Centre for Internet and Society

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality

praskrishna — 2011-05-25T04:11:48Z

A panel discussion on "UID, its feasibility, utility and legality" is being organised by Citizen’s Action Forum, Grahak Shakti and the Centre for Internet and Society. It would be held at The Energy and Resources Institute (at TERI auditorium) in Domlur, Bangalore (near Domlur Club) on Thursday, May 26, 2011. The program commences with lunch at 1 p.m. and ends at 5.30 p.m. You are cordially invited to attend this program.

The panel members would include Mr. Rama Jois (former Chief Justice of Chattisgarh High Court and present Member of Parliament), Mr. Moinul Hassan (Member of Parliament), Mr. Narendra Babu (Member, Legislative Assembly, Karnataka), Mr. V P Sudarshan (former Chairman, Legislative Council of Karnataka and present speaker of Congress party) and Mr. Venkatesh Baberjung, Advocate, High Court of Karnataka.

The National Identity Authority of India Bill, 2010 has been placed before the Parliament by the Government. This Bill has been referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance. Mr. Moinul Hassan is a member of this committee. The committee has held one sitting where the Chairman, UIDAI, Mr. Nandan Nilenkani was asked for certain clarifications on the Bill.

The UID project is now under implementation at Mysore. It is scheduled to be launched in Bangalore in June 2011. The Central Government has decided to include caste and religious data in the census. The linkages between UID and the census could come up for discussion among panel members.

UIDAI officials and government officials from the Department of E-Governance, Government of Karnataka have been invited as panel members.

The subject of the discussion is thus topical and of high public interest and importance. We cordially invite you to the lunch and to cover the event so that the public could become aware of issues concerning the same.

The programme schedule is as follows:

1.00 p.m. to 2.00 p.m. - Lunch
2.00 p.m. to 2. 15 p.m. - Welcome and introduction by sponsoring organisations and moderator
2.15 p.m. to 3.00 p.m. - Opening statements by panel members
3.00 p.m. to 4 p.m. - Panel discussions
4.00 p.m. to 4.15 p.m. - Tea
4.15 p.m. to 4.45 p.m. - Panel discussions and questions to panel from audience
4.45 p.m. to 5.15 p.m. - Open House for Audience views
5.15 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. - Concluding remarks by panel members

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/uid-panel-discussion

Meeting on the Refreshable Braille Displays and Copyright Frameworks for Open Hardware Development

praskrishna — 2011-08-23T04:49:49Z

A meeting on Refreshable Braille Displays and Copyright Frameworks for Open Hardware Development will be held in the office of the Centre for Internet and Society on 4 December 2010.

This meeting in Bangalore will bring together three inventors who have concurrently been working on different ways of building refreshable braille displays to collaborate, share their knowledge, skills and abilities. Representatives from the disability sector will be present to articulate the needs of the disability community and provide feedback on the designs and concepts.

We will also be examining a copyright framework based on the GNU General Public License and will attempt to evolve a similar license for all future Open Hardware development.

The Centre for Social Innovation is a project by Braille Without Borders which aims to build ultra low-cost products for the developing world. Collective ownership, development and a high social-impact are the core tenets of this centre.

Keyword: accessibility

For more information on the programme, please contact:

Rahul Gonsalves
Administrative Director
Centre for Social Innovation, Braille without Borders
e: rahul@iiseconnect.org
m: +91 94 00 33 22 51

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/notices/meeting-on-the-refreshable-braille-displays-and-copyright-frameworks-for-open-hardware-development

National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility

radha — 2011-08-24T06:02:07Z

Minutes of the meeting on draft National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility held on August 17, 2009 in E-Governance Hall, 1st Floor, Electronics Niketan, CGO Complex, New Delhi.

Minutes of the meeting on draft National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility held on August 17, 2009 in E-Governance Hall, 1st Floor, Electronics Niketan, CGO Complex, New Delhi.

The following participated:

DIT

Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT
Dr. Govind, Sr. Director, DIT
Dr. S.K. Aggarwal, Director, DIT
Ms. Tulika Pandey, Addl. Director, DIT (Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment)
Shri T.D. Dhariyal, Dy. Chief Commisioner (M&C), Min. Of Social Justice & Empowerment

NGOs

Shri Javed Abidi, Director, NCPEDP
Ms. Muthamma B. Devaya, NCPEDP
Ms. Shilpa Sawant, NCPEDP
Ms. Dorodi Sharma, NCPEDP
Shri Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet & Society
Ms. Nirmita, Centre for Internet & Society
Shri Rahul Gonsalves, Web Accessibility Consultant

