Centre for Internet and Society

How India’s top firms fare in employing women and persons with disabilities

praskrishna — 2016-08-10T14:27:18Z

It is generally believed that the growth of the corporate sector in India has increased employment avenues for historically deprived sections of our society.

The article by Sachin P. Mampatta, Amritha Pillay and Ritika Mazumdar was published in Livemint on August 9, 2016. Nirmita Narasimhan was quoted.

However, an examination of employment data for India’s top 100 companies by market capitalization shows that there is much scope for improvement when it comes to employment of women and persons with disabilities (PWD). In fact, the share of women and disabled employees in India’s top companies is lower than the national average for non-agricultural workers.

The analysis is based on data culled out from Business Responsibility Reports (BRR) that companies are required to file since FY13, which seeks information on the number of permanent women and PWD employees. After factoring in consistency requirements and availability of data, 60 among top 100 companies have been used to calculate these results. This is what the analysis shows.

Is women and PWD employment increasing in corporate India?

Companies did not show marked improvement in the disclosures across the three years (FY13 to FY15). In fact, they showed a slight decline in the number of women employees. Women employees as a percentage of total employees dropped from 19.62% in FY13 to 18.51% in FY15. The number was better for PWD, though only marginally so. The share of PWD employees rose from 0.73% to 0.76% of the total workforce from 2012-13 to 2014-15. Data had limited granularity. So it is difficult to tell if there were overlaps between women and PWD employees. However such overlaps, if any, are expected to be limited.

Is corporate India better than the economy at large in employing women and PWD?

How does India’s corporate sector fare in employing women compared with the rest of the economy? We used data on other workers category from census to compare this. The category of other workers includes people who are not agricultural labourers, cultivators or people who are working in an industry run from home or within the village. Broadly speaking it gives an idea about the non-agricultural workforce in the economy. Data shows that the percentage share of women in corporate India’s workforce is lower than the share of women in other categories. The gap is even bigger in case of the share of PWD. The census data is for 2011, whereas for companies, the year which had the highest percentage share among FY13, FY14 and FY15 was taken.

What explains this gap?

Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director at The Centre for Internet and Society, a non-governmental organisation that works on issues affecting the differently abled, said that skilling is one of the hurdles that affects employment for the differently abled. While skilling of PWDs is a necessary condition for employability, it is not a necessary condition. For example, a visually impaired person may not be able to use a firm’s internal software if there is no compatible screen-reader to help them know what’s on the screen. Companies feel that they would have to spend a lot of money to procure infrastructure. However, technology now often makes it fairly inexpensive to do so. There is huge lack of awareness among employers. They often believe that this would affect the bottom line, Narasimhan added.

In case of women, larger factors could be at play. Women employment in India is still subject to continuing stereotypes which sees them as homemakers, triggering results such as a decline in employment of women with increase in household incomes, as was pointed out in a 2013 Mint piece.

However, there also exists evidence to show that discrimination might be at play even within companies. For example, women and PWD employees have a lower than median share in training received at workplace in these economies. As much as 69% of the permanent work-force received training in 2014-15, according to median figures for the sample set. The number for permanent women employees is 58.76%, and 49.79% for persons with disabilities. Training included skills upgrading and safety training. Skills was given priority where available, else safety training figures were used. Not all companies provided the figures. The above figures are based on the median value for the available set.

Interestingly, there are very few cases of discrimination filed against the companies. The total number filed for all 60 companies was four in 2012-13. It dropped to one in 2013-14, and was zero in 2014-15.

People are said to be reluctant to move the courts on a large scale in such matters. They are unsure of the outcome and cases tend to drag on.

Does this mean increasing private sector dominance in the economy is retrograde?

That said, the picture is not entirely gloomy. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) database shows that the share of women in private sector employment has been increasing since the 1990s. It has increased by almost 6 percentage points since 1990. However, more needs to be done. And top companies should take the lead.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/livemint-august-9-2016-sachi-p-mampatta-amritha-pillay-ritika-mazumdar-how-indias-top-firms-are-faring-in-employing-women-and-persons-with-disabilities

An India Where the Disabled have a Choice

praskrishna — 2016-08-06T17:06:38Z

The Roundtable on Digital Access to the Disabled held in Bangalore brought forward many issues related to the topic. Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society speaks to Dr. Archana Verma about the problems faced by the disabled while using technology. Being herself partially visually impaired, this is an interview from an expert as well as the personal experiences of a person from the disabled group.

This interview was published in Dataquest on August 5, 2016.

Q-Please throw some light on the issue of the inaccessibility of mobile apps to the disabled, since these have become essential for independent living today.

While mobile apps are fast becoming the preferred and often the only way to access services, these remain unavailable to a large section of the Indian population living with disabilities. This is because they are not designed in a way which conforms to standards of accessibility and cannot be used by persons using assistive technologies such as screen readers. Apps such as Ola, Uber, Big Basket, Make my trip, Flipkart, Myntra and most others are not completely accessible. The inaccessibility varies from total inaccessibility, where the screen reader remains absolutely silent and is unable to give any information to the user opening the app, to partially inaccessible, disallowing persons using screen readers from accessing complete information or from completing transactions. For instance, if one opens Flipkart, one hears a button labelled home page banner and then the screen reader just keeps saying button for whatever is pressed, without being able to give any information on what the buttons are for or what is written there. Similarly, if one opens Myntra, one doesn’t hear any information at all, just a series of clicks, at one point one hears buttons labelled for man, for women, for kids and then when one presses any of those, one is again greeted by complete silence. The Big Basket app also has problems such as unlabelled buttons and fields and makes it difficult to carry out transactions such as changing the quantity, changing the address etc.

It is rather sad that the IT industry fails to realise that persons with disabilities, a group which is the world’s largest minority and account for a very large percentage of our population can potentially be amongst the biggest consumers of these ICT products and services. Consider before the advent of technology, a blind person could not read mainstream books and newspapers, work in routine office environments, shop alone or pay bills, file returns etc. on his/her own. Now, when everything can be done on line and there is technology which can read out and assist blind persons to use computers/ phones themselves, they offer the opportunity to negate the limitations of disability. However, this is not happening because products and services are not designed and developed in compliance with standards of accessibility and universal design, resulting in them being ineffectual or useless for persons using assistive technology. If the apps and websites conform to accessibility standards, Developers need not test their software against each and every disability, which can get understandably complicated, they are automatically accessible to persons with different disabilities in one way or another.

While accessing necessary services and information itself is challenging and often impossible for the disabled, the ability to access and enjoy games like other people is completely beyond imagination, not even something one could dream of said a friend of mine. I asked my friend Dinesh Kaushal, an accessibility expert who heads development of NVDA, an open source screen reader for the blind in India what his experience with the new gaming app Pokemon Go was, which is all the rage nowadays and he said that it was completely inaccessible. There is absolutely no information on the game screen and the Android screen reader Talk Back is absolutely silent. And this according to him this is not uncommon in many gaming apps.

Q- Highlight some of the problems related to the inaccessibility of websites and content to the disabled.

Web site inaccessibility very often hinders a person using assistive technology from accessing information on the internet. A web site can be inaccessible for different persons because of different reasons, depending upon the disability. However, this can be solved by compliance with standards. Inaccessibility of websites also hinders accessing content on mobile phones or affects persons with limited bandwidth or elderly persons.

While progress is being made to make government web sites accessible, this has not yet been completely achieved. In addition, web sites of important services and organisations such as banks, health care, education etc. are often inaccessible. Often a person using a screen reader may come across an important document which is an image file and cannot be read by the screen reader or a deaf person cannot enjoy an audio visual clip because there are no sub titles. Web sites with frequent flashing and flickering, constantly changing pages, images without descriptions and unlabelled form fields and headings, audio visual media content without subtitles, image files of documents without alternate accessible format options continue to populate the Internet. Unless web site accessibility is taken seriously and is treated as a non-negotiable ingredient of a contract for web site development and maintenance, the Internet will continue to be inaccessible.

Q- Can you enumerate the policy and guidelines requiring web site accessibility and the large spread of non-compliance with them?

Although most transactions happen online today, the fact that websites do not conform to universal standards of accessibility render them unusable by persons with disabilities.
The World Wide Web consortium has had accessibility standards for web site accessibility for over a decade now and these have been adopted by many countries around the world. This standard is known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. India also notified the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) which borrows from the WCAG 2.0 to ensure that government websites are accessible. The National policy on universal electronic accessibility was notified in October 2013 and requires conformance to standards of accessibility. It mentions W3C standards such as WCAG 2.0, ARIA and ATAG and identifies procurement as a route to make electronic infrastructure accessible. It also identifies strategies such as awareness raising, training, research and development of assistive technology as vital to implementation of the policy and allocates different roles to different stake holders, including to ministries, departments, private organisations, etc. Other commitments are to be found in the accessible India and digital India campaigns, commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which requires government to make all ICT and Internet available and accessible to persons with disabilities and encourage private service providers to make their services accessible, Access to ICTs are also covered under the goals of the Incheon Strategy to make the rights real for persons with disabilities.

Q- Give us some information about the work of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in the realm of the digital and technological accessibility for the disabled.

We are an eight year old organisation. Our accessibility programme works in multiple ways, which include the following –

(A) Policy research and advocacy (initiating and contributing to new and existing policy discussions to bring digital accessibility on the agenda: We started our work on 3 issues:

(a)Website and electronic accessibility – We produced research on what different countries have in terms of policies, guidelines and measures to promote website and electronic accessibility and worked with the Department of Electronics and information technology (DEITy) to formulate the National Policy on Universal Electronics accessibility which was notified in 2013. We also serve on the Implementation committee.

