Centre for Internet and Society

Report on the Progress in Bengali Language Testing

nirmita — 2015-04-05T16:23:35Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is doing a project on developing a text-to-speech software in 15 Indian languages. This blog post captures the key updates of the work done by CIS team for Bengali language.

Indian Bengali was added to eSpeak by the Indian team. The language was added and improved based on user testing and review.

Conjunct consonant pronunciation when (ba) is conjunct was corrected.
INHERENT vowel PRONUNCIEATION SOME TIMES NEED TO BE SUPPRESSED. It was made possible programmatically.
Changed phoneme rules for য dZV modified to ্) যা :&
sissue with য়/ Oj eg; desired pronunciation /Poi'sa but was being pronounced as 'payosa'
Modified the [phoneme to jV and phone,me rules C)য় (C j
Issue with 'ja'fala, that should double the pronunciation of the preceeding consonant, was rectified. Eg; Onnay was pronounced as 'onyai' as against the desired pronunciation
The Bengali files sent by the developer on 20th December and Third January had been updated in the version.
71 Bengali Exception words had been included with their pronunciation rules - where inherent vowel even being between two consonant is not pronounced.
Changed phoneme rules for য dZV modified to ্) যা :&
issue with য়/ Oj was corrected. eg; desired pronunciation /Poi'sa but was being pronounced as 'payosa'
Issue with 'ja'fala, that should double the pronunciation of the preceeding consonant was rectified. Eg; Onnay was pronounced as 'onyai' as against the desired pronunciation, The Bengali files sent by the developer on, 20th December and Third January had been updated in the version.
4/Auguest/2014Few exception words had been added দশটা , তিরিশটা, চল্লিশটা, পঞ্চাশটা, ষাটটা, সত্তরটা, করবে, বলবে, চলবে, শুনবে, শুনব, মানকচু, ওলকপি, ফটকিরি, চরণপদ্ম.
In eSpeak Indian test build 1.11, the following exception words were added:

অমরসঙ্গী O:mor'SongI
চুপচাপ cup'c,ap
পাগলা pa',g'la
পাগলামো pa',g'la'mo
মর্যাদা mO:rJ,ada
আমপাতা 'ampa,ta
আকাশবানী akaS'banI
বিদঘুটে bi,dg#Ut.e
দেবদেবী deb'debI
অথচ O:t#oco
আমরাই am,rai
খেলা k#&'la
খেলবো k#el'bo
চারটি car,t.i
একটি ekt.i
একটা &kt.a:
দরকার dO:r'kar'
দেখছি dek#'c#i
বলছি bo,lc#i
করছি ko'rc#i
শুনছি Sun'c#i
ভাবছি b#a'bc#i
ঘুরছি g#U,rc#i
দিনরাত din'rat.
সবরকম SO:b,rO:kom
কাজকর্ম kaJ,kO:'rmo
দুঃখ duk#'k#o
তিনটে tin't.e
চারটে car't.e
পাঁচটা p~ac't.a
সাতটা Sat't.a
আটটা a:t.'t.a
দশটা dOS't.:a
একুশটা ekuS't.:a
বাইশটা ba:iS't.:a
তেইশটা tei'St.:a
চব্বিশটা co'b'biS't.:a
পঁচিশটা p~o'ciS't.:a
ছাব্বিশটা ch:a'b'biS't.:a
সাতাশটা Sat.aS't.:a
আঠাশটা a:t.#a:S't.:a
উনত্রিশটা un'triS't.:a
তিরিশটা tiriS't.:a
একত্রিশটা ek'triS't.:a
বত্রিশটা bot:riS't.:a
তেত্রিশটা tetriS't.:a
চৌঁত্রিশটা c~ou:triS't.:a
পঁয়ত্রিশটা p~oj'triS't.:a
ছত্রিশটা chot:riS't.:a
সাঁইত্রিশটা S~ai'triS't.:a
আটত্রিশটা a:t.triS't.:a
উনচল্লিশটা uno'col'l:iS't.:a
চল্লিশটা col'l:iS't.:a

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-the-progress-in-bengali-language-testing

Report on the Progress in Assamese Language Testing

nirmita — 2015-04-05T16:16:05Z

Assamese was added to eSpeak by the Indian team. Rules for the language were introduced and after testing and review, modifications were carried out to ensure basic support. The present document lists issues which were addressed under this project.

Pronunciation rule changes for - 40 - 49. 52 - 56 57 - 59 61 - 64 66 - 69 72 - 75 78 - 80 82 - 86 88 - 89 92 – 99 were corrected.
Pronunciation rule for Hundreds _0C rule were also added and improved.
Conjunctives in asamese were added.
Simple Assamese words following general rules of pronunciation were reviewed.
Finalized pronunciation of joint words.
Modification of rules for (sO) becoming (hO) when in the beginning of the word was done.
Modification of rules for /Ja falaa was done.
Revised the rules for /khio.
Fixed the pronunciation of individual alphabets.
Fixed the pronunciations of "ব" when a vowel is suffixed.
Fixed the pronunciation of "ূ" suffixed to a consonant.
Fixed the pronunciations of "ৱ" in words.
Fixed the pronunciation of a few words with combination of three consonants.
Fixed the pronunciation of "চ" and "ছ" in a word.
Fixed the pronunciations of "ষ" in a word.
Words end with "ত" has an additional sound of "ো" were removed.
The pronunciations of "স", "শ" and "ষ" when it is contracted with another consonant (juktakhor) in a word was made similar to Bengali pronunciation (utcharon).
Pronunciations of "প্ৰ", "ক্ৰ", "শ্ৰ", "ত্ৰ", "গ্ৰ", etc in a word without any suffix of vowel was made clear.
Pronunciation of words ending with "jophola (য)" were rectified.
Pronunciations of Words with "jophola" in the middle were corrected.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-progress-in-assamese-language-testing

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

nirmita — 2015-03-19T01:24:34Z

The training programmes were conducted at the National Association for the Blind, New Delhi on February 5 and 6, 2015 and Blind Relief Association, Delhi on February 13 and 14, 2015. Fifteen participants attended the first training programme at National Association for the Blind. Seventeen participants attended the second training programme held at Blind Relief Association.

