Centre for Internet and Society

India’s missing disabled population

nirmita — 2015-09-10T16:31:49Z

The highest rates of disability are amongst those who are vision-impaired, and those who have problems to do with movement.

The article by Sachin P. Mampatta was published in Livemint on September 7, 2015. Nirmita Narasimhan gave her inputs.

Nirmita Narasimhan remembers the census takers coming to her home. They didn’t ask her question number nine. It was about disability. They said that it makes people uncomfortable.

Narasimhan is a policy director who works on disability issues at The Centre for Internet and Society, an NGO. She insisted that they ask questions on disability. Later, she found out that others too had a similar experience. Those conducting the census often skip the question. Sometimes families are reluctant to talk about it too.

The result is that India has far lower reported instances of disability than most other places in the world. This also means that policy action is effectively running blind, unsure of the scale of the disability issues in the country or its specifics.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) in a report in 2011 estimated that 15.3% of the world’s population deals with disability of one kind or the other. The 2011 census puts India’s disabled at 2.21% of the population.

India's low incidence of disability

The average number of disabled people in India is lower than the global figure as well as the number for high income countries. It is also lower than the corresponding figures for low-income and middle-income countries (between and including African to Western Pacific in the chart).

Different categories as percentage of total disability

Disabilities related to movement, hearing and sight are the most common, according to the Census


Above: A bar chart depicting the world population with disability. India is at lowest. Source: Global Burden of Disease estimates for 2004 (World report on disability 2011 - World Health Organisation), Census 2011 Get the data

The latest census number is not very different from that of the 2001 census when the disabled populace was at 2.13% or from the 2002 National Sample Survey figure which estimated this figure at 1.8%. That just points out for how long the problem has been prevalent in official statistics.

The WHO report used statistics from the Global Burden of Disease estimates for 2004 for comparison. But the situation now is likely to be worse. A WHO factsheet says that “rates of disability are increasing in part due to ageing populations and an increase in chronic health conditions”.

Many people don’t disclose disability because of stigma. Global figures also take into account age-related disability, and those whose function is affected by issues such as diabetes. India does not count these among the disabled. Here, the categories are largely traditional such as blindness and deafness. The highest rates of disability are amongst those who are vision-impaired, and those who have problems to do with movement.

Different categories as percentage of total disability

Disabilities related to movement, hearing and sight are the most common, according to the Census.


Above: A bar chart depicting the percentage of various forms of disabilities Source: Census 2011 Get the data

While the scope of definitions is part of the problem, India’s disability estimation problem is not unrecognized.

“In India, the disability sector in general estimates that 4-5% of the population is disabled. The Planning Commission recognizes this figure as 5%. A report by the World Bank states that while estimates vary, there is growing evidence that persons with disability… constitute between 4-8% of India’s population,” said a December 2011 International Labour Organisation report by Meera Shenoy called, “Persons With Disability and the Indian Labour Market: Challenges and Opportunities”.

The lower-than-actual figures have other repercussions. What’s the literacy rate among the disabled, for instance? The census, of course, says that more than 54.51% of India’s disabled population is literate. But policy analysts such as Narasimhan say that may be inflated again because of under-reporting.

“The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan has contributed to getting a lot of children into school, and the thrust has largely been seen over the last decade or so. Unfortunately, many may not be able to continue in school, though they do manage to attend for a couple of years. This may be enough for them to pick up sufficient skills to be declared literate, where the test is generally rudimentary, say the ability to write your own name. But this does not translate into employability. The majority would still not be able to meet basic criteria required for landing a job. The resources required to make this happen is far in excess of the current expenditure,” said Dipendra Manocha, president, founder and managing trustee, Saksham Trust.

Census data shows that 63.66% of the disabled population is not working compared to 60.21% of the able-bodied. But those working in the field say that employability figures are likely very poor on account of limited resources and difficulties in providing them with skills which could lead to employability. While some among these in the census are students or draw a pension, the majority remain dependent on others.

Status of disabled non-workers

The majority of disabled non-workers are dependent on others, and most don't draw a pension. (Figures are as percentage of overall disabled population, those part of the work-force are not included).


Above: Bar chart depicting categories of disabled population. Source: Census 2011 Get the data

The need for greater attention and resources to this segment is clear from the fact that India’s disability numbers, even with the under-reporting, is higher than the population of entire nations.

Scale of the issue

India's disabled population is higher than the total populations of several countries, despite the under-reporting.Figure below shows India's disabled numbers, and total population (disabled + non-disabled) of other countries.


Above: Bar chart depicting India's disabled numbers. Source: Census 2011, World Bank (Figures for 2011) Get the data

A 2007 World Bank report says that while India has one of the most progressive disability policy frameworks in the developing world—what with acts such as the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995—implementation is poor. The report’s key recommendation is to “get the basics right”, especially identifying people with disabilities as soon as possible after onset. Almost a decade later, nothing seems to have changed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/livemint-sachin-p-mampatta-september-10-2015-indias-missing-disabled-population

August 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-10-27T00:25:02Z

We are happy to share with you the eighth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (August 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

Researchers at Work programme has published a book titled Digital Activism in Asia Reader exploring in detail digital activism in Asia. The Reader was edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun. The pre-publication drafts of two sections written by Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the third volume (2000-2010) of the Asia Internet History series edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon have been posted for open-review process. As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW published blog entries on Governing Speech on the Internet and Mock-Calling - Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual. NVDA team conducted a workshop at Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind, Varanasi from August 26 to 28, 2015. Eighty five students and 13 teachers took part in the training programme. NVDA team had conducted another workshop earlier in Nashik. The workshop was conducted in June. A batch of 17 Special Educators and teachers of the blind attended the workshop. Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta and Paavni Anand as part of the Pervasive Technologies project co-authored a research paper that seeks to compare the publicly available information on the websites of music collective management organizations ("CMOs") operating within India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Amulya Purushothama, Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga in a blog entry have delved into the question of what the mandate of the Sectoral Innovation Council is, what its activities are, and what vision for IPR development in India has it put forth. An RTI Application has been filed by CIS to attain information on these issues. In a blog post, Amulya Purushothama announced our new MHRD IPR Chair Series and has charted the sequence of events, starting from the establishment of MHRD IPR Chairs, to discussions surrounding their purpose and functioning, to concerns surrounding the lack of information about the IPR Chairs, the first round of RTIs that CIS had filed in regard to this and the responses it solicited. Subhashish Panigrahi interviewed Prateek Pattanaik. Prateek has not just digitized as many as 54 Odia-language poetry dating early 18th century but has also annotated, both poetic and prosaic translation in his blogs "Sri Jagannatha" and "Utkal Sangeet". He has also published a complete book "Kisora chandranana champu" on Odia Wikisource. A recent entrant into the Odia Wikimedia community, Prateek is also the youngest Odia Wikimedian. Rohan George and Elonnai Hickok in a blog post analyzed consent, big data and data protection that examines in detail why the principle of consent is providing us increasingly less of an aegis in protecting our data. Elonnai Hickok, Vipul Kharbanda and Vanya Rakesh on behalf of CIS submitted a clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill that was circulated by the Department of Biotechnology on June 9, 2015. Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Tarun Krishnakumar co-authored an article titled Security: Privacy, Transparency and Technology. The article was published by Observer Research Foundation, Digital Debates 2015: CyFy Journal Volume 2. Elonnai Hickok in a blog post titled A Review of the Policy Debate around Big Data and Internet of Things has done an analysis as to how regulators and experts across jurisdictions are reacting to Big Data and Internet of Things. The Supreme Court of India has deemed it fit to refer the question of the very existence of a fundamental right to privacy to a Constitution Bench to finally decide the matter, and define the contours of such right if it does exist. Vipul Kharbanda analyses this in a blog entry. Experts and regulators across jurisdictions are examining the impact of Big Data practices on traditional data protection standards and principles. This will be a useful and pertinent exercise for India to undertake as the government and the private and public sectors begin to incorporate and rely on the use of Big Data in decision making processes and organizational operations. Elonnai Hickok has provided an initial evaluation of how Big Data could impact India's current data protection standards. Elonnai Hickok has provided a comparison of Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 vs. the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015, CIS's main recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill, Sub-Committee Recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill, and the Expert Committee Recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill. CIS submitted its comments to the non-paper on the UNGA Overall Review of the Implementation of the WSIS outcomes, evaluating the progress made and challenges ahead. In a policy brief, Vipul Kharbanda has analyzed the different laws regulating surveillance at the state and central level in India and calls out ways in which the provisions are unharmonized. The brief then provides recommendations for the harmonization of surveillance law in India. Hardnews interviewed Sunil Abraham about the future of the internet in India. The article was published in their August edition. Shyam Ponappa in an Op-ed published by Business Standard has given an analysis on the reasons of the number of dropped calls on our mobile phones.