(b) Getting an exception into the Indian Copyright Act to allow conversion of books and other copyrighted works into accessible formats without the need to get permission from copyright holders. We provided research to MHRD on what other countries have in terms of copyright exceptions to promote access to published works for persons who are blind, have low vision or other print disabilities, we carried out a right to read campaign around India, provided submissions to the standing committee and finally were able to positively influence, along with other NGOs, the amendment to the Copyright Act in 2012.

(c) Aiding the negotiation of a Treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organisation which would facilitate international sharing of books for persons with print disabilities. We attended the negotiations at Geneva from 2010 and are a permanent observer there now, intervening and providing research advice on various issues. The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled was concluded in 2014 and India was the first country to ratify it. The 20 ratifications required to bring the treaty into force just got concluded on June 30th 2016 and the treaty will come into force from 1st September 2016.

(d) We also worked with the Universal Service Obligation Fund of India to launch a pilot scheme to fund projects for persons with disabilities in rural areas.

(e) Apart from the above, we have produced global reports with international partners like the International Telecommunication Union and G3ict on topics such as mobile accessibility and produced research which we sent to relevant government agencies on topics such as banking and financial inclusion, emergency and disaster management for persons with disabilities, accessible broadcasting and so on.

(f) We are implementing a project to develop text to speech for several Indian languages using an open source speak synthesiser called e-Speak and enhanced working of NVDA an open source screen reader which works with English and other Indian languages. We have also carried out several trainings on this software around the country.
We also provide advice to governments and organisations in other countries on ICT accessibility related issues. We have also organised trainings on web accessibility and other topics as may be required.

Q- What kinds of challenges are faced by the CIS in its work?

Limited resources – very few donors fund the kind of work we do although no one denies the criticality and usefulness of it. Neither do we fall within the bracket of a traditional organisation serving persons with disabilities, nor is accessibility as marketable a topic as say something like privacy and cyber security, hence to have a team which can actively carry on this work of research and advocacy, constantly responding to policy developments, attending meetings is very difficult and we are not able to do the kind of work we want.

Q- What kind of vision of empowerment would you propose for the disabled through digital accessibility? How can this vision be achieved?

My Vision- Every person with a disability in India is able to access the Internet, content and facilities through an ICT enabled device, be it computers or phones; where this access is unhindered by barriers and is instantaneous, not retrospective. Further, I speak for an India which is inclusive in the complete sense, i.e. accessibility standards are part of mainstream standards and Universal Design is the standard approach to creations and developments of all kind and not where separate considerations need to be made for the disabled on specific products and services. Where a person with a disability has a choice, as do the other citizens and not where they are given an option; they have access to the world at the same time on the same terms; where there is true equality and we live a life with dignity and pride.

How Can We Achieve It?

India has already taken certain steps to show her commitment to accessibility –

We have ratified the UNCRPD, are part of the Incheon Strategy to make the rights real for persons with disabilities and are in the process of passing a new Rights of Persons with disabilities legislation. We also have a National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility, Guidelines on Government Websites, the Accessible India and Digital India campaigns and the Smart Cities Mission. There is ample opportunity and scope for ensuring accessibility is implemented to give complete effect to these. Some of the areas where action can be taken include:

1. Web site accessibility should be taken up immediately since it affects access for all on using different platforms. The plan can identify number of web sites and different stakeholders and the time lines by which they are required to make their web sites compliant. Both self-certification as well as regular audits should be carried out to check for compliance.

2. Public Procurement is another critical tool in the hands of the government to ensure that all public infrastructure and all facilities/ resources/ products/ services procured out of public money or for the consumption/ use of the public should be made accessible. This is increasingly being adopted in countries around the world. India has a draft procurement bill, several organisations serving the disabled have given a request for the inclusion of accessibility considerations within the procurement bill, we hope they will be taken seriously. By including compliance with accessibility standards as part of performance criteria in all government contracts and calls for proposals and contracts for development and maintenance of products and services, we can ensure not only that web sites etc. become accessible, but that competence is generated in the market to create and market accessible products and increase choice in the market for persons with disabilities.

3. Government ensuring that accessibility requirements are integrated in all government schemes and programmes and accessibility should be considered no longer a matter of choice, but of necessity. There are budgets for different ministries and agencies, there should be a mechanism to evaluate that all the budget set aside for meeting the needs of persons with disabilities are expended meaningfully and not accumulated or go back to the main kitty unspent. There should be proactive disclosure on the part of all government agencies on their spending on accessibility/ disability and they should solicit advice from persons with disabilities and accessibility experts who are part of the committee to review budget spending.

4. Development of appropriate technologies- we need to ensure that enough resources are pumped towards creating our own research and development community to support development and maintenance of assistive technology that caters to needs of specific groups. Open source solutions are desirable for a country like India because of the opportunity they offer for deployment, customisation and improvements.

5. Accessible Smart Cities- The Smart Cities Mission should immediately ensure that their advisory panel includes accessibility experts and that the smart cities which emerge as part of this initiative are inclusive- this is the ideal opportunity to build an accessible city, universal design should be the basic principle on which these smart cities are developed; if this is not done, then there will always remain two worlds- one for the world at large and one for persons with disabilities, and the disparity between the two will always continue.

6. Finally the most important advice I would reiterate is the inclusion of persons with disabilities across all work of the government – only then will the accessibility perspective be represented and taken into account everywhere. Otherwise we may have a situation where accessibility is either missing, or where projects are being implemented to aid the disabled, which are totally meaningless or inappropriate and only serve to waste precious resources, time and effort.

Q- What measures do you suggest for making digital accessibility available to the disabled people across the divides of class, gender and more developed and less developed regions?

Digital accessibility should be implemented at the levels of content, user interface and end user device. Hence accessibility of documents and information on the Internet should conform to standards of accessibility, such as EPUB 3.0, html etc.

User interface-WCAG 2.0 for websites is a must for any device to function effectively. Assistive software must be completely accessible. For instance, it is not uncommon to find that an ATm which is termed ‘accessible’ actually needs the input of a sighted person at some stages of the transaction while some other points are completely prompted through audio. In such a case, the blind still cannot use this.

Schemes under the USOF and others may be used to provide devices and connectivity to persons with disabilities in rural and far flung areas and also targeting specific user groups such as women. For instance a project under the USOF to promote women entrepreneurship in rural areas by providing them with a mobile phone can easily be replicated for disabled women. They could be funded for initiatives such as operating public internet kiosks or public phone booths etc. Schools in villages could be provided with computers fitted with assistive technology (hardware and software as may be required) s that disabled children and teachers have access and exposure to technology.

Providing mobile phones to all persons with disabilities will go a long way to open up the world of books, information, communication and access to emergency services to persons with disabilities.

Common Services Centres throughout the country are an excellent way of reaching persons with disabilities and providing them access to technology. By providing assistive technology on computers there, which is not at all inexpensive if one were to use free and open source software such as the NVDA screen reader and one trained person to impart training to the disabled, who can also be a person with a disability, we can make a lot of progress in terms of both building trained capacity and providing access to technology for persons with disabilities. Private employers and organisations also have a critical role to play in promoting accessibility for the disabled.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/dataquest-august-5-2016-an-india-where-the-disabled-have-a-choice

How tech brings self-reliance to students with disabilities

praskrishna — 2016-05-29T07:47:30Z

Rakshit Malik, 18, has every reason to be pleased with himself. He just scored 96.4% in his Class 12 exam -the third-highest score in CBSE's disabled category.

The article was published by the Times of India on May 29, 2016. Nirmita Narasimhan gave inputs.

He treats his visual impairment matter-of-factly: "My ability is stronger than my disability". A humanities student who wants to specialize in history, Malik learns by listening. He hears the material, pauses, and assimilates it. "While we found audio versions of NCERT textbooks in Classes 9 and 10, they are not available for Classes 11 and 12," says Malik, who then used his own method. "Mama recorded herself reading out my textbooks".

This year, there was merely a 12-mark difference between the student who topped the disabled category and the highest scorer in the exam. In many cases, learning outcomes are aligning, and advances in assistive technology have something to do with the trend. While it is still essential to know Braille, the system of reading raised dots by touch is falling out of use in many parts of the world. In the US, fewer than 10% of the visually impaired read Braille. Now, digital screen readers and magnifiers, and text-tospeech apps make sure that a blind student and a sighted one are on the same page. "Tactile diagrams can be used to teach geography , science and other subjects that require visual aids," explains Nirmita Narasimhan, accessibility expert and policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society , Bangalore.

As more learning material is put online, students have it much easier than they did a generation ago. They also get study notes from peer-to-peer forums.

According to the 2011 census, 2.21% of the Indian population -around 26.8 million -have some form of disability . On paper, the state is committed to supporting these students, and to providing aids and appliances, access to material, scribes and readers; and easing exam processes.In practice, it is far from smooth, explains Diana Joseph of the Fourth Wave Foundation, a Karnataka NGO that bridges the gap between government and students with the Nanagu Shaale programme."Each integrated education resource trainer has to oversee 30 schools. So it's often perfunctory . For example, they may supply hearing tools, without explaining that the battery must be replaced."

Over the last five years, there has been progress in both technology and policy. Copyright restrictions have been lifted for the use of the disabled. Textbooks have been proactively digitized. But ultimately , success depends on the mundane but critical matter of the right standards, explains Dipendra Manocha, who leads the DAISY for All project in India. DAISY, or Digital Accessible Information System, is an international standard for printed material that can be read in Braille, large print, audio, etc on a computer or mobile phone. By contrast, something scanned as an image file can't be read.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/the-times-of-india-may-29-2016-how-tech-brings-self-reliance-to-students-with-disabilities

Accessible ICT Procurement

pranesh — 2016-05-09T14:48:49Z

Today in India there is an excellent opportunity to address the needs of persons with disabilities through accessible ICT procurement. There is a growing body of evidence globally to demonstrate that governments are successfully using accessible procurement as a means of ensuring the human rights of persons with disabilities,. They are amongst the largest purchasers of IT in any country and by requiring accessible products and services, ensure that all citizens with disabilities and government employees who are disabled are able to access and use public infrastructure and communication. CIS along with 20 other organisations petition the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Information Technology to bring in accessibility considerations within the draft Procurement Bill.

