Roundtable on information accessibility for disabled on July 1 in Bengaluru

The DEPwD (Department of People with Disability) is organising a roundtable panel discussion on Information Accessibility jointly with the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) at Leela Palace, Bengaluru on July 1, 2016 from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm. The roundtable will be supported by MPhasis and the NASSCOM Foundation. It will be attended by more than 70 participants from the government departments and from various private sector companies and start-ups.

The aim of the roundtable is to sensitise companies about the overall cause of disability and the importance of accessibility in all spheres of life especially Information and Communication Technologies for ensuring barrier free and independent life for people with disabilities. It will also create awareness amongst companies on how to make their own websites, products and service offerings accessible for persons with disabilities at the initial stages of planning of R & D.

The Roundtable will explore topics such as the meaning of accessibility, current state of disability, Government of India directives and the global mandates, ICT for the disabled as an accessible domain and also as a medium to empower them and to make knowledge more accessible to them, challenges and propositions of solutions, among others.

Javed Abidi, Honorary Director of the NCPEDP and Mukesh Jain, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment will be among the many notable speakers.

According to the WHO (World Health Organisation) and World Bank report on Disability, there are more than 1 billion people with disabilities in the world. Approximately 15% of the world population has a disability, viz., approximately 1 in 7 people. By this estimate, India would have more than a 100 million people affected by one or the other disability.

In order to protect the democratic rights of the disabled people, the United Nations held a Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which was adopted on December 13, 2006. It included protecting and making accessible to the disabled people the democratic rights by all Member States and enjoined upon the participants to make special endeavours to make these rights accessible to the disabled people. In accordance with its article 42, the Convention and its Optional Protocol opened for signature by all States and by regional integration organisations at United Nations Headquarters in New York on March 30, 2007. Following ratification by the 20th party, it came into force on May 3, 2008.

By May 2016, it has gained 160 signatories and 164 parties, including 163 states and the European Union, which ratified it on December 23, 2010 to the extent responsibilities of the member states were transferred to the European Union.

India’s then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on October 1, 2007 had ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities provides that States which ratify it should enact laws and other measures to improve disability rights and also abolish legislation, customs and practices that discriminate against persons with disabilities.

India’s Endeavours

Since India is a ratifying participant to the CRPD, it is a responsibility of the Indian government to enact laws, make efforts through actions to make the democratic rights accessible to the disabled people and to eradicate any form of discrimination against them.

It is to the credit of India that it has been making efforts in the direction of protecting the rights of, extending a state-supported empowerment system for and eradication of discrimination against the disabled people long before the UNCRPD happened. In 1995, India enacted the Persons with Disabilities Act to empower the disabled and to eradicate discrimination against them. Among its many provisions were included an imposition on the government at all levels whether Centre, state or local, to provide equality in education and employment to the disabled and affirmative action programmes to provide aids and appliances to them.

After ratifying the UN CRPD, India has accelerated its efforts in these directions. Especially with the coming of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT), efforts have been made to make information accessible to the disabled in greater intensity. The Department of the Information Technology issued a draft for public consultation on the National Policy for the Electronic Accessibility on March 31, 2010. The policy recognised the need to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disabilities and to facilitate equal access to the ICTE (Information & Communications Technology and Electronics). The National Policy also recognised the diversity of persons with disabilities and provides for their specific needs. It recognised the need for ensuring that accessibility standards & guidelines and universal design concepts are adopted and adhered to. The Department of Information and Technology also initiated E-Learning and R & D Projects during Xth and XIth Plan p eriods. Amongst its various projects was the Adaptable E-Learning Accessibility Model for the Disabled, a 24-month long programme by the CDAC Bangalore and Hyderabad that came into existence in May 2011.

The Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) has been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and adopted by the Department of Administrative reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) in February 2009. GIGW refers to the term ‘Universal Accessibility’ which is to make a website accessible to ALL irrespective of technology, platforms, devices or disabilities of any kind and also very clearly states that with an aim to harmonise with WCAG, states following the mandatory guidelines shall insure compliance to W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (Level A).

Carrying forward this vision of India vis-a-vis the disabled people, the current Indian government under the aegis of the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, has formulated the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), as a nation-wide campaign for achieving universal accessibility for PwDs. The campaign targets three separate verticals for achieving universal accessibility, namely the built up environment, transportation eco-system and information & communication eco-system. The campaign has ambitious targets with defined timelines and will use IT and social media for spreading awareness about the campaign and seeking commitment/engagement of various stakeholders.

It is expected that the Roundtable on the Information Accessibility for the disabled will make further contribution towards increasing awareness among the business class of the society about the need to empower the disabled people by making the ICT available to them easily and affordably.

The report was first published in Dataquest. You can access it here.