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. The project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India got over and the compilation has been printed.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

August 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015).

Event Reports

Training in eSpeak Marathi (Organized by NVDA team; National Association for the Blind; Nashik; June 22 - 23, 2015). The workshop was held in the month of June but the report got published later in August.
Training in eSpeak Hindi (Organized by NVDA team; Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind; Varanasi; August 26 - 28, 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.

Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

Methodology: Patent Landscaping in the Indian Mobile Device Market (Rohini Lakshané; November 10, 2014). This blog post published last year has been recently updated.
Comparative Transparency Review of Collective Management Organisations in India, United Kingdom and the United States (Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta and Paavni Anand; August 1, 2015).

Other (Copyright and Patent)

Blog Entries

CCI Participation at the Upcoming 3rd International Conference on IPR and Competition (Amulya Purushothama; August 5, 2015). CIS wrote to the Competition Commission of India Chairman on August 5, 2015 about participation at a conference organised by Ericsson and concerns regarding conflict of interest. We also had several other NGOs sign on to the letter.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Introduction (Amulya Purushothama; August 10, 2015). Aditya Garg assisted in research and writing.
National IPR Policy Series: What Have the Sectoral Innovation Councils Been Doing on IPR (Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga; August 13, 2015). Amulya Purushothama assisted with research and writing.

Media Coverage

Competition Commission of India chariman's participation in Assocham conference raises conflict of interests (Rema Nagarajan; The Times of India; August 6, 2015).
Assocham event sparks row over conflict of interest by CCI (Dilasha Seth and Deepak Patel; Business Standard; August 6, 2015).

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).

Blog Entry

Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community! (Subhashish Panigrahi; August 21, 2015).

Events Co-organized

Annamaya Library edit-a-thon (Organized by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia Community; August 6, 2015; Andhra Loyola College; Vijaywada).
International Workshop on Digitization and Archiving (Organized by CIS-A2K and Wikipedia Community; August 19 - 21, 2015). Rahmanuddin Shaik was one of the trainers.

FOSS

Participation in Events

Workshop on digital collaborations in Tamil-language, Tamil Virtual Chennai (Organized by Tamil Virtual University, Anna University Campus, Chennai; August 8 - 9, 2015). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja atttended this event.
Open Innovation, entrepreneurship, and our digital future (Organized by iSpirit; Bangalore; August 13, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended the event. Rohini wrote a report on this .

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following:

Telugu Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at ALC (Eenadu; August 6, 2015)
Telugu Wiki Edit-a-thon in ALC (Eenadu; August 6, 2015)
Rare Telugu religious and historical work preserved at Annamacharya library to come on Wikisource! (The Hans India; August 7, 2015).
ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಿಂದ ದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. (Mangalorean.com; August 13, 2015).
ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯ ಮುಕ್ತವಾಗಿ ಬಳಸಿ: ಡಾ.ಪವನಜ (Karavali Karnataka; August 14, 2015).
ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ:ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ-ಪವನಜ (SahilOnline; August 14, 2015).
Talamaddale on August 23 (Hindu; August 16, 2015).

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 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.

Privacy

Article

Security: Privacy, Transparency and Technology (Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Tarun Krishnakumar; Observer Research Foundation, Digital Debates 2015: CyFy Journal Volume 2 ; August 19, 2015).

Submission

CIS Comments and Recommendations to the Human DNA Profiling Bill, June 2015 (Elonnai Hickok, Vipul Kharbanda and Vanya Rakesh; August 27, 2015).

Blog Entries

Policy Paper on Surveillance in India (Vipul Kharbanda; August 3, 2015).
Comparison of the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 with: CIS recommendations, Sub-Committee Recommendations, Expert Committee Recommendations, and the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 (Elonnai Hickok; August 10, 2015).
Right to Privacy in Peril (Vipul Kharbanda; August 13, 2015).
Responsible Data Forum: Discussion on the Risks and Mitigations of releasing Data (Vanya Rakesh; August 26, 2015).
Are we Throwing our Data Protection Regimes under the Bus? (Elonnai Hickok and Rohan George; August 29, 2015).
Supreme Court Order is a Good Start, but is Seeding Necessary? (Elonnai Hickok and Rohan George; August 29, 2015).

Big Data

Blog Entries

Big Data and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules 2011 (Elonnai Hickok; August 11, 2015).
A Review of the Policy Debate around Big Data and Internet of Things (Elonnai Hickok; August 17, 2015).

Participation in Event

The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data (Co-organized by Innovation Center for Big Data and Digital Convergence, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan; August 24 - 25, 2015). Sharat Chandra Ram was granted the Young Scholar Award 2015 to attend theYoung Scholar Workshop followed by main CPRSouth2015 conference (Communication Policy Research South) conference.

Free Speech and Expression

Submission

CIS submission to the UNGA WSIS+10 Review (Jyoti Panday; August 9, 2015),

Cyber Security

Upcoming Event

Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI (Co-organized by DSCI and CIS; September 26, 2015). Melissa Hathaway, Commissioner, Global Commission for Internet Governance and Sunil Abraham will be speaking at this event.

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:

Op-ed

Those Dropped Calls (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 5, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; August 6, 2015).

Researchers at Work

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:

Books

Digital Activism in Asia Reader (edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun; August 8, 2015).

Books Chapters

Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia - Open Review (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Asia Internet History Vol. 3, edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon). Comments are invited.
Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in India - Open Review (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Asia Internet History Vol. 3, edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon). Comments are invited.

Accepted Paper Abstract

Studying the Emerging Database State in India: Notes for Critical Data Studies (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 2, 2015). The paper has been provisionally accepted.

Blog Entries

Mock-Calling - Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual (Sreedeep; August 6, 2015).
Governing Speech on the Internet: From the Free Marketplace Policy to a Controlled 'Public Sphere' (Smarika Kumar; August 28, 2015).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Why the DNA Bill is open to misuse: Sunil Abraham (Kanika Datta; Business Standard; August 1, 2015)
Porn ban: People will soon learn to circumvent ISPs and govt orders, expert says (Karthikeyan Hemalatha; The Times of India; August 2, 2015).
Indian government orders ISPs to block 857 porn websites (John Ribeiro; IDG News and PC World; August 2, 2015)
India blocks access to 857 porn sites (BBC; August 3, 2015).
India launches crackdown on online porn (James Crabtree; Financial Times; August 3, 2015).
Proxies and VPNs: Why govt can't ban porn websites? (Siladitya Ray; August 3, 2015; Hindustan Times)
Nanny state rules porn bad for you (Anahita Mukherji; The Times of India; August 4, 2015).
Ban on pornography temporary, says government (Business Standard; August 4, 2015)
Porn block in India sparks outrage (Australian; August 5, 2015).
Indian Porn Ban is Partially Lifted But Sites Remain Blocked (Sean Mclain; Wall Street Journal; August 5, 2015)
Genetic Profiling: Is it all in the DNA? (Ullekh N.P.; The Open Magazine; August 7, 2015)
India partially lifts Porn Ban? (Nazhat Khan; DESI blitz; August 7, 2015)
Net Neutrality: India is a Key Battleground (Abeer Kapoor; Hardnews; August 10, 2015)
Stats from 2014 reveal horror of scrapped section 66A of IT Act (Aloke Tikku; Hindustan Times; August 20, 2015).
The seedy underbelly of revenge porn (Sandhya Soman; The Times of India; August 23, 2015).
The new tattler in town (P. Anima; Hindu Businessline; August 28, 2015).

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 mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.

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► 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, Access to Knowledge, 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/august-2015-bulletin

Training in eSpeak Hindi

nirmita — 2015-09-03T14:41:13Z

NVDA team conducted a workshop at Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind, Varanasi from August 26 to 28, 2015. Eighty five students and 13 teachers took part in the training programme.