To
The Secretary,
Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD)
Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment,
Room No: 525, 5^th Floor,
Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road,
New Delhi - 110003

The Secretary
Ministry of Finance
North Block, New Delhi- 110001

The Secretary
Ministry of Information Technology
Electronics Niketan, 6,
CGO Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003

Dear Sir/ Madam,

Subject: Urgent opportunity to address the needs of persons with disabilities through accessible ICT procurement in the draft procurement bill.

We are a group of organisations working to protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities in India. You may be aware that persons with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, comprising over a billion persons of the world population as of 2011. We give below some important points which outline the need to consider accessible procurement for your consideration:

Demographic need: As per the census of India in 2011, there are 2.21 per cent or 26 million persons with disabilities living in India. However, there is an inconsistency between the estimates of the Census and the NSS surveys due to various reasons such as different definitions, different methodologies, traditional diagnostic techniques, varied reporting responses and even the 11^th five year plan opines that these numbers may be under representative and the actual number may be closer to approximately 5-6%. A World Bank report pegs the number at about 5-8% or approximately 55-90 million in India. Hence, there is a large constituency of persons with disabilities and possibly an equally large number of persons having special needs and requiring accommodations who are not necessarily identified within this group. The needs of these persons must be taken into account in order to achieve complete national development.
Need for accessible IT infrastructure: With the increasing emphasis and reliance on IT for administration, governance, communication and information through the ‘Digital India’ and ‘Smart Initiatives’, there is a need for the IT infrastructure to be accessible to enable use by all, i.e. a product or service should be usable to its maximum potential by all persons with ease and comfort irrespective of ability. For instance: Persons with disabilities cannot be given productive work in a bank if banking is not usable with the help of assistive technology; and Persons with special needs will not be able to pay bills or do banking or avail services rendered by e-governance platforms if ICT infrastructure is not usable with assistive technology. This need has already been recognized by the Government of India (GoI) through its ‘Accessible India Campaign’. Accessible ICT Procurement will be a vehicle to achieving this.
Legal imperative: India is strongly committed towards creating a barrier free world with equal opportunities and without discrimination, and facilitating enjoyment of all fundamental and human rights for persons with disabilities and complete digital inclusion. India has signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which identifies access to information and information and communication technologies as a human right and requires governments to facilitate enjoyment of these rights on an equal basis and without discrimination through various measures, such as encouraging private organisations to provide accessible services and information and provide other forms of assistance to facilitate access to information and adopting minimum standards of accessibility and design for accessibility at early stage of production to reduce cost.

Article 4(a)-(d) requires states parties to act in conformance with the convention. Accessibility is an underlying principle of the CRPD and integral for persons with disabilities to enjoy all the other human rights such as access to education, employment, assistive technologies, political participation, health, independent living and cultural materials.

India has also signed other national and international instruments in this regard, such as the Inchen strategy to make the rights real for persons with disabilities, the Marrakesh Treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise reading disabled, the Biwako Millineum framework and the Biwako plus 5, enacting various legislations related to disability, including the upcoming Bill on the Rights of persons with disabilities, the National Universal Electronic Accessibility Policy and Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) which prescribes accessibility requirements. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which were finalised in September 2015 and by which India is bound, also call for inclusiveness in all its goals such as education, inequality reduction, infrastructure building, economy, habitation, institutions, poverty reduction and sustainability. Hence there is a very strong legal case for implementing accessible ICT procurement, as the driver for achieving complete inclusion and participation of persons with disabilities.

Proven effective mechanism: Public procurement has been identified as a very effective tool in the hands of policy makers to implement accessibility and significant strides have been made by different countries such as USA, Australia and countries in the European Union. Statistics reveal that governments are amongst the largest purchasers of IT products and services and hence well positioned to leverage this power to ensure that all products and services developed, delivered and maintained out of public money and for the use of the public or government employees are accessible. The Government of India (GoI) is also one of the largest employers of persons with disabilities, hence the absence of accessible public infrastructure hinders efficient functioning of the government itself.
Standards for accessible ICT procurement: Today accessible procurement has proven a successful tool in the hands of policy makers and there are evolved standards in this domain. The two major standards are that of section 508 in USA and the En 301-549 (EN) in Europe. The latter is the most comprehensive and updated standard and there is a global move to develop a harmonized standard based on the EN. Hence, there is a readily available framework and standard in the form of the En for India to adopt and base its framework.

Key Global Initiatives

We’d like to draw your attention to the accessible public procurement initiative and charter launched by G3ict and to the arguments in the G3ict white paper for adoption of this policy. We strongly support the arguments made therein and recommend that GoI embrace accessible public procurement in the draft Procurement Bill of 2014. Some key points from the charter and initiative which argue strongly for the case of having an accessible ICT procurement policy in India are extracted and given below:

“Accessible procurement is relevant for the enjoyment of human rights as set out in the UNCRPD, which has been signed by 160 countries.
Public procurement accounts for 10-15% of a country’s GDP and up to 16 per cent in countries in the EU, In USA, the federal government alone purchases 25 per cent of ICTs and the purchase of the federal and state governments together account for 40 per cent of the total ICT purchases of the country.
Public procurement policy is a strong instrument to achieve digital inclusion and serves to incentivize accessible design from the start of the development process.
It strengthens the local technology industry of a country and creates positive ripple effects into the broader consumer ICT marketplace.
It develops the national accessibility ecosystem, capacity, and expertise to develop and deliver accessible products and services and lowers costs through harmonized standards & competition. It also drives the creation of new development tools for accessible technology and better accessibility training for technology professionals.”

Conclusion and Recommendations:

Access to public services and information are critical for citizens to participate in the nation building process. The development of India hinges on the progress and inclusion of all its citizens. India has already recognized the criticality of building smart cities and the need to create an accessible India. Hence, the adoption of accessible procurement falls directly within the mandate of the GoI as it is a fundamental step to achieving India’s goals. Accessible procurement is not an option, but a necessity. We hence request the GoI to take immediate steps to rectify the lapse and include accessibility as a key consideration within the procurement Bill. Accordingly, we propose the following approach for GoI’s consideration:

Preparation and circulation of a note explaining the need to include accessibility as a key component of the procurement process within the government, describing rationale, business case and best practices.
Inclusion of suitable provisions in the present draft Procurement Bill covering the following:

Identifying accessibility as a key requirement of procurement
Including definitions of accessibility and accessibility standard within the definition section. (We recommend that a national standard be adopted which is similar to or in line with the European standard EN 301-549 since it is extremely evolved and being widely adopted by countries within and outside Europe.
Requiring accessibility experts and persons with disabilities to be part of all committees set up towards implementation of the Act and procurement related processes at the central and state levels.
Including a distinct and comprehensive section in the procurement rules notified after enactment of the Act dealing with accessible procurement processes and communication which may include the following: identification of accessibility as a selection/ award criteria, inclusion of accessibility at different stages of the procurement process, such as preparatory study, pre-qualification documents, contracts for design, development, delivery and maintenance of products and services, purchase of off the shelf products, requirement of attestation and verification procedures, self-declaration by vendors, training requirements, exemption cases, transparent bidding processes to ensure inclusion of accessibility, accessible communication, and implementation and audit mechanisms.
Requiring procuring entities to include accessibility implementation within their reporting requirements.

GoI may undertake capacity building activities to raise awareness amongst procuring entities on accessibility.
GoI may draw up a plan with time lines for implementation which may be in two phases. Phase 1 may relate to setting in the process for all present and future procurement and phase 2 may relate to a plan for legacy systems which will not necessarily be replaced anew.

We would be happy to provide further inputs in this regard.

Thanking you

Yours sincerely

Mr. Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director
Centre for Internet and Society

List of Signatories

Sl. No	Name of the Person	Designation	Organisation	Email id
1	Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan	Policy Director	Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore	nirmita@cis-india.org
2	Mr. Dipendra Manocha	President	Daisy Forum of India and President, National Association for the Blind(Delhi)	dipendra.manocha@gmail.com
3	Mr. Muralidharan	Convener	National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD)	nprd.in@gmail.com
4	Mr. Praful Vyas	Secretary	Andhjan Kalyan Trust	aktrust.drj@gmail.com prafulnvyas@gmail.com
5	Mr. Nilesh Singit	Advocacy & Research Officer	Centre for Disability Studies, NALSAR
6	Ms. Charudatta Jadhav		Techenvision	charudatta.chess@gmail.com
7	Dr. Beula Christy	HOD-Vision	Rehabilitation Centres, L V Prasad Eye Institute	beula@lvpei.org
8	Dr. Ramesh C Gaur	University Librarian	Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU)	1. rcgaur@mail.jnu.ac.in 2. rcgaur66@gmail.com
9	Dr. Homiyar Mobedji		Bookshare	dr.homiyar@gmail.com
10	Dr. Sam Taraporewala	Director	Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged	sam@xrcvc.org
11	Mr. Srinivasu Chakravarthula,	Hon. Joint Secretary	The National Association for the Blind, Karnataka	srinivasu@srinivasu.org
12	Mr. K Raghuraman		Karna Vidya Foundation	raghuram.mcc@gmail.com
13	Mr. Dhanajay Bhole	Coordinator	Acc Savitribai Phule Pune university
14	Mr. Prashant Ranjan Verma	Joint Secretary	National Association for the Blind – Delhi	Pr_verma@hotmail.com
15	Mr. N S Sastry		Samrita Trust	samritatrust2006@gmail.com, norisastry@gmail.com
16	Ms. Madhu Singhal		Mitrajyothi	admin.office@mitrajyothi.org
17	Mr. Bhushan Punani		Blind People’s Association (BPA)	blinabad1@bsnl.in
18	Mr. Anil Mudgal	Secretary	Arushi	arushiorg@gmail.com
19	Ms. Poonam Tyagi	General Secretary	National Association for the Blind, Meerut
20	Dr. Vimal Dengla		National Association for the Blind
21	Mr. V S Sunder	Member	DRA India	sunder@imsc.res.in
22	Mr. Mohith B P			Bpmohith.ckm@gmail.com

