Centre for Internet and Society

Open Source Peluang tidak Terbatas Industri TIK (GCOS 2009)

radha — 2011-04-02T14:45:13Z

JAKARTA--MI: Perangkat lunak Open Source membuka peluang tak terbatas untuk mengembangkan industri di bidang teknologi informasi dan komunikasi (TIK) dalam negeri sekaligus sumber daya manusia di sektor TIK. GCOS '09 was organized by AOSI (Asosiasi open Source Indonesia) and was supported by the State Ministry of Research and Technology and the Ministry Communication Information Technology. The Global Conference on Open Source was held on 26th and 27th of October, 2009 at the Shangri-La Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Hal itu dinyatakan Menteri Komunikasi dan Informatika Tifatul Sembiring saat memberi sambutan pada Global Conference on Open Source (GCOS) yang dihadiri sejumlah pakar open source dari berbagai negara di Jakarta, Senin (26/10).

Menurut Tifatul, Free Open Source Software (FOSS) diadopsi dan dimanfaatan pemerintah bukan saja karena model bisnis alami FOSS yang gratis untuk digunakan, bebas sumber kode-nya untuk dimodifikasi dan disebarkan tetapi juga karena kemandirian yang ditawarkan FOSS.

Bagi pemerintah, FOSS juga mengalihkan masyarakat Indonesia dari masalah pembajakan software (perangkat lunak) karena sifatnya yang gratis, sementara software berlisensi (proprietary) seringkali tak terjangkau masyarakat.

Ia menyatakan bangga bahwa perangkat lunak sumber kode terbuka ini tumbuh sangat cepat meskipun sempat mengalami banyak hambatan dalam implementasinya. Banyaknya pakar dari berbagai negara yang hadir dan bertukar pengalaman dalam GCOS ini, lanjut dia, diharapkan mampu menghilangkan segala hambatan dalam implementasi FOSS di Indonesia.

Sementara itu, Ketua Asosiasi Open Source Indonesia (AOSI) Betti Alisjahbana mengharapkan FOSS bisa sukses diimplementasikan di Indonesia dengan memperkuat komunitas open source.

"Kami berharap Indonesia bisa mengambil manfaat maksimum dari FOSS yang semakin berkembang di dunia untuk kemajuan TIK Indonesia dan pertumbuhan ekonomi umumnya," kata Betti. Menurutnya, sejak Indonesia Go Open Source (IGOS) dideklarasikan pada 30 Juni 2004 Indonesia sudah muncul menjadi pemimpin dalam gerakan open source.

Sejumlah pakar dan praktisi dunia TIK khususnya open source yang hadir dalam konferensi ini antara lain: Sunil Abraham dari India, Krich Nasingkun dari Thailand, Muh Rosli bin Abd Razak dari Malaysia, Ko Hong Eng dari Sun Micro System, Ray Davies dari IBM, Matthias Merkle dari IntWEnt hingga Campbell O Webb dari Harvard University.

Selain itu sejumlah pakar open source Indonesia juga hadir seperti Onno W Purbo, I Made Wiryana, juga Indra Utoyo dari Telkom, Dr Aswin Sasongko dari Depkominfo.(Ant/OL-04)

Link to original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-source-peluang-tidak-terbatas-industri-tik-gcos-2009

GCOS 2009

radha — 2011-04-02T14:44:10Z

The Global Conference on Open Source, held on 26th and 27th of October, 2009 at the Shangri-La Hotel, Jakarta, Indonesia was organized by AOSI (Asosiasi open Source Indonesia) and was supported by the State Ministry of Research and Technology and the Ministry Communication Information Technology.

Open Source Cegah Pembajakan Dorong Kemandirian

KabarIndonesia - Free Open Source Sofware-FOSS akan menghapus jejak Indonesia dari ranah pembajakan software propriety yang dari pengguna komputer di Indonesia diperkirakan hanya 4% menggunakan software legal.

"Dari kreatifitas para pengembang software, tak hanya kebutuhan office dan grafis saja, namun kedepan akan sangat memungkinkan bahwa hanya dengan FOSS keseluruhan pekerjaan bidang multimedia dan animasi bisa dikerjakan dengan berkualitas" kata Andi S. Boediman, pendiri International Design School sambil memberikan contoh bahwa film animasi
Big Bug Bunny adalah salah satu animasi yang dibuat dengan software open source blender.

Senada dengan Andi S. Boediman, adalah Gustaff Hariman Iskandar, pendiri komunitas kreatif Commonroom Bandung, Open source adalah solusi bagi pembajakan software propriety. Meskipun Gustaff juga memberikan catatan, bahwa jika open source mau jadi tuan rumah di Indonesia, maka harus ada peningkatan kecepatan akses internet, karena dalam pemakaian software open source, dibutuhkan koneksi internet yang stabil untuk mengupdate program yang dipakai.

Gustaff memberikan pandangan, bahwa di kalangan komunitas kreatif di Bandung, pemakaian software bajakan sudah lumrah terjadi meskipun kini sudah banyak yang menggunakan sofware asli ataupun memanfaatkan FOSS. Dan ajang global Conference on Open Source-GCOS adalah salah satu program yang menurutnya harus menjadi momentum untuk 'membebaskan' masyarakat dari 'penjajahan' dominasi software berlicensi yang tentunya mahal bagi UKM.

GCOS-Global Conference on Open Source yang digelar 26-27 Oktober lalu, mendapat apresiasi laur biasa dengan mendatangkan tamu dan pembicara dari berbagai negara. Sunil Abraham misalnya, pembicara pada asal India untuk sesi Making Opensource The Driver for Development, merasa terkesan dengan sambutan masyarakat dan pemerintah Indonesia yang luar biasa, bahkan telah terbentuk komunitas open source di Indonesia yang cukup besar sehingga dapat menyelenggarakan GCOS. Sunil, juga bangga dapat berbicara di forum internasional bersama pembicara lain yang menurutnya seperti berbicara di India, karena disini juga berhadapan dengan problem dan karakteristik masyarakat yang hampir sama, butuh software murah untuk saving cost.

Open Source adalah sebuah fenomena, yang menurut Direktur Aptel ICT Depkominfo, Amalia Abdulah, bukan lagi alternative tapi pilihan. Dan kepentingan pemerintah adalah memfasilitasi, mendorong pemakaian software legal yang sesuai kemampuan daya beli masyarakat, bahkan gratis seperti free opensource software-FOSS.

Pasca surat edaran Menpan bulan maret 2009 lalu, sudah ada sekitar 100 lebih pemerintah daerah yang mengajukan permohonan untuk menggunakan open source dan Depkominfo Bersama KNRT [Kementerian Negara Riset dan
Teknologi] mengadakan pelatihan SDM mulai dari mengoperasikan software untuk perkantoran, sesuai kebutuhan administrative pemerintahan.