Pictured above: Trainer is explaining the concepts of NVDA to the students

This workshop had special focus on training the teachers who teach the Blind students of Jeevan Jyoti School, Varanasi and Special Educators, who are being trained in the School for Special Educators at Jeevan Jyoti Institute, Varanasi. The workshop was also attended by senior students of the Jeevan Jyoti Blind school. It was observed that there was a lot of enthusiasm for learning amongst the students and staff. The students wanted to learn Hindi Reading and Writing for reading a lot of Hindi material, which is being produced at the School. The staff wanted to learn Hindi writing for creating documents for their blind students. The Jeevan Jyoti school has an integrated format, where in it caters to about 200 students, of whom about 80 are girls with visual impairment.

The event started with a welcome song by the senior girls, followed by an understanding of the needs of the participants. This was followed by detailed understanding of NVDA and its comparision to other screen readers. The participants were guided towards the steps for downloading the latest build of NVDA from its website. They were than given detailed instructions for installing NVDA. All the participants than installed NVDA onn their respective systems. This was followed by explanation of the different menus of NVDA. The participants were than encouraged to read hindi text. The initial reactions of the students was as expected. Some could understand the text spoken out by Espeak, and some found it difficult to comprehend.

On the 2nd day the participants were given detailed understanding of the Inscript keyboard. They were made to practice all the keys, followed by typing small words followed by short sentences. The participants were than updated about the different sources of reading, including Bookshare. They were guided as to how to become a member of Bookshare. Details were also given about DFI and the Common Catlogue on the DFI website. The participants were than given information about the different reading solutions, including the Android platform. They were also given information about the ADIP scheme of the Ministry of Social Justice. The ADIP forms were also given to the management, for them to fill up for all the blind students studying in Jeevan Jyoti.


Pictured above: Students operating their computers under guidance from the trainer

The 3rd day was dedicated to the teachers and students of the Special Educators school, where in they were updated about Modern Techniques for Teaching the Blind.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/training-in-e-speak-hindi

Konkani voice to guide the blind

praskrishna — 2015-10-04T06:53:52Z

Those visually-impaired and well-versed only with the language of Konkani, now need not worry. Neither their blindness nor the language barrier will come between them and the use of mobile phones, computers and other technology.

The article by Gauree Malkarnekar was published in the Times of India on August 9, 2015.

Konkani will soon join 50-odd languages from across the globe, whose text will be recognized by the online engines for the visually impaired that converts text on mobile phone and computer screens into speech, enabling the blind to use the devices. The bank of sounds of Konkani alphabets for this purpose has been developed by Delhi-based NGO Saksham with the help of staffers of Goa's state central library at Patto, Panaji.

Users will be able to take the benefit of the initiative and have Konkani texts read out to them by making use of the open source or free for use text to speech engine eSpeak.

"Saksham, under Centre for Internet Society in Bangalore, is on the quest to enable text in all Indian languages to be converted into speech for the visually-impaired. We approached them to begin work on Konkani as we realized that while Romi Konkani can be read out because of its Roman alphabets, there was no correct pronunciation of the Devanagri Konkani sounds. The Marathi and Hindi alphabets have a different sound," said Taha Haaziq, incharge of the resource room for the disabled at Goa's central library.

A staffer of the library spoke out the entire range of sounds of Devanagri Konkani alphabets, which was recorded and sent by the library to the NGO in Delhi in January, based on which the sounds for use on eSpeak were developed.

"Work is nearly complete and Konkani speaking visually-impaired the world over will be able to benefit from this initiative. Regular Konkani speakers who prefer to use the text to speech option on their mobile phones instead of reading can also make use of Konkani version of eSpeak," said Haaziq.

The text to speech will also help the blind in the use of refreshable Braille display, which enables the visually-impaired to use computers as the display text on their screens are read out to them, in this case, now in Konkani said Central library curator Carlos Fernandes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/the-times-of-india-garuee-malkarnekar-august-9-2015-konkani-voice-to-guide-the-blind

July 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-11-21T16:23:52Z

Our newsletter for the month of July is below:

We are happy to share with you the seventh issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (July 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

NVDA team conducted a training at SIES College, Sion, Mumbai. Thirty-four delegates attended the training programme. A training workshop was held at Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli by NVDA team. Sixteen delegates participated in this. Konkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Subhashish Panigrahi has blogged on this highlighting the three Konkani Wikimedians. The 30^th Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights was held in Geneva from June 29 to July 3. Nehaa Chaudhari prepared a statement about the negotiations on the Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organisations. Sumandro Chattapadhyay wrote an article in the Hindustan Times about India’s “Digital India” initiative to develop communication infrastructure, government information systems, and general capacity to digitise public life in India. CIS published the first draft of its analysis on technology business incubators ("TBI") in India. The report prepared by Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak looks at operating procedures, success stories and lessons that can be learnt from TBIs in India. Pranesh Prakash did a brief analysis about the Department of Telecommunications Panel Report on Net Neutrality. CIS has participated in the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling constituted by the Department of Biotechnology in 2012 for the purpose of deliberating on and finalizing the draft Human DNA Profiling Bill and appreciates this opportunity. CIS has prepared a dissent note to the Expert Committee on DNA Profiling. In the last few decades, all major common law jurisdictions have decriminalised non-procreative sex – oral and anal sex (sodomy) – to allow private, consensual, and non-commercial homosexual intercourse. Bhairav Acharya brought out the developments from across the world in a blog entry. As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted interviews with a Tibetan security researcher and information activist and Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India. CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania had organized a conference in April in New Delhi. The findings have been condensed in a report titled “Effective research, policy formulation, and the development of regulatory frameworks in South Asia”. Pranesh Prakash in a research paper titled Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality gives an overview on why India needs to put in place net neutrality regulations, and the form that those regulations must take to avoid being over-regulation. Rakshanda Deka undertook an analysis on the anti-spam laws in different jurisdictions. This analysis is a part of a larger attempt at formulating a model anti-spam law for India by analysing the existing spam laws across the world. As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW has published blog entries on WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality; Users and the Internet; Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi; Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights; and 'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube. The National Optic Fibre Network, a part of the Government's Digital India Initiative, has been in the news since the recent Expert Committee Report. Aditya Garg in a blog entry examined the accountability of the funding of the project.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is 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

July 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015).

Event Reports

The training programmes were held in June and the reports were published in July:

Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop (Organized by NVDA team: Anne Jane Ask with Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 – 7, 2015).
Training in eSpeak Marathi (Organized by NVDA team; SIES College, Sion, Mumbai; June 28, 2015).

Access to Knowledge

Submission / Comment

Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30 (Nehaa Chaudhari; July 2, 2015).

Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Reading Devanagari Script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; July 13, 2015).
Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation (Subhashish Panigrahi; July 18, 2015).

Events Co-organized

Christ University Undergraduate Programme (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; July 1 - 8, 2015). Students were initiated into the Wikimedia activities with hands on sessions of typing on Wikisource. Faculty of the Christ University helped the A2K team in deciding on the texts that were to be typed. These texts will provide much needed impetus for Wikisource related activities in Indian Languages. Wikipedia Education Programme at Christ University received support from Ravishankar.A of the Tamil Wikimedia community and Sayant Mahato from Sanskrit Wikimedia community.
Aloysius College (Organized by CIS-A2K; Mangalore; July 1 – 4, 2015). Tulu and Kannada Wikipedia workshops were conducted in St. Aloysis College, Mangalore. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator and a small community is growing in Mangalore. Pavanaja U.B. and Rahmanuddin Shaik participated in this events.
Media Wiki Train the Trainer Program (Organized by CIS-A2K; Bangalore; June 24 – 27, 2015): A four-day long train-the-trainer program aimed at building leadership among technical contributors to Indic language Wikimedians in the areas of bugs, bots--Pywikipedia and Auto Wiki Browser, various MediaWiki tools, and translations. Ravishankar A. from Wikimedia India, MediaWiki developers Pavithra H., Yogesh Omshivaprakash H.L. and Harsh Kothari, and Tamil Wikimedian Dineshkumar Ponnusamy provided support for the event.