[1]. Available at http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/disabled_population.aspx
[2]. Please see
http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/disablity_india_statistical_data_11mar2011/Chapter%204-Dimension_Disability.pdf
[3]. Available at http://www.section508.gov/
[4]. Available at
https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_en/301500_301599/301549/01.00.00_20/en_301549v010000c.pdf
[5]. Global Charter: Promoting Global Digital Inclusion through ICT Procurement Policies & Accessibility Standards, G3ict; URL:
http://g3ict.org/resource_center/g3ict_global_charter
[6]. CRPD Implementation: Promoting Global Digital Inclusion through ICT Procurement Policies & Accessibility Standards, G3ict available at: http://g3ict.org/resource_center/publications_and_reports/p/productCategory_whitepapers/subCat_7/id_339/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessible-ict-procurement

April 2016 Newsletter

sunil — 2016-05-10T06:26:09Z

Welcome to the CIS newsletter for April 2016. The key issues we worked on this month included the Aadhaar Act 2016, Standard Essential Patents, cyber security of smart grids, and involvement of international agencies in the smart cities project in India.

Early last year, thanks to the fund raising efforts of a friend of CIS - Suhail Kazi, we received Rs. 1.9 lakhs as donations from 19 individuals. In January this year, we set up an online giving feature on our website which would ease the donation process, but we haven’t got a single donation so far! This could be because many of you may be under a false impression that CIS is very wealthy and does not need more support. Unfortunately, this is no longer true. Today, we are unable to find a single donor who is interested in our Accessibility, Telecom, or RAW programmes. In other words, we need your support. Would you to consider making a small donation to CIS? Click here to donate.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
CIS prepared an FAQ on the Aadhaar / UIDAI project and the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. Further, two infographics were produced to highlight on the questions of "Can the Aadhaar Act 2016 be Classified as a Money Bill?" and "Can the Matters Dealt with in the Aadhaar Act be the Objects of a Money Bill?". NVDA team prepared a report on the progress of the project for the month of April 2016. CIS submitted its comments to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion's Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and their Availability on FRAND Terms. CIS has offered its assistance on other matters aimed at developing a suitable policy framework for SEPs and FRAND in India, and, working towards the sustained innovation, manufacture and availability of mobile technologies in India. A summary of the comments can be accessed here. Responses to the Discussion Paper is available here. Rohini Lakshané's paper titled Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey has been accepted for publication by the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. Kiran A.B. in a blog post has documented the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. Low-cost Aakash tablet and its previous iterations in India have gone through several phases of technological changes and ideological experiments wrote Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Jahnavi Phalkey in an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly.

-----------------------------------
CIS in the News
-----------------------------------

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

India's biometric database crosses billion-member mark (AFP and Daily Mail, UK; April 4, 2016).
The Panama Papers and the question of privacy (Big News Network; April 6, 2016). This was originally published by Privacyinternational.org.
Daunting task ahead for investigative agencies with WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; April 8, 2016).
PMO’s no to smart cards, insists on Aadhaar (Somesh Jha; Hindu; April 10, 2016).
2014 showed the power of Twitter, now every Indian politician wants a handle (T.V. Jayan, Smitha Verma,Sonia Sarkar and V. Kumara Swamy; Telegraph; April 10, 2016).
Why is the UIDAI cracking down on individuals that hoard Aadhaar data? (Alnoor Peermohamed; Business Standard; April 13, 2016).
You will need a license to create a WhatsApp group in Kashmir (Governance Now; April 19, 2016).
Will Facebook, Twitter relocate servers to India? (Taru Bhatia; Governance Now; April 23, 2016).
Government keeps experts out of cyber security discussions (Amrita Madhukalya; DNA; April 23, 2016).
CCTV plays Sherlock (Raj Shekhar, Arun Dev, V Narayan & A Selvaraj with inputs from Sindhu Kannan and Somreet Bhattacharya; The Times of India; April 24, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following pieces:

Sunil Abraham wrote an article in the July 15 edition of Frontline arguing that the Aadhaar project’s technological design and architecture is an unmitigated disaster and no amount of legal fixes in the Act will make it any better.
Amber Sinha wrote an article in The Wire arguing that the Aaddhaar Act is not a money bill, and the Supreme Court may very well question the decision by the Lok Sabha speaker to classify it as such.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay also wrote on The Wire arguing that "the last chance for a welfare state doesn’t rest in the Aadhaar system."
Subhashish Panigrahi's article on the 8 challenges that Indian language Wikipedias have to overcome was published by Global Voices. The article had earlier been published in the Wire.
Elonnai Hickok and Vanya Rakesh co-authored an article on Cyber Security of Smart Grids in India that was published by Dataquest.
Shyam Ponappa in his monthly column published in the Business Standard tell us that it's time the government accepts that current policies are not enough to bring about Digital India.

-------------------------------------
Accessibility & Inclusion
-------------------------------------
India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

-----------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------
Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Comments

Comments on Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Discussion Paper on Standard Essential Patents and their Availability on Frand Terms (Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshané; April 23, 2016).
Responses to the DIPP's Discussion Paper on SEPs and their Availability on FRAND Terms (Anubha Sinha, Nehaa Chaudhari and Rohini Lakshané; April 23, 2016).
Summary of CIS Comments to DIPP’s Discussion Paper on SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms (Anubha Sinha; April 26, 2016).

Blog Entries

Global Congress 2015 - A Collection of Resources (Pervasive Technologies Team; April 1, 2016).
Compilation of Mobile Phone Patent Litigation Cases in India (Rohini Lakshané; updated on April 15, 2016).
Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone Patent Litigation (Rohini Lakshané; updated on April 29, 2016).
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Information Received from Tezpur University (Karan Tripathi; April 26, 2016).
National IPR Policy Series : Sectoral Innovation Councils on Intellectual Property Rights – RTI Requests + DIPP Responses (Nehaa Chaudhari and Saahil Dama; April 30, 2016). Nisha S. Kumar assisted in compilation of the document.

Participation in Events

Fifth Annual IP Teaching Workshop (Organised by the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property and Competition at National Law University Delhi in association with National Academy of Law Teaching, NLU-D; Delhi; March 31 and April 1, 2016). Nehaa Chaudhari was a speaker.
First Round-table on Innovation, IP and Competition (Organized by the Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property & Competition (CIIPC) at the National Law University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre; New Delhi; April 1-2, 2016). Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha attended the round-table.
Brainstorming Workshop on PG Programme on Media Studies for UGC E-Pathshala Programme (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia; New Delhi; April 5, 2016).
Sensitization Seminar on IPR for Electronics & ICT Sectors (Organized by Andhra Pradesh Technology Development & Promotion Centre (APTDC) of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in association with Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY); Vishakhapatnam; April 21, 2016).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Work Plan

CIS - A2K Work Plan: July 2016 - June 2017 (CIS-A2K Team; April 2, 2016): We have revised the work plan template taking into account the changed proposal plan sent out by WMF and in light of the feedback that we have received from FDC assessment during last proposal application. The FDC feedback is taken into account at the level of design, RoI and ensuring quality for all our activities.

Article

Eight Challenges Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; April 21, 2016). A version of this post was previously published on The Wire.

Media Coverage

Odia gets more space in e-world (Anwesha Ambaly; The Telegraph; April 7, 2016).
Exercise to Correct articles in Tulu Wikipedia begins (Raviprasad Kamila; The Hindu; April 28, 2016).

Event Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Editathon to Improve Quality of Articles in Tulu Wikipedia (Shri Ramakrishna PU College; Mangaluru; April 26 - 30, 2016).

-----------------------------------
Openness
-----------------------------------

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II) (Kiran A.B.; April 12, 2016).

-----------------------------------
Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Cyber Security

Cyber Security of Smart Grids in India (Elonnai Hickok and Vanya Rakesh; April 25, 2016).

►Big Data

Blog Entry

RTI regarding Smart Cities Mission in India (Paul Thottan; April 21, 2016).

►Privacy

Blog Entries

FAQ on the Aadhaar Project and the Bill (Elonnai Hickok, Vanya Rakesh, and Vipul Kharbanda; April 13, 2016).
Aadhaar Act and its Non-compliance with Data Protection Law in India (Vanya Rakesh; April 14, 2016).
Can the Matters Dealt with in the Aadhaar Act be the Objects of a Money Bill? (Pooja Saxena; April 24, 2016).

Articles

Will Aadhaar Act Address India’s Dire Need For a Privacy Law? (Nehaa Chaudhari; Quint; March 31, 2016).
The Last Chance for a Welfare State Doesn’t Rest in the Aadhaar System (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; April 19, 2016).
The Aadhaar Act is Not a Money Bill (Amber Sinha; April 25, 2016).

Participation in Events

RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016 (Organized by RightsCon; March 31 and April 1, 2016). Elonnai Hickok attended the event.
Panel Discussion on UID/ Aadhar act 2016 and its impact on Social, Security (Organized by Students Christian Movement of India at SCM House; Bangalore; April 25, 2016). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
The Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), organised a roundtable discussion on Tuesday, April 26, to discuss the Aadhaar project and Act. Along with Prasanna S, Apar Gupta, and Dr. Chirashree Dasgupta, Sumandro Chattapadhyay was one of the discussants.
Aadhaar by Numbers (Organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; New Delhi; April 29, 2016). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

-----------------------------------
Telecom
-----------------------------------
CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

Breakthroughs Needed For Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; April 6, 2016 and Organizing India BlogSpot; April 7, 2016).