Apa yang dilakukan dalam sinergi Depkominfo, KNRT, Depdiknas, Men PAN adalah sebuah komitmen, bahkan tertuang dalam program dimana pada Desember 2011 ditargetkan pengaplikasian open source di seluruh jajaran instansi dapat terwujud. Keinginan pemerintah tersebut bukan pula tanpa dasar, dengan isu utama dalam open source adalah low cost, mencegah
terjadinya pembajakan software, dan mampu memberikan keuntungan bagi Negara. KNRT misalnya yang secara bertahap mengaplikasikan open source sejak 2005, telah menghemat biaya pembelian licensi sebesar 40% dan bisa ditingkatkan menjadi 60%.

Ternyata tak hanya menjawab kebutuhan kalangan UKM yang ingin berhemat memangkas biaya operasional namun tetap berada pada jalur legal, ternyata juga memberikan kontribusi penghematan anggaran bagi pemerintah Negara berkembang seperti Indonesia.

Dengan memanfaatkan software open source yang bersifat terbuka dan bebas untuk dikembangkan, seharusnya juga menjadi motivasi bagi bangsa indonesia untuk menjadi pemain utama dalam pengembangan software yang dibutuhkan dunia teknologi informasi, yang apada akhirnya dapat mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa.

Pemerintah yang telah memulai aplikasi open source meski hanya berbekal surat edaran Men PAN, mungkin perlu meningkatkan komitmen dan dedikasinya dengan penerbitan regulasi lebih mengikat dan ’memaksa’ yang didalamnya tak hanya berisi himbauan, namun juga proteksi.

Dan jika Depkominfo dan Depdiknas dapat bersinergi melalui program pendidikan open source, akan menjadi awal yang baik memperkenalkan dan mengajarkan open source sebagai sebuah wujud kemandirian bangsa yang tak lagi terjajah secara teknologi.

Betty Alisjahbana dari AOSI [Asosisi Open Source Indonesia] dan Lolly Amalia selaku Direktur Sistem Informasi Ditjen Aptel Depkominfo, kedua belah pihak telah saling bertemu visi dengan 'keroyokan' melaksanakan GCOS secara bersama-sama, diantara kedua pihak telah ada kesepakatan saling membantu aplikasi Open Source di seluruh Indonesia.

Untuk mengatasi kendala profesionalitas AOSI dalam memberikan layanan sebagaimana tuntutan kebutuhan saat ini, Betty bahkan sedang dalam proses mengorganisir kekuatan-kekuatan di dalam AOSI untuk bernaung didalam sebuah payung badan usaha profesional, jadi bukan lagi komunitas penghobi open source saja.

Lebih jauh pandangan Onno W Purbo, penggiat open source, free open source software [FOSS] harus menjadikan Indonesia sebagai 'Knowledge Based Society', menggunakan pengetahuannya untuk bisa berkarya. Dari pihak pemerintah, telah dicontohkan oleh Kementrian Riset dan Teknologi (KNRT) dalam penerapan eGovernment secara menyeluruh dalam rangka
meningkatkan kualitas layanan publik secara efektif dan efisien untuk meminimalisir korupsi di lingkungan pemerintahan.

Dalam bincang-bincang dengan Ditjen Aplikasi dan Telematika Depkominfo Ashwin Sasongko, ia mengandaikan Free Open Source Software seperti air mineral yang bisa diambil gratis dari pegunungan, tapi distribusi dan pengemasannya bayar.

Sun Microsystems melaporkan perkembangan potensi pengguna FOSS, sejak tahun 2008 telah terjaring komunitas OSS dari Java dengan lebih dari 15.000 pengguna dan hampir 10.000 pengadopsi pemula penggunaan OSS dari 150 perguruan tinggi serta 70 sekolah menengah. Tampaknya, aktifitas AOSI yang menyebarkan ribuan komputer dengan aplikasi FOSS ke
sekolah-sekolah mulai terlihat hasilnya.

FOSS hadir menjadi solusi di tengah upaya menekan pembajakan software proprietary dengan memasyarakatkan software legal ,di sisi lain juga membangun susasana kompetitif di tengah usaha untuk membangun kemandirian bangsa.

Link to original article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/gcos-2009

Citizen 2.0?

radha — 2011-10-21T09:54:31Z

Exploring Research Questions, Frameworks, and Methods - Presentation by Minna Aslama, at CIS, on Nov 23rd @ 4.30pm , Bangalore.

The early and mid 1990s witnessed a surge of academic thinking and public debates around the democratizing power of the Internet. The most hopeful utopias of deliberative online communication and formation of active ‘subaltern counter-publics’ (Fraser 1992/1997) were countered with fears ranging from trivialization, fragmentation, even disappearance of widely and commonly shared issues, to viral distribution of non-democratic, ‘harmful’ content. Now the same debates are re-emerging once again in era that is witnessing the explosion of ‘social production’ in a multitude of digital platforms.

The recent examples of the elections in two very different societies, the United States and Iran, provide just two cases where information production by non-professional individuals and loose associations, distributed via informal networks including social networking sites and microblogging, has played a major role in democratic processes (e.g., Williams & Gulati 2007; Keim & Clark 2009).

A question remains: do social networks facilitate platforms for democratic debate and participation in our ‘post-broadcast’ democracies (Prior 2007) characterized by ‘a networked information economy’ (Benkler 2006)? And further, is or can there exist such a phenomenon as a ‘Citizen 2.0’ who actively participates in democratic processes (issue driven and/or local, regional, national, transnational) via digital media? So far academic scholarship has focused on theorization rather than empirical analyses (e.g., Gripsrud 2009), has tended to emphasize activities of social justice movements that are by default networked and proactive (Aslama & Erickson 2009), and thus have ‘romanticized’ the participatory and democratizing nature of the Internet, web 2.0 and mobile communications (while most quantitative indicators tend to point towards concentrated and elite communication, and while digital divide still clearly exists, Hindman 2009). Needless to say, much of the hopeful theorization is European / Anglo-American, and there seems to be relatively little cultural sensitivity in grand visions of global public spheres (c.f., Castells 2008).

The talk will not claim to provide answers to these paramount questions. Instead, Minna wishes to raise more questions about (1) what should be researched about mediated democracy and citizenry in our time; what should we know? (2) How could we frame that research theoretically and conceptually? And (3) what kinds of methodological solutions might be useful in this context. Rather than presenting a comprehensive research agenda, Minna will suggest some ideas that would broadly connect to macro, meso and micro-level view of media, power and citizenship (c.f. Clegg 1989), and will illustrate those ideas with some empirical examples of her current pilot work for a planned multi-country study on the theme. Minna hopes to provoke a lively discussion, or, rather, a brainstorming session amongst us who care about the possibility of Citizen 2.0.