Participation in Events

Wikimania 2015 (Organized by Wikimedia Foundation; Mexico City; July 15 - 19, 2015): A whole day was dedicated for evaluation of strategies and activities by various major stakeholders of the Wikimedia movement. Community members who lead major activities, Wikimedia chapters, affiliate organizations and Wikimedia Foundation itself took part in the discussions. There were several group activities, exchange of ideas focused on project and community level outreach and other activities, tools and techniques, and best practices. Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event and gave a talk on How to do Guerrilla GLAM. Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist along with Rohini Lakshané in the session “Edit-a-thons for Bridging the Gender Gap on Wikimedia: A Panel Discussion”. An Indic Meet-up was also organized. Wikimedians from India, Bangladesh and Nepal representing various language communities, Wikimedia India, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia Nepal, and Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) gathered to discuss about various challenges, cross-community collaborative projects, organizing larger events, and strategies to grow the Wikimedia movement in South Asia.
Classical Languages in the Digital Era Conference (Organized by Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore; July 17, 2015) Tanveer Hasan participated in this conference aimed at discussing about the future of Indian classical languages in the digital era.

Media Coverage

Not many contributors for Kannada-centric Wiki page (The Times of India, July 5, 2015)
Upload More Kannada Articles on Wikipedia (Indian Express, July 5, 2015)
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Udayavani; July 5, 2015)
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mangaluru (Prajavani; July 5, 2015)

Staff Movement

Tito Dutta, Luis Gomes and Abhinav Garule have joined the CIS-A2K team as Programme Associates from March this year. Tito is working for internal documentation and resource building, and Luis and Abhinav are implementing the Konkani and Marathi work plan respectively along with community liaison.

Internet Governance

Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

Regulatory Perspectives on Net Neutrality (Pranesh Prakash; July 8, 2015). Vidushi Marda and Tarun Krishnakumar assisted Pranesh Prakash in this.
Free Speech Policy in India: Community, Custom, Censorship, and the Future of Internet Regulation (Bhairav Acharya; July 13, 2015).
Net Neutrality and the Law of Common Carriage (Bhairav Acharya; July 14, 2015).
Freedom of Expression in a Digital Age (Geetha Hariharan and Jyoti Panday; July 14, 2015). CIS, the Observer Research Foundation, the Internet Policy Observatory, the Centre for Global Communication Studies and the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania organized this conference on April 21, 2015 in New Delhi. Elonnai Hickok edited the report.
Clearing Misconceptions: What the DoT Panel Report on Net Neutrality Says (and Doesn't) (Pranesh Prakash; July 21, 2015).
Role of Intermediaries in Countering Online Abuse (Jyoti Panday; July 31, 2015). This got published as two blog entries in the NALSAR Law Tech Blog. Part 1 can be accessed here and Part 2 here.

Event Co-organized

A Public Discussion on Criminal Defamation in India (Organized by CIS, the Network of Women in Media, India; and Media Watch; Bangalore; July 29, 2015). The event was a public discussion about the continued criminalisation of defamation in India.

Participation in Event

Roundtable discussion on WHOIS (Organized by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Govt. of India; July 28, 2015; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda participated in the discussion remotely. Aditya Garg attended in person.

Privacy

Blog Entries

Anti-Spam Laws in Different Jurisdictions: A Comparative Analysis (Rakshanda Deka; July 2, 2015).
A Dissent Note to the Expert Committee for DNA Profiling (Elonnai Hickok; July 17, 2015). Click for DNA Bill Functions, DNA List of Offences, and CIS Note on DNA Bill. A modified version was published by Citizen Matters Bangalore on July 28.
Privacy, Autonomy, and Sexual Choice: The Common Law Recognition of Homosexuality (Bhairav Acharya; July 18, 2015).
Aadhaar Number vs the Social Security Number (Elonnai Hickok; July 21, 2015).

Participation in Event

7th Best Practices Meet 2015 (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; July 9 – 10, 2015). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Architecting Security for transformation to Digital India". Elonnai Hickok was a panelist in the session "Steering privacy in the age of extreme innovation technology & business models."

Cyber Security

Videos

Cyber Security Series Part 23 (Purba Sarkar; July 13, 2015). CIS interviews a Tibetan security researcher and information activist.
Cyber Security Series Part 24 (Purba Sarkar; July 15, 2015). CIS interviews Shantanu Ghosh, Managing Director, Symantec Product Operations, India, as part of the Cybersecurity Series.

Miscellaneous

Article

Iron out contradictions in the Digital India programme (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Hindustan Times; July 28, 2015).

Research Paper

First draft of Technology Business Incubators: An Indian Perspective and Implementation Guidance Report (Sunil Abraham, Vidushi Marda, Udbhav Tiwari and Anumeha Karnatak; July 25, 2015).

Telecom

Op-ed

The Centrality of Cash Flows (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; July 1, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; July 2, 2015).

Blog Entry

Funding of National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) - Who's Accountable? (Aditya Garg; July 17, 2015).

Researchers at Work

Blog Entries

WhatsApp and the Creation of a Transnational Sociality (Maitrayee Deka; July 1, 2015).
Users and the Internet (Purbasha Auddy; July 10, 2015).
Effective Activism: The Internet, Social Media, and Hierarchical Activism in New Delhi (Sarah McKeever; July 16, 2015).
Studying the Internet Discourse in India through the Prism of Human Rights (Deva Prasad M.; July 22, 2015).
'Originality,' 'Authenticity,' and 'Experimentation': Understanding Tagore’s Music on YouTube) (Ipsita Sengupta; July 27, 2015).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

'IRCTC’s Aadhaar play can violate SC order and derail National Security' (Shubhra Rishi; CIO.IN; July 1, 2015).
The Digital Divide: pros and cons of Modi's latest big initiative (Suhas Munshi; July 2, 2015).
Corporate push to Modi’s Rs.4.5-billion digital dream (Rakesh Kumar; The Statesman; July 13, 2015).
Criminal Defamation: The Urgent Cause That has United Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Subramanian Swamy (Betwa Sharma; Huffington Post; July 15, 2015).
Five Nations, One Future? (Bjorn Ludtke, Ellen Lee, Jaideep Sen, Gwendolyn Ledger, David Nicholson, and Jesko Johannsen; Voestalpine; July 18, 2015).
The scariest bill in Parliament is getting no attention – here’s what you need to know about it (Nayantara Narayanan; Scroll.in; July 24, 2015)
Regulation, misuse concerns still dog DNA profiling bill (Nikita Mehta; Livemint; July 29, 2015)

About CIS

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

Report on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop in Tirunelveli

nirmita — 2015-07-12T07:50:27Z

The training workshop by the NVDA team was held at Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli from June 3 - 7, 2015. Sixteen delegates attended the workshop.

Inauguration

The eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training workshop planned for 5 days (3^rd June 2015 to 7^th June 2015) extensively for visually challenged college students and teachers was inaugurated on 3^rd June 2015 morning by Mr. V. Jayakumar. District Project Officer for Rural Women Development, Tirunelveli. Mr. J Kingston James Paul, Principal of the School gave the Welcome Address. Mr. S. Shankar Subbiah, Assistive Technology Consultant and representative of National Association for Blind, New Delhi and The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, the sponsors of the workshop explained the purpose of the Workshop with the need for Tamil computing becoming necessity among the visually challenged in the present educational and employment context. Mr. Periadurai, the Co-ordinator of the Workshop gave the Vote of Thanks and emphasized on using NVDA in Government given Cost Free Laptops as it is preloaded and supports Tamil language too. He thanked the sponsors as this is first of its kind organized in this region for the visually challenged students as hands on training.

The Training Hall in the School served as the venue for training. In order to facilitate the participants with more concentrated and time efforts, High Tea with Snacks and Lunch were also served for the Training days at the Venue. The Girl students numbering 10 who came from neighboring Districts were given free accommodation in the School. Morning breakfast and Evening Dinner was provided by the Organizers. There were volunteers from Smile Charitable Trust, Tirunelveli who gave Laptops to those students did not have and also assisted the Trainees, who were new to computer. The participant trainees numbering to 16 were from Tirunelveli district and nearby districts like Kanyakumari, Tuticorin, Virudhunagar and Ramanathapuram of Tamilnadu state.