-----------------------------------
Researchers at Work
-----------------------------------
The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Article

Buying into the Aakash Dream - A Tablet’s Tale of Mass Education (Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Jahnavi Phalkey; Economic & Political Weekly; April 23, 2016).

Announcement

Call for Proposal: Big Data for Development – Initial Field Studies (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; April 29, 2016).

-----------------------------------
About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2016-newsletter

Report on eSpeak with NVDA Screen Reader and Assistive Technology for Visually Challenged

nirmita — 2016-04-02T06:33:55Z

The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore and National Association for the Blind, New Delhi in collaboration with Centre for Differently Abled Persons, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli organized a workshop on eSpeak with NVDA Screen Reader and Assistive Technology for Visually Challenged at Centre for Differently Abled Persons, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli on January 21, 2016.

The eSpeak with NVDA Screen Reader and Assistive Technology workshop planned for 1day (21st January 2016) for those stakeholders in Colleges and Volunteers working with visually challenged students was inaugurated in the morning by Mr. S. Shankar Subbiah, Assistive Technology Consultant and representative of Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, and National Association for Blind, New Delhi, the sponsors for workshop. He gave a talk on the purpose of the Workshop and need for use of Assistive Technology among the visually challenged in the present educational and employment context. Dr. M. Prabhavathy, Asst. Professor and Centre Head gave the Welcome address and Vote of thanks, thanking the participants for their interests on empowerment of visually challenged and their earnest efforts to training them.

The well-equipped and accessible ICT lab of the Centre for Differently Abled Persons, at Kajamalai Campus, Bharathidasan University served as the venue for training. In order to facilitate the participants with more concentrated and time efforts, High Tea and Lunch were also served during the workshop. The participant trainees were from Tiruchirappalli district and nearby districts like Karur, Pudukottai and Thanjavur of Tamilnadu state.

The workshop began with Resource persons, Dr. Prabhavathy and Mr. S. Shankar Subbiah gave an introduction on eSpeak with NVDA and various other Assistive Technology available for visually challenged in education as well as future employment opportunities. Emphasis was laid upon how colleges and university could source them, setup resource centres for visually challenged with access to accessible format of information.

In the afternoon, Mr. K. Navarasan, Visually challenged Assistive Technology Expert gave a live demonstration on eSpeak with NVDA screen reader working on various Data processing and other application tasks. Both, English and Tamil with eSpeak TTS was demonstrated. Also, explained about DAISY format and Bookshare, Online library membership and how it helped visually challenged. He narrated his personal experience as a Post Graduate in English how he was benefitted. And, demonstrated, how a visually challenged person who could login to Bookshare, download books and read through DD Reader+.

The one day workshop had the Valedictory function in the evening presided by Prof. V.M. Muthukumar, Hon. Vice Chancellor, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli who delivered the valedictory address and got the feedback from the participants on whether the workshop was useful and added that they should encourage the students in their college and known to them for using technology. Vote of thanks to CIS, NAB and the organizers was given by Dr. M. Prabhavathy, Asst. Professor and Centre Head and the training felt much useful ended up with the National Anthem.


Picture above shows distribution of certificates at the event.

Feedback

Mrs. Ra, Vijaya Priya, Assistant Professor, Government Law College, Trichy gave the feedback, how the training was helpful and would be useful setting up a center in their college, as there are many visually challenged students now taking law as profession and also was happy to have their own students attending the workshop to be motivated by Mr. Navarasan, as he could demonstrate to them all the possibilities of eSpeak with NVDA and also Bookshare.

Dr. V. Vethavalli, Assistant Professor, Coordinator for Visually Challenged, Assistant Professor, Bharathidasan University Constituent College, Orathanadu felt the workshop was much useful personally to know all the assistive technology available for visually challenged and she would encourage the college for the intake of visually challenged in their college knowing all such technology is available for Tamil and English typing. She also appreciated Mr. Navarasan for his participation in the workshop and do a live demonstration on online library access which encouraged others.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-espeak-with-nvda-screen-reader-and-assistive-technology-for-visually-challenged

Report on NVDA with E-Speak and BookShare Online Library

nirmita — 2016-04-02T05:54:55Z

With the objective to sensitize and impart the skillset in handling NVDA – the Screen Reader and the usage of BookShare Online Library for the print disabled to the Special Educators, Karna Vidya Technology Centre in collaboration with Computer and Internet Society conducted a one-day Workshop on NVDA with E-Speak and BookShare Online Library on 27 02 2016 (Saturday) at Karna Vidya Technology Centre. Special Educators from Chennai, Kanchipuram and Thiruvallur totaling 48 have participated actively and got benefited from the Workshop.

Sessions on introduction to and installation of NVDA, Tour of different Menus and Cursors, Learning Tamil Keyboard Layout and introduction to BookShare Library were held with practical exercises. All the Special Educators were given participation certificates along with handouts on NVDA, Tamil Keyboard and BookShare in a folder. Many Special Educators expressed their satisfaction and appealed for a full-fledged workshop for 3-4 days to have an in-depth understanding of NVDA and BookShare Library.

Ms. Divyashree, Deputy Collector trainee, Thiruvallur and other guests graced the function by their precious presence.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-nvda-with-e-speak-and-bookshare-online-library

National Compendium of Laws, Policies, Programmes for Persons with Disabilities

nirmita — 2016-02-05T02:16:36Z

This compendium was compiled by the Centre for Internet & Society in collaboration with the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Department of Disability Affairs, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India. Prasanna Kumar Pincha, Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, has written the Foreword.

Preface

India, one of the longest continuous civilizations in the world is also home to one of the largest populations of persons with disabilities. According to the 2011 census, around 2.21% of its population or around 26.8 million people have disabilities of some form or the other. While the country is developing rapidly, persons with disabilities are often left out of the process. Sometimes they are completely neglected from consideration and measures do not take into account their needs by virtue of being non inclusive. On other occasions, there may be special measures for some disadvantaged groups, but persons with disabilities may not be recognised as a separate group, with distinctive needs.

Overall, there is a clichéd understanding about the needs and abilities of persons with disabilities, limiting efforts made towards their progress. Even in cases where some effort has been made, information about these measures is not available to persons with disabilities and their family members, who are consequently unable to avail of them. Additionally, the insensitivity of rules/ schemes/ procedures/ persons makes it difficult for persons with disabilities to benefit from them. However, regardless of the reason, the fact remains that there is a huge gap in the communication of information from policy makers, administrators and law makers to persons with disabilities as well as their family members, organisations and other concerned groups and institutions.

It is extremely important to bridge this information gap in order to enable persons with disabilities to participate equally in development. Better access to information will enable them to avail of schemes/provisions for their benefit and will consequently enable governments to assess whether they have made adequate provision in various domains as well as identify gaps which need to be addressed.
Finally, accessibility of information will also facilitate the participation of government and persons with disabilities in implementation of measures and increase transparency and accountability

With this aim in mind, The Hans Foundation decided to engage with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) to put together a comprehensive resource on disability related policies across India. It gives us great pleasure to publish this resource and we hope that it be of great help to the community.

Ms. Sweta Rawat
Chairperson
The Hans Foundation

Click to download the PDF version of the book here. (File size 1.72 Mb approx.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-compendium-of-laws-policies-programmes-for-persons-with-disabilities

December 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-01-13T14:07:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of December 2015 is below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share the twelfth issue of CIS newsletter (December 2015). Previous editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
The 4th edition of the Global Congress themed around "Three Decades of Openness, Two Decades of TRIPS" was organized in New Delhi from December 15 - 17, 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Congress was jointly organised by CIS, NLU-D, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University. Nehaa Chaudhari summarized the developments of the 4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest in a blog post that was originally published on the Global Congress blog. Sunil Abraham wrote a blog entry stating the institutional position of CIS on the Net Neutrality discussion going on in India. Catch News interviewed Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics" . Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'. Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das has recently permitted 30 volumes of his notable works to be re-license under an open license (Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0) . Subhashish Panigrahi wrote a blog post on this in Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal in Odisha. CIS has established institutional partnerships with University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs for furthering Wikipedia growth. Tanveer Hasan analyses the developments and lists out the possible future plans in this regard. CIS along with Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and Internet Policy Observatory organized an event in New Delhi on Net Neutrality across South Asia . Today the quantity of data being generated is expanding at an exponential rate. From smartphones and televisions, trains and airplanes, sensor-equipped buildings and even the infrastructures of our cities, data now streams constantly from almost every sector and function of daily life, stated Scott Mason in a blog post. The Government of India is in the process of developing 100 smart cities in India which it sees as the key to the country's economic and social growth. Vanya Rakesh gave an overview of the Smart Cities project currently underway in India in a blog post. For the second part of the Smart City podcast series, Sruthi Krishnan and Harsha K from Fields of View spoke with Sumandro Chattapadhyay on data, people, and smart cities. Fields of View has produced and shared the recording. An extended survey of digital initiatives in arts and humanities practices in India was undertaken last year. The 'mapping digital humanities in India' enquiry began with the term 'digital humanities' itself, as a 'found' name for which one needs to excavate some meaning, context, and location in India at the present moment. P.P Sneha published the third,fourth, and fifth sections of the study this month. The RAW programme has initiated a new annual conference series titled Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC). The first edition of the Conference, organised around the theme of "studying internet in India" will be held in Delhi in February 2016

----------------------------------------------
Accessibility and Inclusion
----------------------------------------------

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

● December 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; December 31, 2015).