MNCs

Shri Deepak Maheshwari, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt.Ltd.
Shri Ibrahim Ahmad, Cyber Media India Ltd.
Ms. Ritu Ghosh, Sun Microsystems
Ms. Vikas Goswami, Microsoft
Shri Vijay Kapur, Microsoft
Miss Gitanjali, UN Solution Exchange
Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Barrier Break Technologies

ERNET

Shri B.B. Tiwari, ERNET India
Ms. Tejal Tiwari, ERNET India

NIC

Shri D.P. Misra, NIC
Shri Lokesh Joshi, NIC

CDAC

Shri Amit Srivastava, CDAC

2. Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT chaired the meeting and welcomed all the participants and requested Shri Javed Abidi, Honorary Director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) to give an insight on how the draft policy got prepared. He also mentioned that the Department has nominated Dr. Govind, Sr. Director in a committee constituted by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for reviewing the work of development of Disabled Friendly websites.

3.1 Shri Abidi thanked the Ministry officials for their co-operation. He elaborated on how India has seen a paradigm shift from charity and welfare to rights and development in the past one decade. This is reflected in the Disability Act, 1995, the United Nations Convention for the Rights of UNCRPD and the XIth Five Year Plan. In fact, India was the 7th and the first most prominent country, to have ratified UNCRPD. It truly reflects the commitment that the present Government has towards disability. The XIth Five Year Plan has a full chapter on disability which mandates accessibility to information and communication. The Plan has the approval of the Prime Minister and Planning Commission.

3.2 Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Director, Barrier Break Technologies presented the draft policy. She began by saying that the basic premise on which the policy was drafted were:

The Constitution of India
United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD)
The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995

She mentioned that the draft policy takes into consideration accessibility to hardware and accessibility to user interface (websites and software). As far as content is concerned, it considers only the delivery of the content and not the content itself.

3.3 Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan of Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) elaborated on the available policies on web and electronic accessibility in other countries. Countries like UK and Italy have made it mandatory for providers of public information and services to be accessible to persons with disabilities. Other countries such as US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan have made the policies mandatory for Government and advisory for the private sector.

3.4 Dr. S.K. Aggarwal, Director, DIT raised a query in respect of coverage of the following 3 issues:

How could the policy be made mandatory for private sector?
Whether the policy making function in this regard is under the jurisdiction of the IT Ministry alone?
What is the kind of model envisaged for R&D funding under the proposed policy?

He also opined that the draft of the policy needs to be refined, properly worded, made more crisp and coherent, repetitions to be deleted and paragraphs to be numbered.

3.5 Shri Abidi responded by saying that all services available in the public domain should follow the policy and India should not look at the West anymore and should be a pioneer in this effort and policy should cover all sectors. As far as jurisdiction is concerned, the XIth Five Year Plan clearly mandates that all Departments / Ministries must formulate detailed rules and guidelines / policies in their respective domain areas and ensure that not less than 3% of their funds are reserved for disability issues which can take care of funds required for R&D also.

3.6 Shri Sunil Abraham of CIS said that maybe instead of saying ‘private companies’, we could say ‘essential service providers and utilities services’. He further suggested that in order to make the policy more acceptable to a broader set of stakeholders, the phrase ‘open source’ could be deleted since the accessibility policy endorsed specific open standards like WCAG which would level the playing ground for bother proprietary and Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) vendors. Alternatively, he suggested that both proprietary and Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) could be mentioned.

3.7 Members said that there is a need to define clearly the hardware, software and user interfaces covered under the policy. Ms. Shilpi Kapoor and Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan gave examples of ATMs, mobile phones and even Set Top Boxes which would fall under hardware. Ms. Shilpi Kapoor also emphasized on making the issue of Universal Electronic Accessibility mandatory in the procurement process by various Ministries. She stated that most of these service providers have products which are compliant to accessible norms which they sell in Europe or America.

3.8 Shri T.D. Dhariyal, Dy. Chief Commissioner, Dept. Of Disability, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment expressed his concern about how to make the technology accessible to all, including the poor.

3.9 Shri Vijay Kapur of Microsoft said that in order to have a comprehensive policy covering entire range of hardware products, representation of the electronics industry would be appropriate. It was felf that representation from Industry Association such as MAIT, TEMA, NASSCOM etc. may be obtained. Further he mentioned about inviting industry associations such as CII, FICCI, Asocham etc.

4. As a next step towards finalising the policy, following committee was constituted:

Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT
Representative from Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment
Shri Javed Abidi, Director, NCPEDP
Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Barrier Break Technologies
Smt. Neeta Verma, Sr. Technical Director, NIC
Shri Deepak Maheshwari, Director, Microsoft
Shri Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society
Representative from MAIT / NASSCOM / CII / FICCI / Asocham
Officer from E-Infrastructure Division, DIT - Convenor

It was proposed that the draft policy be finalised at the earliest for its approval by Government of India.