Workshop Schedule

The workshop began with Resource persons, Mr. Pandiyaraj, Mr. G. Kumaresan and Mr. S Shankar Subbiah continuing with the training activities on their expertise areas. The below were the activities conducted during the training period.

Day 1: June 3, 2015

Forenoon

The whole group of Trainees had few who were new to computers, few with knowledge on operating until the level of Notepad and few in an advanced level working on MS Word and Internet.
A general overview on Operating System, Applications available in Windows, Screen readers and other Assistive Technology like OCR, Scan and Read applications available for Visually Challenged were dealt with.
NVDA was loaded in Laptops who did not have them installed previously and Tamil language keyboard settings was added.

Afternoon

The group was divided in to three groups. First without prior knowledge on computers were given training on Keyboard mapping and basic computer operation commands through NVDA.
The second group was given practices on NVDA shortcuts, Windows operations and an introduction to Word.
The third group was given exercises to work efficiently on using MS Word through Shortcuts and Tamil computing introduction through passages to read.

Day 2: June 4, 2015

Forenoon

Tamil keyboard layout mapping of Microsoft Windows for default Unicode Tamil Font typing were introduced to all the trainees by the Resource person and it was decided to use Notepad for uniform training.
The whole group of Trainees were trained to identify the keys for vowels and consonants of Tamil language, type and practice by themselves with the volunteers supporting them, when they had difficulties.

Afternoon

The Trainees were trained to identify the keys for combinations of vowels for typing and practicing by themselves as few of them wanted more time. Combinations with two letter, three letter, four letter word units given as dictation to those who were bit advanced in their typing skills.
A play and learn session was organized to say the keystrokes for vowels and consonants at the end for memorizing.

Day 3: June 5, 2015

Forenoon

The Trainees were trained by giving large sets of four, five and bigger letter units of words to type and practice as a revision.
It was followed up by smaller phrases and then sentences to be typed by the Trainees.
The trainees at this point of time, were introduced with short cuts for navigation within the text, spell check, cut, copy, paste commands. Almost everyone were in the same page at this point of time, regarding Tamil typing skills. And, now they were allowed to use Notepad or MS Word, whichever is comfortable for them.

Afternoon

The trainees were made to listen to the Tamil text paragraphs with the help of NVDA screen-reader supported by eSpeak voice.
The trainees were suggested to type out the phrases listened on a separate document.
The settings of NVDA to change Voice, rate and other settings were given for practice to do themselves as a revision.

Day 4: June 6, 2015

Forenoon

The trainees were introduced to toggle language between English and Tamil for bilingual content typing and practice.
Next training on file operations like simple formatting, folder creation, saving the file in Unicode format to required folder and retrieval of the particular file. Similarly, for navigating, opening the file saved and continuing editing.
The Trainees were given a home work to listen a Tamil content, type and save it as a separate file.

Afternoon

Introduction to HTML, various tags and formatting that can be done, Forms and fields, Email Clients and Browsers were given to the Trainees. Usage of Tamil in Internet, and the browsers supporting the Unicode formatted content and the NVDA development efforts to support Internet browsing was discussed.
Introduction on DAISY books and knowledge sharing on the available resources to read a DAISY book was done.
Demonstration on using Android based tablets and mobile phones to access the Tamil DAISY books given to the Trainees using Bookshare.org. The Trainees were also given information to subscribe for Bookshare membership and Book search and retrieval.

Day 5: June 7, 2015

Forenoon

The trainees were given information on Higher Education options available as well as career opportunities ahead in Government and Private Sector. The trainees were explained of various scholarship and assistive devices schemes as they had a request have a session on this.
This was followed up with a game based assessment for their Computer skills and Tamil computing knowledge imparted through training. It was a two hour session, with initial 45 minutes being spent as a chain to say the right keystrokes for letters, keystrokes for different words and make a sentence using the keystrokes for Tamil alone. The next 45 minutes concentrated on their bilingual word processing skills, shortcuts, file operations, formatting through interactive questions, and group quiz. These the students felt like a revision and practiced them on their Laptops too.

The Valedictory Function

After the Lunch, The eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training workshop conducted for 5 days (3^rd June 2015 to 7^th June 2015) had a great Valedictory function presided by Mr. T. Manoharan, District Officer for Welfare of Differently Abled, Tirunelveli. The District Officer, also felicitated the gathering and distributed the Certificates to the participants. Few students demonstrated their Tamil computing skills to the District Officer by operating on Laptop. He was happy to note that and informed the Trainees he would discuss with the higher authorities to organize more such Workshops during the holidays or after Laptop being distributed. He thanked the organizers for choosing Tirunelveli and invited the local TV media reporter immediately to make a record of it. This would be shared in his sensitization programme for Government officials to create awareness on potential capabilities of the Visually Impaired if training opportunities were given particularly in computers. The certificates were distributed to the Trainees thereafter. The Principal of the School, Mr. Kingston also gave a felicitation talk on how the training have to be further continued through practice. He thanked the sponsors and organizers for a timely measure to use the Summer holidays much useful for the Trainees by learning Tamil computing. Vote of thanks to CIS, NAB and the organizers was given by Mr. Periadurai, the Co-ordinator. The training that one such programme to be conducted in Tirunelveli as per the District Officer felt much useful and requested to extend in coming Holidays ended up with the National Anthem.

Previously, the Tamil equivalent ‘Dinamani’ of The New Indian Express covered with a one fourth page content of the Training programme interacting with the students and the coordinator. A scanned copy of this news is attached herewith.

Feedback

Ms. Gnanam, a Tamil Teacher felt it would be now easy to type her lesson plans in Tamil and she could read more e-text novels available in Tamil. Also, do emails in Tamil. She thanked the Organizers for a good stay in their old school and a useful training with her friends coming together.

Ms. Keerthika, a graduate who exhibited her typing talent to the Officer was happy and felt that this day was a markable in Life for her. The five days training introduced her to many shortcuts not known to her and also gave her more confidence now for using computers in her higher studies and career.

The mother of Ms. Anna Sundari, felt that it was a great opportunity for all the trainees as they were able to spend their time much useful. And, as mother is happy to see her Girl typing in Tamil all their names. She thanked the organizers for the workshop in a nearby district and wanted one such run regularly in the school. This would help the students in their education, reduce dependency on scribes, readers and work independently.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-using-espeak-tamil-with-nvda-training-tirunelveli

June 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-09-13T16:10:19Z

Newsletter for the month of June.

We are happy to share with you the sixth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (June 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

-------------------------------
Highlights
-------------------------------

As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted a series of interviews with cyber security actors. The interviews were compiled and edited into one documentary . The film was produced by Purba Sarkar, edited by Aaron Joseph, and directed by Oxblood Ruffin features Malavika Jayaram, Nitin Pai, Namita Malhotra, Saikat Datta, Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang, Anja Kovacs, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and, Ravi Sharada Prasad.

CIS conducted a training on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA in Tirunelveli in the month of June. Sixteen delegates attended the event.
The 30th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's ("WIPO") Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights ("SCCR") was held from June 30 to July 3, 2015. CIS was unable to attend the meeting. However, CIS had a statement to make on negotiations on the Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organizations .
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India had called for comments on the technical background paper prepared by the WIPO Secretariat in relation to the Broadcast Treaty. CIS submitted its comments .
Rohini Lakshané in a blog post analysed the commonalities in big-ticket patent infringement lawsuits pertaining to mobile devices.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored a report on open data intermediaries in developing countries . The report concluded by saying that consideration needs to be given to the presence of multiple intermediaries in an open data ecosystem, each of whom may possess different forms of capital to enable the use and unlock the potential impact of open data.
Odia language Wikipedia has grown to 800k page views in a month. The Odia Wikipedia community gathered in Bhubaneswar on June 3 to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 13^th anniversary. Subhashish Panigrahi wrote about this.
Sunil Abraham in an article titled "The generation of e-Emergency" published by Livemint on June 22 argued that the next generation of censorship technology is expected to be 'real-time content manipulation' through ISPs and Internet companies.
In two separate blog entries, Jyoti Panday provided insights into IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability. The first part gives a background to the IANA transition and updates on the ensuing processes in an attempt to familiarise people with the issues at stake and the second part provides an overview of submitted proposals and highlights the areas of concern that will need attention moving forward .

Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-designed and co-facilitated a workshop for government officials from Bhutan, Maldives, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Tripura, on open data policy and implementation, organised by UNDP India.
Shyam Ponappa in his monthly column published in the Business Standard stated that government can't control market forces but can and must fix regulatory issues.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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►NVDA and eSpeak

# Monthly Updates

June 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; June 30, 2015).

# Language Testing Reports

Report on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop in Tirunelveli (Organized by NVDA team; Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 - 7, 2015).

►Other

# White Paper

Inclusive Financial Services - Global Trends in Accessibility Requirements (Nirmita Narasimhan; May 3, 2015).

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Access to Knowledge
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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.

# Submission / Comments

Comments on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations: Technical Background Paper Prepared by the WIPO Secretariat (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 28, 2015).
Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30 (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 30, 2015).

# Blog Entries

Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone Patent Litigation (Rohini Lakshané; June 1, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: India's National IPR Policy - What Would WIPO Think? (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 20, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: Follow-up RTI to DIPP on the IPR Think Tank (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 25, 2015).
The US 301 Report - A Myopic View of IP Rights (Varun Baliga and Nehaa Chaudhari; June 24, 2015).

# Media Coverage

CIS gave inputs for the following:

One reason startups are moving out of India (Evelyn Fok and Varun Aggarwal; The Times of India; April 10, 2015). This was also mirrored in Economic Times .
Indian businesses crave IP certainty, but better patent values are tempting them overseas (IAM Magazine; April 28, 2015).

►Wikipedia

# Blog Entries

How the Odia Wikimedia community is enriching Wikipedia with character encoding technology (Subhashish Panigrahi; June 14, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group (Sailesh Patnaik; June 29, 2015).

# Event Organized

Odia Wikipedia Turning 13 this June 3 (Organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikipedia Community; Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School PO, Gajapati Nagar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha; June 3, 2015).

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following:

ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ୧୩ ତମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ପାଳନ, ୨୦୧୫ ଜୁନ ୩ ତାରିଖ (Odishan.com; June 2, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia celebrates 13 years of free knowledge contribution at Bhubaneswar (Orissadairy.com; June 2, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia Celebrates 13 Years of Free Knowledge Contribution at Bhubaneswar (FullOdisha.com; June 3, 2015).

►Openness

# Blog Entries

FOSS for Public Use:Free and Open Source Software for Digital India (Anubha Sinha; June 1, 2015).
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; June 2, 2015).
Open Data Intermediaries in Developing Countries - A Synthesis Report (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; June 16, 2015).

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Internet Governance
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►Free Speech and Expression

# Article

The generation of e-Emergency (Sunil Abraham; May 20, 2015).

# Blog Entries

IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability (I) (Jyoti Panday; June 20, 2015).
IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability (II) (Jyoti Panday; June 21, 2015).

# Participation in Event

Panel Discussion on Internet Intermediaries, Law and Innovation (Organized by Confederation of Indian Industries, Google and Centre For Communications Governance, NLU Delhi; New Delhi; June 2, 2015). Jyoti Panday attended the panel discussion.

► Cyber Security

# Film

DesiSec: Cybersecurity and Civil Society in India (produced by Purba Sarkar, edited by Aaron Joseph, and directed by Oxblood Ruffin). The film features Malavika Jayaram, Nitin Pai, Namita Malhotra, Saikat Datta, Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang, Anja Kovacs, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and, Ravi Sharada Prasad.

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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:

# Op-ed

Unfettering Stranded Capacity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; June 3, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; June 4, 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:

# Blog Entry

Indic Scripts and the Internet (Dibyajyoti Ghosh; June 30, 2015).

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Can Uber, Ola apps be blocked? Govt fighting cyber odds (Siladitya Ray; Hindustan Times; June 4, 2015).
Government's stand on internet governance draws applause from civil society organisations (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; June 24, 2015).
Most emerging firms low on cyber security: Experts (Malavika Murali and Payal Ganguly; June 24, 2015).

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About CIS
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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.

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Report on Training in eSpeak Marathi

nirmita — 2015-07-16T01:48:09Z

The NVDA team conducted a training at SIES College, Sion, Mumbai on June 28, 2015. Thirty-four delegates attended the training programme. Harshad Jadhav was the trainer.

Voice Vision conducted workshops on June 27 and 28, 2015 for persons with visual impairment in Mumbai. These workshops were in partnership of National Association for the Blind (NAB) Delhi which has been a pioneer in the spread of Assistive Technology for the blind and Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) Bengaluru which has been conducting the project for development of Indian Language support for eSpeak TTS (Text-to-Speech) which is bundled as the default TTS with NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access). The workshops were held at SIES college of Arts, Science & Commerce, Sion, Mumbai.

The inauguration of the event was done by the Chief Guest from the social justice & special assistance ministry, Yashwant More, Regional Deputy Commissioner, Department of Social Welfare, Konkan Bhavan.

This was followed by the training session on NVDA which was conducted by the CEO of NAB Delhi himself, Dr. Homiyar Mobedji. It was a practical training session for the participants on how technology can be used for the non-visual access of computers. Dr. Homiyar and his team along with the zeal of the participants to learn about NVDA made it a wonderful session as recorded from the feedback received.

The NVDA training was followed by a lunch break. Post the lunch break there was a session on eSpeak TTS in Marathi language and was conducted by Harshad Jadhav, Marathi Tester for the eSpeak project.

A total of 34 people attended the workshop held on the June 27, 2015 at SIES college of Arts, Science & Commerce, Sion, Mumbai.

The workshop saw participation from people from every walk of life, students, job seekers, special educators and the like. More than 45% of the attendants were students and 12% of them were trainers in professional life.

Forty-nine per cent of the attendants said their overall experience with the workshop was excellent, 43 per cent said it was very good while 8 per cent of the attendants felt their overall experience to be good.

Sixty-three per cent believed that the workshop was highly helpful for them personally and professionally, while 37 per cent believed that the workshop was surely helpful somewhat suggesting that they were very much satisfied with the workshops.

A whopping 74 per cent of the respondents were highly impressed by the trainer and termed him ‘excellent’, 23 per cent said he was very good and 3% said he was good.

Ninety-one per cent of the respondents were overwhelmed by the quality of work put in by our volunteers and termed them ‘excellent’. Nine per cent said the volunteers were very good.

Fifty-one per cent people regarded the content material provided as excellent, 34 per cent said the material was very good whereas 15 per cent said it was good.

					Pictured above: Participants undergoing training in eSpeak Marathi at the workshop in Mumbai

Learnings from the Workshop

Forty-two per cent of the respondents felt that the Marathi typing session which was conducted would immensely help them in their career and the overall response was that all the activities which happened in the workshops would help them in their profession.

Thirty-seven per cent of the respondents were satisfied with the workshop content and thought nothing more is required. Some other responses were directed towards need for more of such workshops as well as workshops in various other regional languages.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-in-e-speak-marathi

Report on eSpeak Marathi Training at MJ College, Jalgaon

nirmita — 2015-07-22T01:22:40Z

The Centre for Internet & Society conducted a workshop for reading and writing using eSpeak with NVDA at Dreamy Eyes Resource Centre in Jalgaon on June 23 and 24, 2015.


Participants seen practicing on their computers during the workshop

The two days event comprised of the following trainings:

Introduction to NVDA.
Advantages of NVDA.
Configuration of NVDA.
Installation of Espeak for Indian Languages [Developer Version 1.31]
Configuration of Espeak synthesiser.
Configuration of Language options in Control Pannel.
Introduction to Marathi Keyboard.
Typing short words and sentences.
Reading and Comprehension in Marathi.
Knowledge about Assistive devices.

Most of the participants were college going students, who were very excited to start reading and writing in Marathi. They expressed deep gratitude for empowering them in their mother tongue.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-espeak-marathi-training-at-mj-college

Report on the Use of eSpeak in Urdu and Kashmiri

nirmita — 2015-07-21T15:39:50Z

NVDA team conducted a training programme at Kashmir University from June 15 to 17, 2015. Forty-four delegates attended the training programme. Kaifee Asami was the trainer.

Inauguration

The programme was inaugurated by the District Commissioner of Srinagar. He emphasised the importance of Technology in lives of persons with visual impairment. Head of Radio Kashmir, Head of Cell for the differently-abled students, Kashmir University, Head Librarian – Alama Iqbal Library and Head of Students Cell also graced the occasion.

