility has been slow in practice.  There is a gap between what should happen and what it is happening.  Why are good ideas adopted slowly?

To gain a better insight into today’s reality, its barriers and opportunities, the author interviewed web owners and experts, who are promoting web accessibility in Europe and in Japan, which has led to a number of recommendations for action to all stakeholders.

* This paper has been prepared as a course requirement for the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Corporate Social Responsibility, University of Geneva, Switzerland, 2011

The full paper is available from here.