-----------------------------------------------------------
Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------------------------------
As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entries

Abuse of Dominant Position in Indian Competition Law: A Brief Guide (Sarthak Sood; December 9, 2015).
GCIP2015: Notes from the Inaugural Session (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 14, 2015).
GCIP Day 1 Session 3: Challenges in Re-Articulating Public Interest (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).
GCIP 15 Day 2: Discussions on Health Technology, Innovation and Access (Spadika Jayaraj; SpicyIP; December 17, 2015).
Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions in abeyance (Anubha Sinha; Anubha Sinha; December 21, 2015).
4th Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest: Statement of Conclusion for the IP and Development track (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 25, 2015). This was also published on the Global Congress Blog.

Event Organized

Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (Organized by National Law University, Delhi, American Assembly, Columbia University, Open A.I.R., American University, and CIS; New Delhi, December 15 - 17, 2015).

Participation in Event

CODE Session (Organized by IDRC; December 17, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Media Coverage

NLSIU Conference on Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability: An enriching experience (Abolee Vaidya and Nuhar Bansal; SINAPSE; December 14, 2015). This is an event report on a one-day national conference on the 'Access to Copyrighted Works for Persons with Disability' for which Pranesh Prakash was a speaker .

►Wikipedia

Articles

30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource (Subhashish Panigrahi; Discover Bhubaneswar; December 4, 2015).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର (Subhashish Panigrahi; Sambad; December 6, 2015).

Blog Entries

Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books (Subhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav Garule; December 3, 2015). This was published on Wikimedia Blog.
Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional Partnership (Tanveer Hasan; December 3, 2015).
Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada Wikisource (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ University and St. Aloysius College, Mangalore (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
TTT 2015 (Tanveer Hasan; December 5, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon at Mangaluru (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; December 29, 2015).

Events Organized

Talk on bringing 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi Wikipedia (The Energy and Resources Institute; Bangalore; December 1, 2015). Avinash Chaphekar, Joint Secretary, Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha gave a talk.
Odia Wikimedia community meetup (Organized by Odia Wikipedia Community and CIS; Cuttack; December 3, 2015).
Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Edit-a-thon (Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune; December 3, 2015).

Participation in Events

Telugu Wikipedia Day 2015, Photo Walk (Organized by Telugu Wikipedians; Dr. YSR State Archaeological Museum, Hyderabad; December 13, 2015). Pavan Santhosh attended the event. One of the popular Telugu news channel TV9 covered the event and telecasted the same. Eenadu published a special item on photo walk on December 13, 2015.
English Wikipedia and the Telugu Wikipedia joint meetup and edit-a-thon (Organized by Wikipedia community; Golden Threshold, Hyderabad; December 20, 2015). The event was covered inSakshi and Andhra Jyoti.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia (Indian Express; Mangaluru edition; December 12, 2015).

A Kannada Wikipedia Editathon was conducted in Mangalore on December 10, 2015. The following are the media coverage for the same:

Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Udayavani; December 7, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Vijayavani; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Vijaya Karnataka; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Udayavani; December 11, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Prajavani; December 10, 2015).
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon (Prajavani; December 13, 2015).

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Free Speech and Expression

Interview

Facebook shares 10 key facts about Free Basics. Here's what's wrong with all 10 of them (Shweta Sengar; Catch News; December 24, 2015).

Blog Entry

CIS's Position on Net Neutrality (Sunil Abraham; December 4, 2015).

Event Organized

Net Neutrality across South Asia (Organized by Observer Research Foundation, Centre for Global Communication Studies, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Internet Policy Observatory and CIS; New Delhi; December 12, 2015).

Participation in Event

Consultation on "Understanding the Freedom of Expression Online and Offline" (Organized by Digital Empowerment Foundation and Association for Progressive Communications; YMCA, New Delhi; December 10, 2015). Jyoti Panday was a speaker at this event.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Benefits and Harms of "Big Data" (Scott Mason; December 30, 2015).

►Cyber Security

Blog Entry

Ground Zero Summit (Amber Sinha; December 22, 2015).

Participation in Events

Second Regional Conference on Connectivity for All: Future Technologies, Markets and Regulation (Organized by International Telecommunications Society, IIMA IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence and Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad; New Delhi; December 13 - 15, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.

Event Organized

Bangalore Chapter Meet - DSCI (CIS, Bangalore; December 1, 2015). CIS hosted the Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI. Pronab Mohanty, Inspector General of Police gave a talk on Cybercrimes. Sunil Abraham presented the outcome of his study "Anonymity in Cyberspace".

►Privacy

Blog Entries

UID Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
DNA Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Privacy Policy Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Sectoral Privacy Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 2, 2015).
Security Research (Vanya Rakesh; December 3, 2015).
Eight Key Privacy Events in India in the Year 2015 (Amber Sinha; December 31, 2015).

Participation in Events

Kick Off Meeting for the Politics of Data Project (Organized by Tactical Tech; Phnom Penh; December 7-8, 2015). Amber Sinha participated in the event.
Unbundling Issues of Privacy, Data Security, Identity Matrics, for Financial Inclusion (Organized by Indicus Foundation and MicroSave; December 10, 2015; Metropolitan Hotel and Spa, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

►Miscellaneous

Blog Entry

Smart Cities in India: An Overview (Vanya Rakesh; December 21, 2015).

Participation in Event

Elite Capture of Governance (Organized by Forum for Urban Governance and Commons; December 16, 2015; Bangalore). Vanya Rakesh participated in the event.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Articles

The Free Basics debate: Trai has a point in imposing temporary ban on net neutrality (Sunil Abraham; FirstPost; December 24, 2015).
Millions of Indians Slam Facebook's 'Free Basics' App (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 29, 2015).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Upcoming Events

A.I. Hype Cycles and Artistic Subversions (CIS, Bangalore; January 22, 2016). Gene Kogan will give a talk.
First Edition of Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions (Organized by CIS; New Delhi; February 25 - 27, 2016).

Blog Entries

RAW Lecture #01: Nishant Shah on 'Stories and Histories of Internet in India' - Video (P.P. Sneha; December 1, 2015).
FOV Podcast - Data, People, and Smart Cities (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; December 2, 2015).
Reading from a Distance - Data as Text (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).
The Infrastructure Turn in the Humanities (P.P. Sneha; December 7, 2015).
Living in the Archival Moment (P.P. Sneha; December 14, 2015).

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News & Media Coverage
---------------------------------

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

India's net neutrality debate is unique and complex (Pratap Vikram Singh; Governance Now; December 14, 2015).
Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics (Anita Babu; Business Standard; December 22, 2015).
A Scam Masquerading as Santa (Apurva Venkat & Vandana Kamath; Bangalore Mirror; December 25, 2015).
Facebook goes out all guns blazing in push for Free Basics, Net neutrality advocates cry foul (IBN Live; December 29, 2015).
Foreign Media on Zuckerberg's India Backlash (Bhuma Shrivastava; NDTV; December 30, 2015).
Mark Zuckerberg's India backlash imperils vision for free global web (Bhuma Shrivastava; Livemint; December 30, 2015).

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About CIS
---------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Offices

Bengaluru - No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. Location on Google Map .

Delhi - First floor, B 1/8, Hauz Khas, near G Block market, after Crunch, New Delhi, 110016. Location on Google Map.

► Follow Us

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560 071.

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2015-bulletin

Global Charter: Promoting Global Digital Inclusion through ICT Procurement Policies & Accessibility Standards

praskrishna — 2016-01-03T05:26:44Z

The Centre for Internet & Society was a signatory to this initiative.

This was published by G3ict.

Foreword

G3ict, the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communications Technologies (“ICTs”), whose mission is to promote the full implementation of the dispositions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ("CRPD”) relative to the accessibility of ICTs,

Considering that Accessibility, Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination are among the fundamental principles of the CRPD, the realization of which in the digital age is conditioned by the availability of accessible ICTs,
Taking into account that the CRPD specifically recognizes the accessibility of information and communication technologies (ICTs) both as a right (Article 9) and as an enabler of other human rights as prescribed in other articles of the Convention.
Noting that its articles 4(a) to 4(d) under "General obligations" further require that States Parties adopt appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures to ensure these rights are met and to refrain from any act or practice that is inconsistent with the Convention and that public authorities and institutions are in particular required to act in conformity with the Convention.
Acknowledging that the procurement of ICTs for use by the public that are not usable and accessible by persons with disabilities may be deemed to be in contravention of the Convention.
Recalling that Reporting Guidelines to States Parties should include legislative and other measures taken to ensure access by persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation and to information and communications; technical standards and guidelines for accessibility, as well as the use of public procurement provisions and other measures that establish compulsory accessibility requirements.

Offers the attached charter for signature by leaders of Civil Society, International Organizations and the Private Sector to further the progress and momentum of international cooperation in establishing public procurement policies and standards in compliance with the CRPD.

Charter

We believe that governments should use their purchasing power to support the innovation of accessible technology and the creation of more robust accessible technology markets in every country.

We encourage governments at all levels and around the world to promote the digital inclusion of persons with disabilities and older persons by adopting effective policies for the public procurement of accessible ICT and an international accessibility standard to support them.

Public Procurement as an Inclusion Strategy

Public procurement processes have gained increased attention as an effective policy tool to promote the accessibility of information and communications (ICT) equipment, software, applications, and services purchased by governments or government-funded programs. Global interest in the positive effect of public procurement is in part the result two well-known accessibility public policy activities; Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the United States (governing the federal government purchase of accessible electronic and information technology) and in Europe, the Public Procurement Directive of 2014 in combination with EN 301 549 (the European accessibility standard developed to support the public procurement of accessible ICT products and services in Europe). However, G3ict research and analysis show that to date only 33% of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) have enacted some type of policy on the procurement of accessible ICT.