References:

Aslama M. & Erickson I. (2009). Public Spheres, Networked Publics, Networked Public Spheres? Tracking the Habermasian Public Sphere in Recent Discourse. Fordham University, McGannon Center Working Papers.Retrieved at: http://www.fordham.edu/images/undergraduate/communications/public%20spheres,%20networked%20publics,%20networked%20public%20spheres.pdf

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Castells, M. (2008). The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance. The Annals Of The American Academy Of Political And Social Science, vol. 616, no. 1, pp. 78-93.
Clegg, S. (1989). Frameworks of Power. London: Sage.

Fraser N. (1997(1992)). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of an Actually Existing Democracy. In Calhoun C (ed.). Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp., 109-142.

Gripsrud, J. (2009, March). Digitising the Public Sphere: Two Key Issues. Javnost-The Public, 16(1), 5-16.

Hindman, M. (2009). The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Keim N & Clark J (2009) Public Media 2.0 Field Report: Building Social Media Infrastructure to Engage Publics. Twitter Vote Report and Inauguration Report ’09. American University, center for Social Media.
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/public_media_20_field_report_building_social_media_infrastructure_to_engage/ (accessed 30 August 2009).

Prior, M. (2007) Post-Broadcast Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Williams, C. B., & Gulati, G. J. (2007). Social Networks in Political Campaigns: Facebook and the 2006 Midterm Elections. Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Minna Aslama’s Bio:
Minna Aslama is a researcher and a lecturer at Fordham University, New York, and the University of Helsinki. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki and has taken part in several international research activities including The Media Between Culture and Commerce Project by the European Science Foundation, and the research-advocacy project on Global Media Monitoring of news media (GMMP, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2009). From 2008-2009, she served as the Program Officer for the Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere program at the Social Science Research Council.
Prior to her academic career, she worked at the Division of Advancement for Women of the UN Secretariat and at the Finnish Broadcasting Company in the research, training and development unit. She has also served as a consultant for various national and international organizations on research and training, especially with regard to issues of media and gender.
Her recent/ongoing research work includes new conceptualizations of media audiences and the concept of ‘participation’, public service media and content diversity in the digital era, and media policy flows in the globalizing media environment. In addition, she is especially interested in new forms of collaboration emerging in relation to the media justice and reform movements. Together with Phil Napoli, she is currently editing a book “Communication Research in Action” that depicts scholar-practitioner collaborations in the field.
Contact: minna.aslama@helsinki.fi

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/citizen-2.0

Shadow Search

radha — 2011-04-05T04:28:00Z

CIS in collaboration with NEWS announces an open call for proposals to explore the use of natural-language search algorithms that are able to find people and activities that embody the self-understanding of the kind of art we are seeking without specifically using the word art or a related vocabulary.

In particular this search engine would allow prospectors in the world of information and databases to discover ‘shadow art activities’ that are partially hidden, off-the-radar, stealthy.

The selection procedure will take place over several stages:

15th October 2009 – Call goes out, submissions can be uploaded at n.e.w.s.

15th November 2009 – Closing date for entries

20th November 2009 - Final Round submissions announced

23rd November 2009 – Winner(s) announced

Please send:

A Pseudocode representation

A plain text description no longer than 500 words

If required, you can add a graphical representation along with the text

Please send all entries to: shadow@northeastwestsouth.net

Cash Prize: EURO 1000 (the jury reserves the right not to award the prize if no submission fits the bill)
All submissions will be published online (with the exception of personal details)

To learn more, visit n.e.w.s

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/shadow-search

Right to Read Campaign - Kolkata

radha — 2013-02-04T06:47:59Z

The nationwide Right to Read campaign which began with its first road show at Loyola College, Chennai is now having its second road show at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. There will be half day events with publicity. Events shall comprise presentations, debates and demonstrations, book reading sessions and stalls where various accessibility tools will be demonstrated.

Problem Statement

Millions of Indians are unable to read printed material due to disabilities. There are technologies available which can help them read print if the material is converted into an alternate format such as large print, audio, Braille or any electronic format. While the Indian constitution guarantees the “right to read” as a fundamental right, the copyright regime does not permit the conversion of books into accessible formats for the benefit of persons with print impairment, as a result of which a “book famine” is created. International conventions that India is a party to specifically require India to amend its copyright laws for the benefit of persons with disabilities and to make available information and material to persons with disabilities on an equal basis as others. Publishers also do not make books available in accessible formats as a result of which less than 0.5% of books are available in accessible formats in India. As a result persons with print impairments get excluded from the education system and it impacts their career choices.
In addition to this, there are no national Policies or action plan to ensure that publications in accessible formats in all Indian languages are available to persons with print disabilities all over the country.

Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign

To accelerate change in copyright law
To raise public awareness on the issue
To gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

Your Support:

No campaign is complete without the endorsement of leaders in the field. We invite you to lend your name and support to this campaign in large numbers and help us make this campaign a success. If you wish to do so, please e-mail Nirmita Narasimhan: nirmita@cis-india.org.

Agenda

Declaration on the Right to Read

Cookie Jar - Glass Jar full of cookies. The jar is locked by chains and a lock. Caption below in large letters saying "Open the cookie jar for 70 million people". Right to Read logo. Wording below: The right to read campaign seeks to accelerate change in copyright law, raise public awareness on issues of access to reading for the print impaired. Support the campaign by turning up for the event at Kolkata. Venue, date and time given. To know more about the campaign and to join us in our endeavor visit our website. www.righttoread.in

Daffodils - Poem Daffodils by Wordsworth. Black strips across many of the lines of the poem as a result only some scattered words of the poem can be seen. Caption below in large letters saying "Not Quite Right? 70 million people agree". Right to Read logo. Wording below: The right to read campaign seeks to accelerate change in copyright law, raise public awareness on issues of access to reading for the print impaired. Support the campaign by turning up for the event at Kolkata. Venue, date and time given. To know more about the campaign and to join us in our endeavor visit our website. www.righttoread.in

Videos
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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/right-to-read-campaign-kolkata

Right to Read Campaign - Kolkata

radha — 2009-10-22T09:48:40Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/home-images/right-to-read-campaign-kolkata

The Right to Read Campaign - Chennai

radha — 2011-08-31T10:45:38Z

A nationwide Right to Read campaign began with road shows in the four metro cities of India and was then carried on in other cities. The events comprised of presentations, debates and demonstrations, book reading sessions and setting up of stalls where various accessibility tools were demonstrated. The first road show was held in Loyola College, Chennai on 26th September, 2009.

The Problem Statement

Millions of Indians are unable to read printed material due to disabilities. Technologies are in place which can help them read printed matter if the material gets converted into alternate formats such as large print, audio, Braille or other electronic formats. Whereas the Constitution of India declares “right to read” a fundamental right, the provisions of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957 does not permit conversion of books into accessible formats for the benefit of persons with print impairment, as a result of which a “book famine” is created. International conventions to which India is a signatory to specifically requires it to amend its copyright laws for the benefit of persons with disabilities and make available information and materials to persons with disabilities on an equal basis as others.