The meeting ended with vote of thanks to the Chair.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-policy-on-universal-electronic-accessibility

Meeting on National Policy for e-Access for All

nirmita — 2011-08-26T05:13:44Z

The world over, there is a move towards making the internet more accessible for persons with visual and print disabilities and for elderly persons. Many countries like the USA and UK have adopted legislation to make adherence to web accessibility standards mandatory. In India we are still relatively unaware of the importance of web accessibility. On Nov 7, 2008 at 11:00 am, the Centre for Internet and Society will host a meeting at the CIS office to discuss strategies and a plan of action to launch a campaign for making web content accessibility standards mandatory in India.

The internet has has breathed fresh life and energy into the situations of disabled persons throughout the world. It has enabled and liberated them in the most complete sense of the word and succeeded in elevating levels of independence, competence and confidence. Like any other technology however this comes with its share of problems, related to accessibility. Thankfully, many of these problems can be solved by merely setting some minimum standards in place at no extra cost or effort.

For any technology to be completely useful, it has to meet the criteria of utility, usability, affordability, acceptance and accessibility. Unfortunately, while the internet can surmount most of obstacles that are faced by disabled persons in relation to access to information, navigation or comprehension problems are equally severe barriers to visually and print disabled persons effectively using it. To help better understand the issue, explained below are some features which are quite problematic for persons with visual and reading disabilities. They are accompanied by some simple solutions which can be easily incorporated by web page creators.

Web pages often contain images and graphics which cannot be discerned by screen readers; text descriptions and explanations can be provided for these. Creation of links to skip to content can provide a huge relief for persons using screen readers, instead of them having to listen to unrelated or confusing content. There should be keyboard alternatives for every function that has to be executed with a mouse. Links without references such as “click here” or links without any specific destination should be avoided. Creators of web pages should not rely upon colours to convey meanings. Finally, since screen readers read content as it is in the code, web page creators should ensure that content is read correctly on the page as well as in the code.

Adherence to web accessibility standards can help avoid these problems. Countries like the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia have enacted legislations to make it mandatory for creators of web pages to follow their minimum standards for web page accessibility. India has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in October 2007. Unfortunately however, no move, has been made till date to adopt web accessibility guidelines or make such guidelines mandatory in our country. Consequently, a lot of government and private web sites are inaccessible for persons with disabilities, defeating the very purpose of ICT for development.

Considering these factors, we think it is time we make a concerted effort towards enabling a more inclusive online environment for all. Adopting a web accessibility standard does not merely make the web more accessible to disabled persons, it makes navigation and operation easier for everyone. The W3C has come out with a web accessibility standard called the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) which has been adopted by many countries. This makes the tasks of the countries easier in the sense that they already have a ready framework and guidelines available to work with.

We solicit your active support and presence in this movement for enabling mandatory adherence to web accessibility standards in India. You are invited to join the Google group for a national policy for e-Access (http://groups.google.com/group/e-access). We are planning to have a meeting of all interested parties and organizations who are committed to supporting this cause on the date and venue given below. We request you to attend along with other supporters.

Meeting Details

Date: 7th Nov, 2008 (Friday)
Time: 11:00 am
Venue:
Centre for Internet and Society
No. D2, 3rd Floor, Shariff Chambers
14 Cunningham Road,
Bangalore - 560 052

Map: http://bit.ly/cis-map
Phone: +91 80 4092 6283

Please communicate your participation to us, by sending an email to
nirmita AT cis-india DOT org
M: +91 9845868078

Download meeting agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/meeting-on-national-policy-for-e-access-for-all

First Meeting on a National Policy for Web Accessibility

nirmita — 2011-08-25T08:38:03Z

The first meeting to discuss having a national policy for web accessibility to ensure universal and inclusive participation was held at the Centre for Internet and Society's office on 7 November 2008. It was aimed at formulating an action plan to work with the government and other private and public bodies to ensure conformity to accessibility standards for web sites.

The first meeting to discuss making compliance with web accessibility standards a part of the national policy agenda was held today (7 November 2008) at the CIS office. Fifteen participants representing organizations from the disability sector, media and law firms came together to discuss the why, what and how of mandatory compliance with web accessibility standards for Indian government web sites.