Everyone Benefits from the Procurement of Accessible ICT

Public procurement of accessible ICT can advance equality and non-discrimination for persons with disabilities. Governments that purchase accessible ICT are better able to provide inclusive services to all citizens. Because governments are large employers, their investments in accessible ICT products and services help to create inclusive workplaces and support the employment of people with disabilities. Procurement policies strengthen the local technology industry in a country. They lead to greater innovation, competition, and choice for accessible technology. They drive the creation of new development tools for accessible technology and better accessibility training for technology professionals. Procurement policies create positive ripple effects into the broader consumer ICT marketplace.

The Tools Available for Success

G3ict, working with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and with global experts from civil society and industry has created a model procurement policy as resource for governments wanting to ensure that their technology purchases support digital inclusion. There exists today a comprehensive technical standard, EN 301 549, that was developed by experts specifically for public procurement. It defines accessibility across all types of disability and technology. The ITU has created a training course to support procurement officials as they implement accessibility into their procurement work.

If your organization would like to be part of this Global Charter for Accessible ICT Procurement, please send us an email globalcharter@g3ict.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/global-charter-promoting-global-digital-inclusion-through-ict-procurement-policies-accessibility-standards

International Day of People with Disability

praskrishna — 2015-12-16T15:54:46Z

Nirmita Narasimhan was a panelist at this event organized by Capgemini in Bangalore on November 30, 2015.

The theme of the panel discussion was Accessibility. Nirmita Narasimhan was one of the guest speakers. She spoke about the work done on Accessibility at the Centre for Internet & Society.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/international-day-of-people-with-disability

Comments on the Draft Outcome Document of the UN General Assembly’s Overall Review of the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes (WSIS+10)

geetha — 2015-11-18T06:33:13Z

Following the comment-period on the Zero Draft, the Draft Outcome Document of the UN General Assembly's Overall Review of implementation of WSIS Outcomes was released on 4 November 2015. Comments were sought on the Draft Outcome Document from diverse stakeholders. The Centre for Internet & Society's response to the call for comments is below.

The WSIS+10 Overall Review of the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes, scheduled for December 2015, comes as a review of the WSIS process initiated in 2003-05. At the December summit of the UN General Assembly, the WSIS vision and mandate of the IGF are to be discussed. The Draft Outcome Document, released on 4 November 2015, is towards an outcome document for the summit. Comments were sought on the Draft Outcome Document. Our comments are below.

The Draft Outcome Document of the UN General Assembly’s Overall Review of the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes (“the current Draft”) stands considerably altered from the Zero Draft. With references to development-related challenges, the Zero Draft covered areas of growth and challenges of the WSIS. It noted the persisting digital divide, the importance of innovation and investment, and of conducive legal and regulatory environments, and the inadequacy of financial mechanisms. Issues crucial to Internet governance such as net neutrality, privacy and the mandate of the IGF found mention in the Zero Draft.
The current Draft retains these, and adds to them. Some previously-omitted issues such as surveillance, the centrality of human rights and the intricate relationship of ICTs to the Sustainable Development Goals, now stand incorporated in the current Draft. This is most commendable. However, the current Draft still lacks teeth with regard to some of these issues, and fails to address several others.
In our comments to the Zero Draft, CIS had called for these issues to be addressed. We reiterate our call in the following paragraphs.

(1) ICT for Development

In the current Draft, paragraphs 14-36 deal with ICTs for development. While the draft contains rubrics like ‘Bridging the digital divide’, ‘Enabling environment’, and ‘Financial mechanisms’, the following issues are unaddressed:
Equitable development for all;
Accessibility to ICTs for persons with disabilities;
Access to knowledge and open data.

Equitable development

In the Geneva Declaration of Principles (2003), two goals are set forth as the Declaration’s “ambitious goal”: (a) the bridging of the digital divide; and (b) equitable development for all (¶ 17). The current Draft speaks in detail about the bridging of the digital divide, but the goal of equitable development is conspicuously absent. At WSIS+10, when the WSIS vision evolves to the creation of inclusive ‘knowledge societies’, equitable development should be both a key principle and a goal to stand by.
Indeed, inequitable development underscores the persistence of the digital divide. The current Draft itself refers to several instances of inequitable development; for ex., the uneven production capabilities and deployment of ICT infrastructure and technology in developing countries, landlocked countries, small island developing states, countries under occupation or suffering natural disasters, and other vulnerable states; lack of adequate financial mechanisms in vulnerable parts of the world; variably affordable (or in many cases, unaffordable) spread of ICT devices, technology and connectivity, etc.
What underscores these challenges is the inequitable and uneven spread of ICTs across states and communities, including in their production, capacity-building, technology transfers, gender-concentrated adoption of technology, and inclusiveness.
As such, it is essential that the WSIS+10 Draft Outcome Document reaffirm our commitment to equitable development for all peoples, communities and states.
We suggest the following inclusion to paragraph 5 of the current Draft:

“5. We reaffirm our common desire and commitment to the WSIS vision to build an equitable, people-centred, inclusive, and development-oriented Information Society…”

Accessibility for persons with disabilities

10. Paragraph 13 of the Geneva Declaration of Principles (2003) pledges to “pay particular attention to the special needs of marginalized and vulnerable groups of society” in the forging of an Information Society. Particularly, ¶ 13 recognises the special needs of older persons and persons with disabilities.

11. Moreover, ¶ 31 of the Geneva Declaration of Principles calls for the special needs of persons with disabilities, and also of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, to be taken into account while promoting the use of ICTs for capacity-building. Accessibility for persons with disabilities is thus core to bridging the digital divide – as important as bridging the gender divide in access to ICTs.

12. Not only this, but the WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes (June 2014) also reaffirms the commitment to “provide equitable access to information and knowledge for all… including… people with disabilities”, recognizing that it is “crucial to increase the participation of vulnerable people in the building process of Information Society…” (¶8).

13. In our previous submission, CIS had suggested language drawing attention to this. Now, the current Draft only acknowledges that “particular attention should be paid to the specific ICT challenges facing… persons with disabilities…” (paragraph 11). It acknowledges also that now, accessibility for persons with disabilities constitutes one of the core elements of quality (paragraph 22). However, there is a glaring omission of a call to action, or a reaffirmation of our commitment to bridging the divide experienced by persons with disabilities.

14. We suggest, therefore, the addition of the following language the addition of paragraph 24A to the current Draft. Sections of this suggestion are drawn from ¶8, WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes.

"24A. Recalling the UN Convention on the rights of people with disabilities, the Geneva principles paragraph 11, 13, 14 and 15, Tunis Commitment paras 20, 22 and 24, and reaffirming the commitment to providing equitable access to information and knowledge for all, building ICT capacity for all and confidence in the use of ICTs by all, including youth, older persons, women, indigenous and nomadic peoples, people with disabilities, the unemployed, the poor, migrants, refugees and internally displaced people and remote and rural communities, it is crucial to increase the participation of vulnerable people in the building process of information Society and to make their voice heard by stakeholders and policy-makers at different levels. It can allow the most fragile groups of citizens worldwide to become an integrated part of their economies and also raise awareness of the target actors on the existing ICTs solution (such as tolls as e- participation, e-government, e-learning applications, etc.) designed to make their everyday life better. We recognise need for continued extension of access for people with disabilities and vulnerable people to ICTs, especially in developing countries and among marginalized communities, and reaffirm our commitment to promoting and ensuring accessibility for persons with disabilities. In particular, we call upon all stakeholders to honour and meet the targets set out in Target 2.5.B of the Connect 2020 Agenda that enabling environments ensuring accessible telecommunication/ICT for persons with disabilities should be established in all countries by 2020.”

Access to knowledge and open data

15. The Geneva Declaration of Principles dedicates a section to access to information and knowledge (B.3). It notes, in ¶26, that a “rich public domain” is essential to the growth of Information Society. It urges that public institutions be strengthened to ensure free and equitable access to information (¶26), and also that assistive technologies and universal design can remove barriers to access to information and knowledge (¶25). Particularly, the Geneva Declaration advocates the use of free and open source software, in addition to proprietary software, to meet these ends (¶27).

16. It was also recognized in the WSIS+10 Statement on the Implementation of WSIS Outcomes (‘Challenges-during implementation of Action Lines and new challenges that have emerged’) that there is a need to promote access to all information and knowledge, and to encourage open access to publications and information (C, ¶¶9 and 12).

17. In our previous submission, CIS had highlighted the importance of open access to knowledge thus: “…the implications of open access to data and knowledge (including open government data), and responsible collection and dissemination of data are much larger in light of the importance of ICTs in today’s world. As Para 7 of the Zero Draft indicates, ICTs are now becoming an indicator of development itself, as well as being a key facilitator for achieving other developmental goals. As Para 56 of the Zero Draft recognizes, in order to measure the impact of ICTs on the ground – undoubtedly within the mandate of WSIS – it is necessary that there be an enabling environment to collect and analyse reliable data. Efforts towards the same have already been undertaken by the United Nations in the form of ‘Data Revolution for Sustainable Development’. In this light, the Zero Draft rightly calls for enhancement of regional, national and local capacity to collect and conduct analyses of development and ICT statistics (Para 56). Achieving the central goals of the WSIS process requires that such data is collected and disseminated under open standards and open licenses, leading to creation of global open data on the ICT indicators concerned.”

18. This crucial element is missing from the current Draft of the WSIS+10 Outcome Document. Of course, the current Draft notes the importance of access to information and free flow of data. But it stops short of endorsing and advocating the importance of access to knowledge and free and open source software, which are essential to fostering competition and innovation, diversity of consumer/ user choice and ensuring universal access.

19. We suggest the following addition – of paragraph 23A to the current Draft:

"23A. We recognize the need to promote access for all to information and knowledge, open data, and open, affordable, and reliable technologies and services, while respecting individual privacy, and to encourage open access to publications and information, including scientific information and in the research sector, and particularly in developing and least developed countries.”