Publishers too do not make books available in accessible formats as a result of which less than 0.5 per cent of books are available in accessible formats in India. As a result, persons with print impairments get excluded from the education system and this has a big impact on their career choices. Further, there are no national policies or action plans to ensure that publications in accessible formats in all Indian languages are made available to persons with print disabilities all over the country.

Objectives of the Right to Read Campaign

To accelerate change in copyright law;
To raise public awareness on the issue; and
To gather Indian support for the Treaty for the Blind proposed by the World Blind Union at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

Your Support for the Campaign

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/the-right-to-read-campaign-chennai

Fellows

radha — 2021-11-26T05:22:19Z

Rahul Cherian

Rahul was a lawyer, disability policy activist and a co-founder of Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy. He was one of the experts who drafted the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization. His areas of expertise included disability law, intellectual property law and technology law. He was also the co-founder of www.inclusiveplanet.com, the world's largest social network for persons with visual impairment.

Rahul was on the legal expert panel constituted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to give input on the new disability law, was instrumental in conceptualizing and executing a national Right to Read Campaign to bring about changes in copyright law to enable persons with disabilities access copyrighted work on an equal basis with persons without disabilities, helped the State of Kerala draft a plan document with a vision to ensure that by the year 2025 persons with disabilities are completely integrated into mainstream society.

Rahul Cherian passed away on February 7, 2013 due to an illness.

Click for Rahul's detailed profile. [PDF, 195 Kb]

Malavika Jayaram

Malavika is the inaugural Executive Director of the Digital Asia Hub. Prior to her relocation to Hong Kong, she spent three years as a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, focused on privacy, identity, biometrics and data ethics, and eight years in London, with the global law firm Allen & Overy in the Communications, Media & Technology group and as Vice President and Technology Counsel at Citigroup. While a partner at Jayaram & Jayaram in India previously, she was one of 10 Indian lawyers selected for The International Who’s Who of Internet e-Commerce & Data Protection Lawyers directory for 2012 and 2013. In August 2013, she was voted one of India’s leading lawyers – one of only 8 women to be featured in the “40 under 45” survey conducted by Law Business Research, London.

A graduate of the National Law School of India, Malavika has an LL.M. from Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago. She taught India’s first course on information technology and law in 1997, and as Adjunct Faculty at Northwestern more recently: part of the Master of Science in Law program bridging STEM subjects and the law. She has been a Fellow with the Centre for Internet & Society, India, since 2009 where she helped start their privacy program. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and has had fellowships at the University of Sydney and the Institute for Technology & Society, Rio de Janeiro. She is on the Advisory Board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

Chanuka Wattegama

Chanuka is an independent policy researcher and consultant with expertise in telecom policy and regulations, ICT for Development, Development Economics, Disaster Risk Reduction and Development Evaluation. An Electronics Engineer by profession, he graduated from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka and obtained his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Colombo.

In the past he worked as a Senior Research Manager at LIRNEasia, an Asian think tank on policy and regulation and as a Program Specialist ICT4D at the United Nations Development Program and was posted in Colombo Regional Centre’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG) initiative. His focus was to use Information and Communication Technology for poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs.

As a researcher, he co-authored the Sri Lankan chapters for the books Cyber Communities of Asia (AMIC, Singapore), Media in Asia (Sage Publications, New Delhi), Internet in Asia (AMIC, Singapore) and Digital Review of Asia Pacific (APDIP, Orbicom and IDRC). He was the lead researcher for Sri Lanka in a nine-country study on ICT for Human Development in Asia, by UNDP and is also a regular writer and commentator on ICT issues in the Sri Lankan media. He founded Pariganaka, the largest selling ICT magazine in Sri Lanka with a circulation of more than 40,000 copies where he worked as a consultant editor. He is a two-time recipient of the Science Writer of the Year Award, presented annually by the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science.

Selvam Velmurugan

Selvam is the founder of eMoksha.org, a non-partisan non-profit focused on enabling stronger democracies through increased citizen awareness and participation. In 2009, eMoksha.org helped launch VoteReport, a citizen-driven election monitoring platform - in India, Lebanon, and Afghanistan - and FixOurCity, a local civic-management platform in Chennai.

Prior to founding eMoksha.org, Selvam was an internet technologist with more than 12 years of experience in building and managing distributed web-scale systems. During his 10-year stint at Amazon, he devised complex search indexing and querying algorithms, setup the Chennai Development Center, and managed critical platform components for Amazon Web Services. During that time, he took an active role in several non-profit and community efforts, notably being a core member of the Tsunami Relief team at Amazon enabling collection of over $15 million in relief funds.

Selvam holds an MS in CS from University of Georgia and BS in CS from College of Engineering, Guindy. He also holds a Diploma in Film-making from University of Washington. Currently, he lives in Seattle with his wife and two kids.

Nirmita Narasimhan

Nirmita is a Policy Director with the Centre for Internet and Society, working in the areas of policy research and advocacy related to technology access for persons with disabilities. She was involved in drafting the Indian National Universal Electronic Accessibility Policy and also worked closely with different departments of the Government of India to bring accessibility into their policies and programmes. Nirmita has authored several reports on accessibility which are being used by policymakers worldwide. She has also presented papers on ICT and Accessibility at international fora like the IGF and is the Director, Global Reports, for G3ict. She has also participated in the World Blind Union Treaty negotiations at WIPO. Nirmita has won several awards for her work, including the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, which she received from the President of India in December 2010. Her educational background includes degrees in Law, German and Music.

List of volumed edited by Nirmita:

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities, in collaboration with the G3ict (Global Initiative for Inclusive Information Communication Technologies) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union), and sponsored by the Hans Foundation
Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices, in collaboration with the G3ict.
Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report, supported by the Hans Foundation.

Read Nirmita's detailed resume.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/people/fellow

The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change

radha — 2011-10-21T09:59:51Z

CIS in collaboration with the LINK Centre, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and in association with different institutions across India is organizing a Lecture Tour on:
“The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change” By Sagie Chetty, Senior Manager, Eskom, South Africa.
It will be our pleasure to have you join us for the talks.

The Co-hosts, Dates and the Venues for the Talk are given below –

Co-Host: Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Date: 19th October, 2009 at 3.30pm
Venue – IIT-M, Chennai

Co-Host: Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Date: 20th October, 2009 at 4.00pm
Venue – IIT-B, Mumbai

Co-Host: International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore
Date: 23rd October, 2009 at 4.00pm
Venue – IIIT-B, Bangalore

Co-Host: Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi
Date: 26th October, 2009 at 3.00pm
Venue – IGNOU, Delhi

Co-Host: National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies, Delhi
Date: 27th October, 2009 at 3.00pm
Venue – NISTADS, Delhi

Co-Host: CCMG - Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Date: 29th October, 2009 at 2.00pm
Venue – CCMG - Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi

About the Speaker:

Sagie Chetty is a Senior Manager in Eskom, South Africa’s largest electricity utility. Sagie spent the first part of his career at Eskom as Information Manager in the Generation Division. In that time he was responsible for information systems strategy development and implementation. Some of the key projects he has been involved in are the implementation of SAP Plant Maintenance, Business Intelligence systems and other bespoke Information Systems for Generation Power Stations.