The meeting started off with brief introductions of the participants, followed by a presentation by Rahul Gonsalves introducing the concept of and need for web accessibility standards amongst web developers. In his presentation, Rahul gave some examples of the kinds of problems faced by different users of the net and simple solutions to solve these problems. Speaking from the perspective of a web designer, he pointed out that while the total cost of creating an accessible web site is merely about 2-3% more than a normal web site, revamping an existing web site to make it conform to accessibility standards is a more complicated and expensive task. He further clarified that for a website to be accessible, it is not merely enough that it is created in accordance with accessibility standards; all future additions and modifications must be made with accessibility in mind. Hence, persons working on the web site should be initiated into creating accessible web pages.

The second presentation of the day was by Jayna Kothari of Ashira Law Services. Jayna, a lawyer who is well known for taking up disability related cases in Bangalore, talked about the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 (PWD Act) and highlighted provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which came into force in May 2008. She began by talking about the right to access information being a fundamental right guaranteed by Article 19 of our constitution and gave references to various sections in the PWD Act. The Act calls for the setting up of Central and State Co-ordination Committees to ensure that action is taken to give effect to the provisions of the PWD Act and that an accessible, barrier free and inclusive environment is created for persons with disabilities in all spheres such as health, education, employment, transportation, etc. Jayna also highlighted that article 9 of the UNCRPD called for persons with disabilities to have an equal right to access to information and communication. Hence the mandate was not restricted to government web sites only. She opined that we could potentially work with the State and Central Co-ordination Committees to include web accessibility on their agenda of urgent requirements.

Mr Ganesh of Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled talked about intervention at the level of educational organizations and training institutes. He said that instead of merely discussing strategies which are designed to target the Government and get its attention, we also need to work on building awareness amongst the coming generation of web site developers and appeal to schools, training institutes like the NIIT and other educational organizations and centres of learning to disseminate awareness about accessibility right from the beginning. The approach, in other words, has to be both top-down and bottom-up. Ushajee Peri from the Alternative Law Forum (ALF) talked briefly about the Right to Information Act (2005) and said that since the right to information is a fundamental right, we need to carefully analyse provisions of the Act under which we could push for web accessibility.

Mr. L. Subramani from the Deccan Herald talked in brief about media strategy and about how publications could help in creating awareness and pressure. Finally, Meenu Bambani from MPhasiS talked about the 11th Five Year Plan and cited various provisions from it which called for specific measures for disabled persons. After an entire chapter devoted to disability, nothing has as yet been achieved in the year since the plan came into force, even though India has ratified the UNCRPD. Meenu called for immediate action to push the Government for implementation of the chapter on disability in the 11th Five Year Plan. As per the plan, each Government department was to allocate 3% of its funds for supporting disabled persons; this has not been done so far. Meenu believes that 3 December, which is usually celebrated as the World Disabilities Day, should this year be spent in introspection on what we have not achieved and on how we can push the state and government authorities to take their international and national commitments with respect to disabled persons seriously.

There was also a brief discussion on how laws in different countries accommodated web accessibility. For instance in the USA, Section 508 requires web sites of all federal agencies to comply with web accessibility guidelines. In the UK, the Code of Conduct which was brought out by the Disabilities Rights Commission (DRC) under the Disabilities Discrimination Act 2002 (DDA) mandates that persons with disabilities should have the right to access goods, services, facilities and premises on an equal basis as others. Section 2.14 lists the different kinds of services and 2.17 specifically says that a website is a provision of service and hence should be accessible. PAS 78 lays down guidelines for web developers for creating accessible web sites. While some participants expressed curiosity about the actual number of disabled persons using the internet in India, it was generally understood that only by making web sites more accessible could we widen the net of disabled users and enhance universal access and participation.

Another area for intervention was presented by Sunil Abraham in the form of a discussion on the national policy for Open Standards. Sunil said that CIS had given an addendum to the response to the draft national policy on open standards which specifically dealt with web accessibility for disabled and elderly persons. By ensuring that WCAG compliance is inserted in the presentation layer of the Government Interoperability Framework (GIF), which the Government is shortly expected to release, we could make a definite and substantial intervention.

The final conclusions of the meeting were that there were different areas and scopes for intervention and they all had to be simultaneously pursued by different groups. Everyone agreed that we should try and work with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to make all government web sites accessible. Almost all participants felt that while it was not possible to impose web accessibility standards on private entities, we need not restrict ourselves to government web sites in our recommendations and should include at least public listed companies as well. Mr. Subramani felt that working with NASSCOM might be useful for that. Finally it was also decided that an appeal for web accessibility would be put out by CIS at the Walkathon to be organized by Samarthanam on 6 December, since it would be a good platform for spreading awareness and gaining support amongst disabled users, public authorities, organizations and the public at large.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/first-meeting-on-a-national-policy-for-web-access-for-all