(2) Human Rights in Information Society

20. The current Draft recognizes that human rights have been central to the WSIS vision, and reaffirms that rights offline must be protected online as well. However, the current Draft omits to recognise the role played by corporations and intermediaries in facilitating access to and use of the Internet.

21. In our previous submission, CIS had noted that “the Internet is led largely by the private sector in the development and distribution of devices, protocols and content-platforms, corporations play a major role in facilitating – and sometimes, in restricting – human rights online”.

22. We reiterate our suggestion for the inclusion of paragraph 43A to the current Draft:

"43A. We recognize the critical role played by corporations and the private sector in facilitating human rights online. We affirm, in this regard, the responsibilities of the private sector set out in the Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, A/HRC/17/31 (21 March 2011), and encourage policies and commitments towards respect and remedies for human rights.”

(3) Internet Governance

The support for multilateral governance of the Internet

23. While the section on Internet governance is not considerably altered from the zero draft, there is a large substantive change in the current Draft. The current Draft states that the governance of the Internet should be “multilateral, transparent and democratic, with full involvement of all stakeholders” (¶50). Previously, the zero draft recognized the “the general agreement that the governance of the Internet should be open, inclusive, and transparent”.

24. A return to purely ‘multilateral’ Internet governance would be regressive. Governments are, without doubt, crucial in Internet governance. As scholarship and experience have both shown, governments have played a substantial role in shaping the Internet as it is today: whether this concerns the availability of content, spread of infrastructure, licensing and regulation, etc. However, these were and continue to remain contentious spaces.

25. As such, it is essential to recognize that a plurality of governance models serve the Internet, in which the private sector, civil society, the technical community and academia play important roles. We recommend returning to the language of the zero draft in ¶32: “open, inclusive and transparent governance of the Internet”.

Governance of Critical Internet Resources

26. It is curious that the section on Internet governance in both the zero and the current Draft makes no reference to ICANN, and in particular, to the ongoing transition of IANA stewardship and the discussions surrounding the accountability of ICANN and the IANA operator. The stewardship of critical Internet resources, such as the root, is crucial to the evolution and functioning of the Internet. Today, ICANN and a few other institutions have a monopoly over the management and policy-formulation of several critical Internet resources.

27. While the WSIS in 2003-05 considered this a troubling issue, this focus seems to have shifted entirely. Open, inclusive, transparent and global Internet are misnomer-principles when ICANN – and in effect, the United States – continues to have monopoly over critical Internet resources. The allocation and administration of these resources should be decentralized and distributed, and should not be within the disproportionate control of any one jurisdiction.

28. Therefore, we reiterate our suggestion to add paragraph 53A after Para 53:

"53A. We affirm that the allocation, administration and policy involving critical Internet resources must be inclusive and decentralized, and call upon all stakeholders and in particular, states and organizations responsible for essential tasks associated with the Internet, to take immediate measures to create an environment that facilitates this development.”

Inclusiveness and Diversity in Internet Governance

29. The current Draft, in ¶52, recognizes that there is a need to “promote greater participation and engagement in Internet governance of all stakeholders…”, and calls for “stable, transparent and voluntary funding mechanisms to this end.” This is most commendable.

30. The issue of inclusiveness and diversity in Internet governance is crucial: today, Internet governance organisations and platforms suffer from a lack of inclusiveness and diversity, extending across representation, participation and operations of these organisations. As CIS submitted previously, the mention of inclusiveness and diversity becomes tokenism or formal (but not operational) principle in many cases.

31. As we submitted before, the developing world is pitifully represented in standards organisations and in ICANN, and policy discussions in organisations like ISOC occur largely in cities like Geneva and New York. For ex., 307 out of 672 registries listed in ICANN’s registry directory are based in the United States, while 624 of the 1010 ICANN-accredited registrars are US-based.

32. Not only this, but 80% of the responses received by ICANN during the ICG’s call for proposals were male. A truly global and open, inclusive and transparent governance of the Internet must not be so skewed. Representation must include not only those from developing countries, but must also extend across gender and communities.

33. We propose, therefore, the addition of a paragraph 51A after Para 51:

"51A. We draw attention to the challenges surrounding diversity and inclusiveness in organisations involved in Internet governance, including in their representation, participation and operations. We note with concern that the representation of developing countries, of women, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, is far from equitable and adequate. We call upon organisations involved in Internet governance to take immediate measures to ensure diversity and inclusiveness in a substantive manner.”

Prepared by Geetha Hariharan, with inputs from Sunil Abraham and Japreet Grewal. All comments submitted towards the Draft Outcome Document may be found at this link.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-the-draft-outcome-document-of-the-un-general-assembly2019s-overall-review-of-the-implementation-of-wsis-outcomes-wsis-10

Report on use of eSpeak Bengali with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-11-09T15:57:18Z

NVDA team conducted a training programme at Turnstone Matruchaya, Siligudi, West Bengal from September 7 to 9, 2015. Fourteen delegates attended. Nirmal Verma was the language trainer.

Day 1

Turnstone Matruchaya is an NGO working for the upliftment of Blind and other under privileged sections of the society. Located in midst of tea gardens, Turnstone Matruchaya had a perfect location for conducting a traning session.

The workshop was attended by 14 computer teachers and special educators for the blind. The participants came from Sikkim, Darjeling, various districts of West Bengal etc. The participants had some idea about NVDA, though support for indian languages was a new concept for them. There was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm for learning to read and write in Bengali and Hindi.

The workshop started with a round of introductions, where in each participant also spelt out his or her needs and expectations from the workshop. Most of them expressed the need for learning about an alternative screen reader, which would help them read and write in their vernacular language.

This was followed by understanding the benefits of NVDA in comparision to other screen readers. The participants were taken for a brief tour of the NVDA home page and explained the process of downloading the installer for NVDA.

A hands on demonstration was given about installation of NVDA, followed by the participants installing NVDA on their systems.

This was followed by introduction to the menus of NVDA, and their utility. Each participant was instructed to configure NVDA, as per their requirements. They were instructed to select a suitable voice variant and rate, and also make certain changes in the keyboard and mouce settings.

They were than given Bengali text to read. This text was taken from a Bengali daily newspaper. All the participants were very comfortable with the Espeak TTS, and were able to comprehend the text.

Day 2

Day 2 started with introduction to the Bengali keyboard, followed by practice of typing words and sentences. The afternoon session was dedicated to writing practice, which was followed by a session on Bookshare as a source of accessible reading material.

Day 3

Day 3 began with a revision session for Bengali keystrokes. This was followed by a session on using Espeak on Android. Various other features of the Android platform were also demonstrated during the session.

The afternoon session was dedicated to giving information about different schemes for the benefit of the Blind. The participants were informed about the ADIP scheme, Loan scheme of Saksham, E-card scheme of Railways etc.

The workshop ended with a feed back session. All the participants expressed their deep gratitude for the workshop and have promised to send their feedback on a regular basis.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-use-of-espeak-bengali-with-nvda

Report on the Training in the Use of eSpeak Hindi with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-10-04T10:52:40Z

This workshop was organized by the newly established NGO called “Lakshay for the Differently Abled’”. The main objective of the organization is to spread the knowledge of Assistive Technology amongst the Visually Impaired population of the State of Jarkhand.

The event was conducted on-line by Dr. Homiyar over skype, with local support from Mritunjay Kumar and Zainab.

The participants were a mix of Trainers and students from all walks of life. They had come in from all parts of Jarkhand and Bihar.

The event started by an inauguration by the local Municipal Deputy Mayor. The DY. Mayor of Ranchi promised a new premises for the newly formed NGO during his inaugural speech.

The main training began with a round of introductions and Expectations from the participants.

This was followed by sessions on Introduction to NVDA, Advantages of NVDA, Download and Configuration of NVDA and Configuration of Windows for Hindi.

The post lunch session was dedicated to explanation of different menus of NVDA, followed by comprehension of Hindi text using Espeak.

The last session was used to introduce the Hindi Inscript Keyboard.

Day 2 started with a quick revision of the Keyboard followed by an extended session on Hindi typing.

The post lunch session was dedicated to Bookshare and Reading and Writing on the Android platform.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-the-training-in-the-use-of-espeak-hindi-with-nvda

Report on 5 day TOT for Training in Use of Espeak Kannada with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-10-04T10:34:33Z

A unique programme was organized in partnership with Mitra Jyothi – Bangalore, Enable India – Bangalore and NFB Karnataka. The aim of the programme was to empower the Computer Teacherrs for the blind in the use of Espeak Kannada and apprise them with Modern Teaching Techniques for the Blind.

The training programme was held from September 21 - 25, 2015 at Mithra Jyoti in Bangalore. Fourteen delegates attended the programme. Suresh, Sandesh and Moses from Enable India were the trainers. NFB Karnataka helped in sourcing the participants, Mitra Jyothi hosted the event and the female participants and the trainers were from Enable India.

The workshop started with a round of introductions and expectations from the participants. All the participants expressed various needs, which include the following:

Need to learn to read and write in Kannada.
Need to learn new teaching Techniques.
Need to learn how to make accessible materials for teaching computers.
Need for learning EYE tool and /spelling tools.

The participants were a blend of Sighted and Blind Trainers. The Sighted trainers were very keen in knowing all they could about the new Teaching Techniques and the Screen Readers. They were also excited to know more about Assistive Technology for partially sighted students.

The Blind trainers showed special interest in NVDA and Assistive Technology.

The Session began with an introduction to NVDA and its advantages followed by a detailed presentation by Suresh.

The validation function was conducted by Major A. Singh – CEO Mitra Jyothi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-5-day-tot-for-training-in-use-of-espeak-kannada-with-nvda

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