Abstract of the Lecture: The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change

With a gross domestic product of over $506 billion (PPP, 2008) South Africa is one of the leading economies on the African continent. Only Nigeria with a GDP of $328 billion and Egypt with a GDP of $453 billion currently rival the South African economy. The economy is strong in manufacturing and agriculture, but is still based significantly on mining of gold, diamonds, platinum, coal and iron ore. Its main trading partner is the European Union. Bilateral trade with India amounts to $6, 2 billion (2008) with the balance of trade in South Africa’s favour to the value of about $1 billion.
Although one of the leading economies in Africa, South Africa’s Information and Communications (ICT) sector has not shown the concomitant level of development that reflects its economic position in Africa. ICT usage – telephony and Internet – has historically been low, and electronic transactions are utilised largely by business. There are a number of reasons for this; however the high cost of telecommunications is certainly a contributing factor. The high cost is attributed largely to policy and regulatory failure in the telecommunications sector. The sector is characterized by powerful incumbent telecoms operators that thwart competition and further entrench their dominant market positions. The consequence is that the high telecommunications costs impact access, affordability and the cost of doing business for the region.
Recent developments in the telecommunications sector, however could spell the end to high costs if policy and regulatory actions do not hinder competition. South African consumers can in the very near future look forward to lower telecommunications prices with the laying of new undersea cables, a new national backbone to compete with the existing one, new satellite ventures to provide the backhaul between cellular and broadband towers, a landmark court decision allowing value added network service providers (VANS) to build their own networks and the imminent entry of the incumbent telecommunications fixed line operator into the mobile arena. It is an opportune time for policy makers and regulators to take bold steps to free up the sector and open it up for true competition.
Lines that historically demarcated fixed, mobile, voice, data are blurring, causing shifts in market structures. However, currently the market is structured around the incumbent Telkom for fixed lines services and Vodacom and MTN for mobile services. A second PSTN, Neotel has been licensed but is only offering limited services. A third mobile operator, Cell C is operating but has yet to gain any significant market share.

The talk is open to all and there are no registration or entry fees.
Please let us know if you require any further details.

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/lecture-tour-by-sagie-chetty

Access Beyond Developmentalism: Technology and the Intellectual Life of the Poor

radha — 2011-08-02T07:16:36Z

Essay by Lawrence Liang, September 21, 2009 in response to - A Dialogue on ICTs, Human Development, Growth, and Poverty Reduction

In February 2009 we invited the French philosopher Jacques Ranciere to Delhi for the release of his book “Nights of Labour” which we had translated into Hindi, and to have a conversation with a group of young writers and practitioners at the Cybermohalla (“CM”) in Dakshinpuri. The Cybermohalla is one of three media labs that have been set up in different working class colonies in Delhi where young people living in the colony meet, engage in conversations and write about their neighborhood, technology, media, culture and life in the city. Almost six years old, the CMs were set up as experimental spaces to explore ways of looking at the relationship between technology and the urban poor beyond the lens of developmentalism. The CM is presently involved in documenting intellectual life in their neighborhoods and the transformations brought about by media.

In this brief note I would like to raise a few critical questions about the dominant ICT and Development discourse that dominates policy and NGO circles, and I will be using the writings of Ranciere, the CM practitioners, and the conversation between them as the grounds on which to raise these questions. Ranciere began his career as a labour historian, and had initially set out to do a straight forward history of class consciousness in the labour archives outside Paris. What he found surprised him, and informed his philosophy of education and I believe has immense significance for people working on ICT, poverty and development. Ranciere’s rethinking of labour history paves the way for us to start thinking seriously about the hidden domain of aspiration and desire of the subaltern subject, while at the same time thinking about the politics of our own aspirations and desires.

Ranciere goes into an unexplored aspect of the labour archive of nineteenth century France, where he starts looking at small, obscure and short lived journals brought out by workers, in which they were writing about their own lives. But they were not necessarily writing about their work, or their condition as workers. And if they were , they were not writing about it in glorified terms but with immense dissatisfaction. Instead they were interested in writing poetry, philosophy and indulging in the pleasures of thought. They looked enviously at the thinking life that intellectuals were entitled to. At the same time, intellectuals have always been fascinated with the world of work and the romance of working class identity. Ranciere says “what new forms of misreading will affect this contradiction when the discourse of labourers in love with the intellectual nights of the intellectuals encounters the discourse of intellectuals in love with the toilsome and glorious days of the labouring people”

Ranciere’s motley cast of characters include Jerome Gillard, an iron smith tired of hammering iron, and Pierre Vincard, a metal worker who aspires to be a painter. In other words, a series of sketches of people who refused to obey the role sketched out of for them by history, people who wanted to step across the line and perform the truly radical act of breaking down the time-honored barrier separating those who carried out useful labour from those who pondered aesthetics. He says that “A worker who has never learned how to write and yet tried to compose verses to suit the taste of his times was perhaps more of a danger to the prevailing ideological order than a worker who performed revolutionary songs… Perhaps the truly dangerous classes are not so much the uncivilized ones thought to undermine society from below, but rather the migrants who move at the borders between classes, individuals and groups who develop capabilities within themselves which are useless for the improvement of their material lives and which in fact are liable to make them despise material concerns.”

While we ordinarily think of development in terns of an improvement in the material life and living condition of people, it seems from Ranciere’s account that this was not enough. What the workers wanted was to become entirely human, with all the possibilities of a human being which included a life in thought. What was not afforded to works was the leisure of thought, or the time of night which intellectuals had. This is not to say that an improvement in the material conditions of life was not important. On the contrary it was crucially important, but if we are also recognize inequality as being about the distribution of possibilities, then it is futile to maintain a divide between material and intellectual life. The struggle in other words was between time as a form of constraint and time as a possibility of freedom. For Ranciere, a worker then was someone to whom many lives were owed.

If we were to translate what this means for our understanding of ICT and the subject of development, we find that most interventions frame the poor as objects of the discourse of digital access, and they are rarely seen as the subject of digital imaginaries. How do we think of the space created by ICT as one that expands not just the material conditions but also breaks the divide between those entitled to the world of thought, and those entitled to the world of work? In other words, what is the space that we create when we frame the discourse of ‘digital divides’ only as a matter of technological access? How do we begin to look at the technological lives of people beyond developmentalism and take into account the way it changes aspirations and subjectivities?