The inauguration was followed by a press conference. At least 7 members of print and electronic media covered the function. The event also got a lot of publicity on Doordarshan Kashmir and Radio Kashmir.

The inaugural function was attended by more than 100 persons with blindness, parents of blind students, faculty and staff of Kashmir University and volunteers helping during the event.

The main training was conducted in the Reading / Training room of Alama Iqbal Library. Commendable efforts were put in by the library staff for arranging for the 2 day training.

Students from all across the Kashmir valley attended the training. They were overwhelmed by the technology presented. Most of them were very new to screen readers, whilst most had never imagined that reading and writing in Urdu was possible for blind persons.


Above: File photo of delegates posing at the end of the training session held in Kashmir

The event was declared as a grand success by one and all. There were numerous requests for conducting many more such trainings,as J&K has been left out of the technological revolution.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-use-of-espeak-in-urdu-and-kashmiri

Report on 15 days Training in Basic Computing at RNKS

nirmita — 2015-07-21T15:16:55Z

The NVDA team organized a 15 days training in basic computing at Rajasthan Natrahin Kalyan Sansthan (RNKS) in Jaipur. The training programme held from June 1 - 15, 2015 was attended by 12 delegates. Mrityunjay Kumar was the trainer. The basic training for computers was targeted for school going children of RNKS.

The aim was to enable them to at least start using a computer as a Tool for Reading and Writing in Hindi. Along with knowledge of Basic computer Operations, the participants were also taught about the use of Bookshare Online Library, Use of Android and other Assistive Devices.

Report from Master Trainer: Mritunjay Kumar

Day 1: We have learnt Keyboard orientation and Introduction to computer, like what is a computer, where do you use a computer and advantages of computer.
Day 2: We have learnt Typing and introduction of screen reader, what screen reader is and how many types of screen reader. Also discussed about input and output devices.
Day 3: We have played small game about typing, how do we use fingers do typing? Also explained desktop and taskbar concept.
Day 4: We have learnt about software and types of software, There are three types of software, also explained menu, what is menu? What types of menu?
Day 5: We have learnt Opening closing and saving the document, editing concept have also been discussed.
Day 6: We have learnt how to cutting, copying and pasting the text in documents. Also we discussed Hindi alphabet.
Day 8: We have done Hindi typing and we have written small story in Hindi language.
Day 9: We have learnt File folder management and explain concept of dialog box, what is dialog box, types of dialog box.
Day 10: We learnt find and replace feature using Microsoft word document. Also explained how to create table in Microsoft Word.
Day 11: We have learnt spelling tool.
Day 12: We have discussed brief history of internet, and how will be do Google search. Also we learnt how to open website using NVDA
Day 13: We discussed about book share website, then we have learnt how to open book share website, and how to download books. Also we explain about android.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-15-days-training-in-basic-computing-at-rnks

Report on Kannada eSpeak Training with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-07-22T02:14:39Z

NVDA team conducted a two day training programme at Mitra Jyothi in Bangalore (June 8 and 9, 2015). Forty-three delegates attended the training programme.

This workshop was successful in training 43 members in reading and typing in Kannada . It was a “Dream Come True “ feeling for many of them who were waiting to express their thoughts in the regional language. They are now happy as they can continue to write poems , stories etc in their regional language without any external help to type or read.

For the job seekers it is an added advantage as in many government jobs they expect them to make reports and type documents in the official language and visually impaired are now equipped with those skills. It is very important for promotional examinations at various levels during the career. It was indeed a very useful workshop for the visually impaired students and professionals in Karnataka. This training also included some telugu and hindi speaking students who were trained to read and write in their regional language.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-kannada-espeak-training-with-nvda

Report on 30 Days Summer Course on Basic Computer Competencies and Language Proficiency

nirmita — 2015-07-12T13:55:05Z

The month long summer course was held at Karna Vidya Technology Centre, Thiru-Vi-Ka, Industrial Estate, Chennai and was attended by 20 delegates.

With the support of Centre for Internet Society (CIS), Karna Vidya Technology Centre (KVTC) has conducted 30 days Summer Course on Basic Computer Competencies and Language Proficiency to introduce, strengthen and enhance the students on Computer Operations and language proficiency.

Inauguration

On the first of May 2015, the Summer course was inaugurated by Mrs. Sumathi, a Tamil poet cum volunteer. The function started off with a melodious invocation by KVTC trainee. The manager, KVTC, welcomed the invitees and participants. The course trainers outsketched the details of the course. It was followed by the chief guest’s address. The guest emphasized on the the need for professionalism and commitment. She inaugurated the course and conveyed her best wishes to all the trainees. With the vote of Thanks by one of the trainers from KVTC, the function came to an end.

Sessions:
The sessions are designed as:
02 00 pm – 04 00 pm Computers
04 10 pm – 06 00 pm English communication Skills.
Between 04 00 pm – 04 10 pm Tea Break

Session on Computers with NVDA

The trainees are given a thorough understanding of NVDA, it’s installation process, commands, Typing Speed and Accuracy, Desktop orientation, Menu Bars, Dialogue boxes, editing and alignment in MS. Word. They were also given training on Tamil Typing using NVDA. Online Bookshare Library was also introduced to them and some have got registered in the Library.

English Language proficiency :

Students had a valuable training on English Communication Skills. They were taught basic grammar and given various practical exercises on Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Home assignments are also given and assessed.

Evaluation: The students were assessed at regular intervals and guided for their betterment. Special focus was given to slow learners.

Benefits:
This Summer Course was very benefitial, Since it focused and enabled three different categories of students namely:
Students pursuing Secondary (10th Std),
Higher Secondary (12th Std) and
Higher education (Graduates)
All the 20 students learnt the basics of NVDA and English only from KVTC. At the end of the course, they felt happy, as they were able to breathe the air of independent learning using screen readers. They have assured us that they would minimize their visit to reading centres and make use of E texts, Audio books and Online Bookshare Library for their studies. The trainees were given a folder comprising:

Certificate
A Book on English communications both in print and audio CD.

Valedictory Function

The valedictory function was graced by Mr. Pankesh and Ms. Abhirami from Paypal. We also had a special invitee Mr. Ramakrishnan Accessibility Consultant, IBM, Bangalore. The function began with the invocation and the manager, KVTC, welcomed the gathering. Then, Mr. Ramakrishnan highlighted on the various avenues available for the visually impaired candidates. The guests congratulated every trainee and wished them the best for their future endeavours. They also handed over the Study Kit for every trainee. The function ended with National anthem.

Thanks to Supporters

Karna Vidya Technology Centre would like to submit it’s sincere gratitude to all it’s supporters for being with all the endeavours of the centre at all stages. Especially, The Summer Course on Basic Computer Competencies and Language Proficiency, conducted from 1st May 2015 to 31st May 2015 had seen best outcome from the student participants. The support and guidance of DR. Homiyar Ji, CEO, NAB Delhi, The cooperation of centre for Internet Society, Bangalore - our funding partner for this course and our parent club Rotary club of Madras Coromandel enabled us to conduct the course smoothly and effectively.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-30-days-summer-course-on-basic-computer-competencies-and-language-proficiency

Report on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop

nirmita — 2015-06-04T13:44:25Z

The training programme was held from May 25 to 29, 2015 at Differently Abled Children Section, District Central Library, Coimbatore. Twenty-one delegates attended.

Inauguration

The eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training workshop planned for 5 days (25^th May 2015 to 29^th May 2015) extensively for visually challenged school, college students and teachers was inaugurated on 25^th May 2015 morning by Mr. J. Karthikeyan. District Library Officer, Coimbatore. Mr. S. Shankar Subbiah, Assistive Technology Consultant and representative of National Association for Blind, New Delhi and The Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, the sponsors of the workshop gave the Welcome talk. He also explained the purpose of the Workshop with the need for Tamil computing becoming necessity among the visually challenged in the present educational and employment context. It is most required with the Government distributing Cost Free Laptops preloaded with NVDA and the equipment and technology cost becoming Nil. The Librarian of the District Central Library gave the Vote of thanks, thanking the sponsors, the District Library Officer for the opportunity to train visually challenged members of the Library on Tamil with NVDA, and placed a request to include the staff of the Children's section as they would be able to train the school going Children further.

