History of the European Computer Driving Licence - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 140

“ECDL Foundation is committed to ensuring that no one is excluded from pur-
suing our certification programmes and actively works to maintain the accessibil-
ity of our programmes to all, including people with disabilities. We have been
working with our national operators and with disabilities groups to identify and
eliminate major barriers to the accessibility of ICT skills and will continue as part
of the ongoing enhancement of ECDL Foundation's programmes.”
4.3 Development and Updating
The ECDL Foundation set up a Members Forum which gave a platform for licensees,
sub-licensees and test centres to share experiences and to suggest developments which
they felt were appropriate. This ensured that the products were updated and developed
in line with advances in technology and market requirements. The ECDL syllabus and
EQTB were updated on a regular basis by an international panel of subject matter
experts, ECDL licensees, end users and companies.
4.4 Automation
A priority in 1997 was to ensure that the testing process was automated to the fullest
possible extent. This was seen to be vital in the light of the expected volumes of
ECDL candidates planned to be some hundreds of thousands initially and ultimately
would be millions. The feasibility of taking tests over the Internet from work or home
was also be investigated as were diagnostic tests which pointed to the areas of weak-
ness of each candidate rather than the pass/fail testing process [1].
4.5 ECDL Products and Programmes
There was a window of opportunity for the core ECDL at that time in 1997. It was
hoped that it would quickly gain acceptance as the test of skills in Europe. There were
early optimistic signs that this would be achieved. The support of the European
Commission through funding from the ESF (European Social Fund), DGIII and
DGXXII gave the ECDL considerable credibility. In addition, ECDL was included in
the Information Society Action Plan prepared by Commissioner Bangemann for
Central and Eastern European Countries [18].
Countries outside Europe began to take an interest in ECDL in 1998. In these coun-
tries ECDL runs as ICDL (International Computer Driving License). The syllabus,
procedures, test methods and certification remain exactly the same. The first ICDL was
presented to a young woman in Port Elizabeth in South Africa in 1999 [19].
The ECDL which has been discussed in this paper is the core ECDL which is identi-
fied today as an ECDL programme - “Essential Computer Skills”. ECDL now offers
many other programmes. The first to be developed was the advanced ECDL, which
was proposed by the Danish computer society in 1999. Programmes developed over
the last ten years include e-Citizen and Equalskills - these comprise programmes on
“Internet and email” and “computers for beginners”, respectively. These programmes
fall within the digital literacy categories. Other specialist programmes include Com-
puter Aided Design (CAD), Website creation, Health Informatics and Digital Imaging.