Suraj, one of the writers at CM, in his conversation with Ranciere says “The capacity of my intellectual life always competes against my imagination. Exploration for me consists of recognizing the continuous pull by others around me (the constant movement), which propels me to the imagination of an intellectual life which always seems to be beyond me.” What this statement forces us to think about is the fact that we all lead intellectual lives, but the distribution of opportunities to lead an intellectual life is unequal, and we need to think through the history of materiality also as the history of conditions which divide people on the basis of those who think and those who work, or the division of time between the days of labour and the nights of writing. It would be tragic if we were to recycle clichéd ideas of the real needs of the elite and the real needs of the subaltern. The development sector seems to have inherited a certain anti intellectualism on the grounds that it is elitist and the left have failed to engage with such desires on the grounds that they were ‘false consciousness’.

But as Ranciere says “What if the truest sorrow lay not in being able to enjoy the false ones.” Ranciere argues that politics has always been about a distribution of the sensible or sensibilities (and this is certainly evidenced in political discourse as well as the critical discourse on technology where we find metaphors of ‘visibility’, ‘silence’ as a way of thinking about the political condition of the underclass). While the focus of the Harvard Forum has been appropriately on the correlation between ICT and poverty alleviation, it is also important to remember that these technologies (computers, mobiles, DVD players) are also a radical redistribution of the sensible. All of a sudden you have a vast number of people whose access to the world of images, texts and sounds have dramatically increased. At the same time they are engaging with the world of the sensible not just as passive consumers but actively producing, sharing and thinking through these new ephemeral forms.

We could ask questions about the larger change that a small experiment like the CM has been able to bring about. Do these young writers have the ability to change the world, is the model sustainable, etc.? The answer would be yes, but perhaps not in the way usually imagined by funders or NGOs. They have already changed the horizon of the possible by reinventing themselves and claiming their space in the world of thought. This also involves a radical rethinking of the very idea of equality itself. The liberal assumption is that equality for something we strive, in other words that we move from inequality to equality. But what if we were to start with equality itself.

Starting from equality does not presuppose that everyone in the world has equal opportunities to learn, to express their capacities. We recognize immense inequalities in the material conditions of life, but we also recognize that there is always some point of equality when we think of each other as thinking beings, and to think of the process of learning, not as a moving from ignorance to knowledge but as a process of going from what is already known or what is already possessed to further knowledge or new possessions.

It in this context that we also have to recognize that ICT technologies are a serious redistribution of the means of thought and expression. When Victor Hugo, a sympathizer of the working class, was shown a poem written by a worker, his embarrassed and patronizing response was “In your fine verse there is something more than fine verse. There is a strong soul, a lofty heart, a noble and robust spirit. Carry on. Always be what you are: poet and worker. That is to say, thinker and worker.” This is a classic instance of what Ranciere would term as an ‘exclusion by homage’. Thus, the aspiration and desires of the poor have to be ‘something more than fine verse’; the information needs of the poor have to be more than wanting to watch a film or even dreaming of becoming a film maker.

These injunctions certainly tell us more about the fantasies of the state, of the intellectual and of NGOs than they do about people participating in the new realms of the digital, and if we are to avoid collapsing all ICT interventions into ‘exclusions by homage’ then we also need to start thinking about the new landscape via the intellectual possibilities that they hold, and the many lives that they enable. After all, the poor are also those to whom many lives are owed.

Lawrence Liang is founder of the Alternative Law Forum and a Distinguished Fellow with the Centre for Internet and Society.

Link to the original article

Link to related article

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/access-beyond-developmentalism

Youth light up lives, one book at a time

radha — 2011-04-02T14:42:45Z

Chennaiites join a campaign to aid the visually challenged in accessing popular works of English literature THERE ARE MILLIONS OF BOOKS THAT THE VISUALLY CHALLENGED CAN'T ACCESS - an article in the Deccan Chronicle - Chennai, dated 10th Oct 2009.

Activists and students in the city have come together for a noble cause -- to ensure that the visually disabled can exercise their constitutional right to a dignified life. Since printed material is not accessible to those with visual disability and also since the copyright laws do not allow for books to be converted into Braille or audio format to enable the blind to `read', several organisations have come together to start the `Right to Read' campaign.

The campaign saw its India launch in Chennai recently, and their cause, supported by many, is simple -- to bring about amendments in the copyright laws of the country so that blind people can have access to reading material.
The organisations involved in the campaign are: the Centre for Internet and Society, DAISY Forum of India, Bookbole.com, Ability Foundation and the Loyola College in Chennai.

Students of Loyola kickstarted the campaign in the city by bringing down experts from various parts of the country and organising road shows, panel discussions and signature campaigns. Says S. Naresh, the vice president of the Students' Union of the college, "We realised that there was a need to create awareness about issues like disability and the problems faced by the blind.

And since there are many visually impaired students in our college campus itself, we decided to do something proactive at the earliest." Janaki Pillai, director, operations, of Ability foundation, an NGO which works with people with disabilities, explains, "There are millions of books available in the world but people with visu al disability do not have access to them. The copy right laws in our country do not let us reproduce books in a format that is accessible to the visually , challenged, and that makes it illegal for students to even convert a textbook into a format that can be used by the disabled. We're campaigning for this to change, and we hope that we will be able to con vince the govern ment to see our point of view." Nirmita Narasimhan, a programme manager with the Centre for Internet and Society, says, "We should be allowed to convert the books into a format which is convenient for us with out stringent copyright laws coming in our way."

Link to the article in Deccan Chronicle - Chennai (Page 24)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/youth-light-up-lives-one-book-at-a-time

National Conference on ICTs for the differently- abled/under privileged communities in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship 2009 - (NCIDEEE 2009)

radha — 2011-08-31T10:48:22Z

A national level conference on the use of Information and Communication Technology for the differently abled / under privileged community in education, employment and entrepreneurship.

The management, staff and students of Loyola College and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore (in association with department of IT, Government of India and pioneers in educating differently abled and professional bodies like NASSCOM, CSI-Chennai chapter), are proud to announce that we will be hosting a national level conference on the use of Information and Communication Technology for the differently abled / under privileged community in education, employment and entrepreneurship. This conference which will be a momentous occasion will be held from the 1^st to the 3^rd of December and will be attended by individuals from all walks of life including representatives of the differently abled and under privileged community, government officials, educationalists, researchers, program managers, representatives of international business missions, NGOs and students etc.

The main aim of this conference is to devise a successful formula through which the lesser privileged people of our society can be provided the opportunity to use the Information and Communication Technology to grow on par with the modernized world. The program will be a three day event ending on the 3^rd which happens to be e-accessibility day and the World Disability Day and hence in addition to the specific topics with the opinions, ideas and criticisms of each and every individual which will be heard, discussed and analyzed carefully, we will also be recognizing the many individuals who have contributed their tireless efforts in making Information and Communication technology accessible to all.