The well-equipped and accessible section of the District Central Library, Coimbatore 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 for the Training days at the Centre. There were volunteers to assist the Trainees and they served enthusiastically. Many of the students used their Laptops and those who did not have a laptop were given access through the computers available in the section. The participant trainees numbering to 21 including the section staff were from Coimbatore district and nearby districts like Tiruppur, and Erode of Tamilnadu state.

The workshop began with Resource persons, Mr. S. Shankar Subbiah and Mr. R. Jaganathan, a low vision employee of the Library and a resource export continuing with the training activities on their expertise areas.

Activities conducted during the training period:

Day 1 - 25/05/2015

Forenoon

The whole group of Trainees were installed or updated with the latest versions of NVDA

A general overview on Operating System, Applications available in Windows, various File formats, Screen Readers and other Assistive Technology like OCR, Scan and Read applications available for Visually Challenged were dealt with

The session was conducted in an interactive manner to understand and assess the computer skills of the participant trainees.

Afternoon

The major and sub menus of NVDA were explained to the trainees after few of them were new to that.

The Trainees were given hands on training by making them to change the settings, configurations by themselves and checking out the changes.

The trainees were given comprehensive passages to be read in NVDA to get accustomed to the voice modulation and asked questions based on it

Day 2 - 26/05/2015

Forenoon

Tamil keyboard layout mapping of Microsoft Windows for default Unicode Tamil Font typing were introduced to the trainees by the Resource person.

The whole group of Trainees were trained to identify the keys for vowels and consonants of Tamil language, type and practice by themselves with the volunteers supporting them, when they had difficulties.

Afternoon

The Trainees were trained to identify the keys for combinations of vowels and combinations with two letter, three letter, four letter word units given for typing and practicing by themselves as they picked up faster.

A play and learn session was organized to spell out connected words for typing practice.

To make the training workshop more live, the participants also were requested and exhibited their Tamil native talents and knowledge.

Day 3 - 27/05/2015

Forenoon

The Trainees were trained by giving large sets of five and bigger letter units of words to type and practice as a revision.

It was followed up by smaller phrases and then sentences to be typed by the Trainees.

The trainees at this point of time, introduced short cuts for navigation within the text, spell check, cut, copy, paste commands

Afternoon

The trainees were made to listen to the Tamil text paragraphs with the help of NVDA screen-reader supported by eSpeak voice

The trainees were suggested to type out the phrases listened on a separate document

Day 4 - 28/05/2015

Forenoon

The trainees were introduced to toggle language between English and Tamil for bilingual content typing and practice.

The trainees were trained on file operations like simple formatting, folder creation, saving the file in Unicode format to required folder and retrieval of the particular file. Similarly, for navigating, opening the file saved and continuing editing.

Afternoon

As a reinforcement on the learning process, a Quiz Programme was conducted to the Trainees on Microsoft Tamil layout and key strokes required for different Tamil words, phrases.

Introduction to HTML, various tags and formatting that can be done, Forms and fields, Email Clients and Browsers were given to the Trainees. Usage of Tamil in Internet, and the browsers supporting the Unicode formatted content and the NVDA development efforts to support Internet browsing was discussed.

The trainees were given HTML contents like Newspapers formatted to navigate and read for practice

The students were given downloaded online application Forms (as Internet was restricted to few computers in the library) and explained form navigation. They were assessed for their short cut using

Day 5 - 29/05/2015

Forenoon

Introduction on DAISY books and knowledge sharing on the available resources to read a DAISY book was done.

Demonstration on using Android based tablets and mobile phones to access the Tamil DAISY books given to the Trainees using Bookshare.org. The Trainees were also given information to subscribe for Bookshare membership and Book search and retrieval.

The trainees were also given information on different groups operating on Internet like Access India, Valluvan Paarvai online, the benefits and encouraged their participation for enriching their knowledge and practicing their language content writing, and development skills.

The Guest also had an interactive session assessing the participants Tamil computing skills by questions and also introduced them to one another Tamil keyboard Layout 'Anthaga Kavi' developed by visually challenged community. He recommended them to try that after practicing the present learned Microsoft layout for more easier typing experience.

The Valedictory Function

The eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training workshop conducted for 5 days (25^th May 2015 to 29^th May 2015) had a brief Valedictory function presided by Mr. G. Venkateshan, State Bank of India Zonal Office, Coimbatore and an experienced visually challenged person on Tamil computing who delivered the valedictory address and stressed on Tamil computing skills necessity for higher education and employment opportunities. The District Library Officer, Mr. J. Karthikeyan also felicitated the gathering and distributed the Certificates to the participants. Vote of thanks to CIS, NAB and the organizers was given by Mr. Muthu Venkatasubramanian, Co-ordinator for the Differently Abled Children section and a visually challenged participant. The training felt much useful and requested to extend in batches for more persons ended up with the National Anthem and Lunch served for all.

Feedback

Mr. Ashok, a student of Final year graduation felt how easy it was to learn Tamil typing and he is looking forward to eagerly participate in groups and though he had subscribed to Bookshare, he had not read Tamil books. But, now he is confident to download and read Tamil content.

Mr. S. Sabareesh, Student from Loyola College, Chennai felt that his vacation to his native town gave him a good learning experience on Tamil computing and various other concepts, shortcuts for efficiently using NVDA.

Mr. Jeeyawolhok, a Government School Teacher present felt that now it is necessity of visually challenged persons to work with Computers even in the field of Teaching profession and this Training gave him more confident as being a Tamil teacher.

Ms. Loganayaki, an English Literature student felt that she did not think Tamil typing was so easy before and now would read large volume of e-contents of Tamil novels available in the Library as well as practice her Tamil writing skills on Computer.

Mrs. Saraswathi, the mother of Mr. Shankar, 10^th Grade student and participant trainee gave a feedback that she was worried on how she had to read the whole Tamil books for her son. Reading it as e-content through NVDA and eSpeak voice becoming familiar to her son made her job easy. And, he could also practice and revise his lessons like any other child by typing the contents in Tamil as others do by writing. She thanked the organizers for the workshop and wanted one such run for school children with visual impairments from 8^th standard onwards conducted by school or at least in the Library regularly. This would help them in their higher standards and education for being more independent and not to depend on readers for their academic requirements.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-espeak-tamil-computing-with-nvda-training-workshop

Report on Training in Basic Computing with use of NVDA and eSpeak in Assamese

nirmita — 2015-06-03T02:44:33Z

This training was held at Monfort School in Guwahati on May 9 and 10, 2015. Laishram Lingappa was the trainer. Eleven participants attended the programme.

Situated in the backdrop of steep hills, Monfort school was the perfect location for training in use of eSpeak Assamese. The delegates came from all across Assam, and represented various organizations. The participants were extremely impressed with the quality of the eSpeak Assamese, and were able to follow the text-to-speech (TTS) very fast.

The visit to Gauhati University’s Cell for the Differently Abled was also a grand success. A presentation about the power of NVDA and eSpeak was made in front of the Chairman of Gauhati University, Registrar, Joint Registrar, Head of the Cell for the Differently-abled, Chief Librarian and the Chief of the Computer Section.

At the end of the two hour presentation, it has been decided that the Cell for the Differently-abled will take the lead in the following aspects:

Preparing a complete list of Persons with Blindness studying in various Colleges of Gauhati University

Organizing a Sensatising workshop for the identified Persons with Blindness.

Negociate with the Publishers associated with the Gauhati University, for Accessible Bookks.

Identify staff who could be trained in making books Accessible in both English and Assamese.

NAB – Delhi will provide Technical support to the Cell for the Differently Abled, as and when required.

A visit was also undertaken to the Gauhati Blind school, where in the students were presented with the different accessibility solutions. They were shown the Smart Cane along with the Plextalk Vachak. Most of the students took keen interest in knowing about the various solutions including eSpeak Assamese. Fortunately the school is supported by some very enterprising young Blind persons, who are extremely good in Technology. These volunteers have taken up upon themselves to teach computers to the students of Gauhati Blind School.

A 15 day follow up training will also be organized either at the sister organization of Monfort school in the district of Tora or the Cell for the Differently-abled in Gauhati.

Our thanks to Laishram for organizing the four day trip to Gauhati.

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