Some of the main aims and themes of this conference would be the Institutional and national responses to technological change, the intersections of Political economy and educational technology. The architecture of learning, Pedagogy in the evolving tech environment, Informal and formal adult education, Multi-grade education, Instructional design and delivery, evaluation and assessment, Strategies and tools for teaching and learning, simulations and gaming, Effects on training institutions and industry, Impacts on educational institutions: effects on faculty, staff, administration, and students; curriculum and program development Intellectual property, Building communities of teachers/educators, e-governance and leadership and so on.

The focus would be on the various problems faced by the differently abled and the under privileged people in our society especially with respect to education and the use of Information and Communication Technology for their development and tools for language learning especially English, Tamil and Hindi. During the conference, discussions would be made on the ways to implement data mining in such a way that it includes multimedia facilities such as voice over, Globalization and ICT in the labour market, ICT applications and systems contributing to desirable goals, learning, knowledge growth and career patterns in ICT, leadership roles, human needs, skills and competencies needed for proper growth and its effects, etc. These problems and solutions would be discussed on every possible front including the political, the educational the financial level with its usefulness and effects on the under privileged in mind.

We would also strive with our utmost effort to reach our desired goals such as humanization, bridging the digital gap, freedom of expression, peace, sustainability, human welfare and quality of life. The most important of them all will be the devising of important decisions and strategies that could be implemented in order to help the differently abled people use Information and Communication Technology for their employment by means of introduction of newly devised hardware and software that could benefit them and enable them to develop further.

It is hoped that this conference will be a memorable experience for both the participants as well as the hosts resulting in decisions that are aimed at making life better and easier for all the differently abled and under privileged throughout the country.

Registration

About Loyola College:

Loyola College, Chennai is one of the leading colleges not only in the state of Tamilnadu alone but also in India. It has been rated A+ by the NAAC for several years in a row and is also one among the top ten colleges in the country. All this is proof enough that the college takes utmost interest in the development of students. The main aim of the college is not to provide the highest quantity of education but the highest quality of education to its students. To carry out its aim, the college arranges for several conferences, seminars, educational tours, Industrial visits etc. in order to make sure that the knowledge of the students is not limited within the classroom alone. Hence the great support that the college provides to the staff and students of the various departments is quite evident in the many successful conferences, seminars and other such programs that have been conducted in the past and this is sure to continue in the future.

Organizers

RCDA: The Resource centre for differently abled (RCDA) started in the year 2006 as one of the Centers of Excellence at Loyola College has successfully carried out the task of making education and learning an accessible tool for the less privileged members of our society. As a joint venture with some of the departments of the College, the resource center has decided to organize the National Conference on ICTs for the differently- abled/ under privileged communities in Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship 2009 (NCIDEEE 2009).

http://www.loyolacollege.edu/rcda.html

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bangalore based non-profit organization, bringing together a team of practitioners, theoreticians, researchers and artists to work on the emerging field of Internet and Society in order to critically engage with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange.

We focus on areas such as Anonymity/Privacy, Censorship, Surveillance, Free and Open Source Software, Open Standards, Open Access, Family, Sexual practices, Addiction, Intellectual Property Rights and Trade, Piracy, ICT4D, Digital and Participation Divide and
Digital Communities and Movements.

Website: www.cis-india.org

Program

The conference will be divided into four tracks which will be running simaltaneously ,, except for the main session and the concluding session on the first and last days which are to be common for all participants. The tentative schedule for the different tracks is as follows:

Track 1:

Day 1. Presentations of papers

Day 2. OCR Round Table- Deployment of OCR technologies in Indian languages: present state and road ahead

Day 3. TTS Round Table: Assessing the state of TTS in Indian languages: current position and future road map.

Track 2

Workshop on Web Accessibility for web developers- Web developers and designers from various sectors will be initiated into the need for and the techniques of compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 formulated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The tentative schedule for this track is given below:

WCAG Training Session Plan (2 Day)

Day 1
14:00-15:30 - Introductory Session

Disability - 5 major types
The W3C and the WCAG
How people with disabilities use computers (could use a movie here)

Group Exercise/Discussion

Split participants into small groups and give them questions/problems to talk about and solve
Example: If your friend is deaf, how do you make sure that s/he understands what a video is about? OR How does someone who can't see or hear answer/check their email? OR X lost his hands in a car accident. How does he do a Google search?

15:30-16:00- coffee/tea break
16:00-17:30

Session 1 - Building an Accessible Website

Laying Accessible Foundations
Table-less layouts
Well-structured markup
Valid Code

Day 2

09:30-11:00 Group Exercise
11:00-11:30- tea/coffee break
11:30-13:00

Session 2 - Building an Accessible Website

Removing Barriers
Guideline 1 - Perception
Non-text content
Audio/Visual content
Adaptability
Contrast

13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:30 Group Exercise
15:30-16:00-tea/coffee break
16:00-17:30

Session 3 - Guideline 2

Operable
Keyboard Access
Enough Time
Seizures
Navigable

Wrap Session - Feedback and Clarifications

Day 3

09:30-11:00 - Session 4 - Guideline 3 and 4

Understandable
Natural Language
Predictable
Input Assistance
Robust
Compatible

11:00-11:30- tea/coffee break
11:30-13:00

Session 5 - Accessibility Testing

Automated Testing + Tools
Manual Testing

13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-15:30 Concluding session- feedback, clarification and action points of participants
15:30-16:00 tea/coffee break

Track 3

Capacity building for persons with visual impairments

This track is designed to equip students with visual impairments with skills and information required to face the employment world. It has courses such as goal orientation, soft skills and etiquettes and managing challenges in the work environment. It informs the students on what to expect when they go out to look for jobs and how to deal with potential logistic and attitudinal barriers. This is a very popular module which is currently being offered by Enable India Solutions,Bangalore and is being replicated in two days for the benefit of college students in Chennai.

The tentative sessionwise schedule for this track is given below:

Sessions

14:00-15:30- Why/How to be a finished product
15:30-16:00- Tea/coffee
16:00-17:30- Awareness on different jobs

Day 2

09:30-11:00- Goal orientation session
11:00-11:30- Tea/coffee break
13:30-13:00Employability awareness session 1 – Case studies of jobs and skills

Employability awareness session 2 – Computer skills (efficiency / quality)

13:00-14:00- Lunch
14:00-15:30- Employability awareness session 3 – Understand the real world perspective (& sighted point of view)
15:30-16:00- Tea/coffee break
16:00-17:30- Employability awareness session 4 - Importance of mobility
16:00-17:30- Employability awareness session 5 – Case studies on problem solving, workplace solutions, employed visually impaired

Day 3

Equipping for the employment world: Sessions

09:30-11:00
Soft skills including Social skills and etiquettes
Independent living skills
Emerging technologies - GPS, Mobile based OCr etc

11:00-11:30- tea/coffee break
11:30-13:00 Working in the corporate world- Managing challenges in work environment

Track 4

Capacity building for NGOs

This track is designed for general capacity building and information dissemination. It will cover topics like legal challenges, special needs for different disabilities, setting up resource centres, experimenting with new pedagogic techniques and using ICTs to impart education, presentation of case studies and so on.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/ncideee-2009

G3ict and CIS in collboration

radha — 2011-08-17T08:44:56Z

The G3ict and Centre for Internet and Society, India (www.cis-india.org) are collaborating on a white paper comparing internet accessibility policies and legislative frameworks in 15 countries across the world.

The paper seeks to identify initiatives which different countries have taken to make the internet more accessible. Countries chosen for the study include both developed and developing countries having very comprehensive legislations like USA and Germany, as well as countries having less detailed policies which are both low in scope of coverage as well as applicability like Portugal. The study will map the policies against several criteria such as their scope of coverage (only the internet or including electronic accessibility), applicability (only to the Government or to both the public and private sector), efficacy of the monitoring mechanism, provision for review, penalty in case of non compliance and so on.

Based on the findings of the study, the paper will identify generic options which policy makers could adopt to address the specific needs of their countries. This study will also form part of the larger tool kit for policy makers which G3ict is jointly publishing with the ITU.

The paper will be peer reviewed by experts in different countries to ensure that information which is given in the study is accurate and up to date. The paper will be published on the G3ict website in the first week of October and will be open for review by interested experts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/g3ict-and-cis-in-collboration

The Option To Read

radha — 2011-04-02T14:42:26Z

A blog in ‘thinkopotamus’ by Mr. Shreekumar Varma, Chief Guest, Right to Read Campaign’s first road show in Loyola College, Chennai

I was inaugurating the Right to Read Campaign's first Indian "road show" in Loyola College, Chennai, a couple of weeks ago when i realised that what we always take for granted is often a luxury or even impossibility for many others. For example, 70 ml people in India cannot access the printed word. Not because of illiteracy but due to some disability or other--- like blindness, dyslexia, etc. Click on the title of this entry to know more.

When I spoke during the event I said something that's been with me for some time. Calling people mentally challenged or visually challenged-- things like that--- tends to separate them and dump them with insurmountable disadvantage. We are becoming so politically correct in so many things today that we are losing touch with human correctness. I noticed during the event that when the blind spoke, they called themselves "blind" while the sighted called them "visually challenged". I said, in that case we should have sugar-challenged (diabetics), size-challenged, etc. When we realise that we are ALL a blend of advantage and disadvantage, ability and disability, then we can see the vulnerability in others as easily as we see it in ourselves.

I remember, exactly 20 years ago, I was "scribing" for a blind student in MCC, the college where I once studied and was at that time teaching for a year. I was writing the student's exam answers as he dictated. All at once, he stopped and said, "Sir, are you Shreekumar Varma?" Puzzled, I said yes. He told me he'd heard me speak during a programme I'd put together for All India Radio three months earlier, and now he recognised my voice! It was a revelation. The world that we cannot grasp is a bigger world than we think.

20 years later. Here I was at Loyola, kicking off a campaign. Well, I also promised them I'd do everything I could to drive the message home. And I am--- on Facebook, Twitter and "word of mouth".

Soon after that day, I contacted my editor at Harper Collins and brought her and Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan of CIS (centre for internet & society) together. The Copyright Act, unchanged since it was born (two years after me!), still makes it illegal to transform printed works into convenient forms for the disabled. I hope my Maria's Room will be read by many who can't read other books. We are still exploring ways of accomplishing this. The novel will be out in November this year, and will be a source of great satisfaction to me: the cover design is my son's, and everyone would have the option to read it.

Link to the blog

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-option-to-read

Internet sceptic? Go get a life

radha — 2011-04-02T14:49:11Z

Fifty years down the line, generations will laugh off the paranoia about the Internet - an article by Nishant Shah in the magazine Down To Earth

If there is one thing the Internet can claim uniqueness for, it will be for the fact that never in human history has a technology been charged so much with being the object of obsessions, compulsions or psychological disorders. We have never really heard of a print addict. We do have bibliophiles and cultural gurus. The camera has been duly appointed the most effective form of preserving memories. Its presence at all occasions, or even in the ordinarily mundane, has been accepted as a protocol. Photographers might spend days in dark rooms and morphing memories for posterity but we haven’t yet heard of a camera addict who needs a rehab.

How does the Internet, then, achieve this dubious status of being heralded for generating the Internet Addiction Disorder? The term, coined as a hoax by Ivan Goldberg as a satirical comment on the easy ‘disorder-isation’ of practices by contemporary psychiatry, has unfortunately ended up becoming what it critiqued: pointless, devoid of meaning, and backed by questionable research and studies by groups with vested interests.

What is the Internet Addiction Disorder? The first set of answers that list physiological descriptions such as dry eyes, carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive stress injury shall be summarily dismissed because these are not specific to the Internet. They are associated with lifestyles, postures and lack of awareness among the users about their physical engagements with technology but cannot, in any way, be a part of the psychological disorder under scrutiny.

So, ask the question again. The answers we get are: gambling, watching pornography, inappropriate time spent on social networking and email, chronic dependence for information, shopping beyond limits, excessive gaming and recreation online and neglecting different parts of life, and work. The list continues, but leaves us slightly baffled.

Surely critiques must know people used to gamble—we have made a nation of TV audience watching people gamble their lives, dignity and relationships on the camera—way before the Internet. Are they naive enough to think pornography and adult sex industries were lying low before the Internet came into play? In the increasingly urbanized spaces that we occupy, the need for social networking is inversely proportional to the reduced mobility, time and spaces of social interaction. In such cases, social networking is a tool that fulfils the human need to know we are not alone.

Anybody who is making claims about the Internet leading to excessive shopping is confessing they haven’t been around since plastic money was invented. And if somebody is avoiding responsibilities, it is a problem that will persist with or without the Internet.

The Internet is only a gateway to these and other interesting (and sometimes disturbing) cultural products, trends and fashions. We have never called for banning print as a technology because people use it to publish sexual material. The TV is going strong with celebrities gambling their lives and choosing spouses in front of an audience. Digital cinema and portable media devices have ensured that movies can be seen almost anywhere.

The fact is we depend on technologies of the time. These technologies, like the Internet, offer us possibilities and potentials for expression, cultural production and dissemination, information and communication, and each technology has its own inherent potential for abuse. The anxiety about technology is not new. Carolyn Marvin’s fascinating account, When Old Technologies Were New, shows how the telephone was supposed to make our children more furtive, our women more gossipy, our men more promiscuous and our society more detached and less civil.

The editor of a Philadelphia newspaper in 1894 had cautioned his readers “not to converse by phone with ill persons for fear of contracting contagious diseases.” Ridiculous as it sounds to us who have grown up with universal telephone technology, these concerns were grave and important to the people in those early days of telephones. Fifty years from now, generations are going to look at the contemporary paranoia around Internet addiction in a similar way and wonder what the fuss was all about.

Link to the article in Down to Earth

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-sceptic-go-get-a-life