The training at National Association for the Blind, Delhi had representations from organizations serving the blind and visually impaired from all across Delhi. Those who took part were either heads of IT Department or computer instructors. The aim of inviting the IT heads and computer instructors was to promote the use of NVDA in their training programmes and also facilitate reading and writing in Hindi.

The training programme at Blind Relief Association was mainly attended by special educators for the blind. The aim of promoting use of NVDA and knowledge of reading and writing in Hindi using eSpeak amongst these special educators was that these special educators would be working closely with the blind community. If the special educators are sensetized, the use of regional languages can be maximized.

List of Participants at National Association for the Blind

1	Bharti Kalra	bhartikalra56@gmail.com	Computer Instructor, National Association for the Blind
2	Jaikaran	dhaiajaikaran@gmail.com	Gail India Pvt. Ltd.
3	Shivani	shivaniharit@redifmail.com	Student, National Association for the Blind
4	Shabnam	shabnamdumh@gmail.com	Research Assistant, National Association for the Blind
5	Neetu	ng.neetugoyal@gmail.com	Computer Instructor, National Association for the Blind
6	Dr. R.S. Chauhan	chauhan.ddn@gmail.com	Freelancer
7	Varsha singh	varshactet@gmail.com	Volunteer, National Association for the Blind
8	Neelu Suneja	sunejaneelu@gmail.com	Head, IT Department, Blind Relief Association
9	Rajpal	rajpal007@gmail.com	Senior Computer Instructor, Blind Relief Association
10	Ganesh Bhatt	bhattg526@gmail.com	Student, National Association for the Blind
11	Maneesh sharma	sharma.manish445@gmail.com	Student, National Association for the Blind
12	Mohammad Sajid	mdsajidsdp11@gmail.com	Student
13	Sanjeev Luthra	sanjeevluthra737@gmail.com	Student
14	Nilesh varma	nileshvarma940@gmail.com	Student
15	Irfan Mir	meererfan@gmail.com	Student

List of Participants at Blind Relief Association

1	Rajpal	E-1/11B, Om Vihar Extn, Uttam Nagar	rajpal007@gmail.com
2	Arun Tiwari	Village Poterganj, Post Pathwali, Dist Gaunda	Mrtiwari1982@gmail.com
3	Rishoo Singh	House No.44, Meethapur, Badarpur	mr.rsingh2908@gmail.com
4	Vijay Tiwari	House No.62, Gokhle Nagar, Konch, Dist Jalaun	tiwarivijay322@gmail.com
5	Shiv Kumar	Village Post Padri, Distt Rewa	shivkumarrawat144@gmail.com
6	Sonia Setia	742/3, Ward No-14, GuruNanak Pura, Rohtak	soniasetia1986@gmail.com
7	Sandeep Kumar	Satyara ganj, Behind Bus stand, Dist. Rewa	sandeepkumarj61@gmail.com
8	Rini Singh	village post Jhanjhara, Pasraha, Dist. Khagriya	rinisingh2792@gmail.com
9	Rajbhan Saket	Gram Atarala Kala, Tehsil Hanmana, Dist. Rewa	rajbhan591@gmail.com
10	Rajbala Bhagel	Dubey Gas Agency, Dayalbagh, Agra	rajbalabhagel@gmail.com
11	Priyanka Devi	Town jhinjhana, Dist. Shamli	kashyappriyanka250@gmail.com
12	Pramod Kumar	Gram Atroley,Post Lakhua, Dist. Ghaziabad	pkpramodpk9@gmail.com
13	Mritunjay Kumar	Hingua, Miyatala, Dist. Chappra	mritunjay1942@gmail.com
14	Mary Mini	AICB, Braille Bhawan, sector-5, Rohini	minimary1994@gmail.com
15	Avnish Kumar	N166/122, J.J. Camp, Badli	avnishk910@gmail.com
16	Hidayat Husen	House No.311, Zakir Hussain Ward, Gohalpur, Jabalpur	Hidayatansari420@gmail.com
17	Biranchi Sahoo	Japharapur, G.P Khairabad, Dist. Jajpur	Biranchi.caviodisha@gmail.com

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

Report on Training in the use of eSpeak Oriya with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-03-18T17:05:46Z

NVDA team from the Centre for Internet and Society conducted this workshop at Orrisa Association for the Blind, Bhubaneswar from February 8 to 10, 2015. Thirty six individuals attended the training.

The workshop received an overwhelming response from participants. The participants acknowledged the importance of Oriya support for their career growth. This was evident from the excitement and curiosity of the participants to read and type in Oriya language.

The eSpeak training was preceded by a Career Counselling Workshop, which highlighted the importance of reading and writing in the local vernacular language for a career growth.

The main challenge faced during the training was that there was virtually no material available in Oriya on the internet in Unicode font, for the participants to practice reading. Hence, the participants had to first learn typing and then create their own sentences to read.

The training was conducted by Ganshyam Mohante, who also was the tester for Oriya language.

The inauguration was attended by the whole managing committee of Orrisa Association for the Blind.

Orrisa Association for the Blind is also very keen on organizing a 15 day follow up programme, where more delegates could be trained in reading and writing in Oriya, along with the knowledge of using computers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-in-use-of-e-speak-oriya-with-nvda

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

nirmita — 2015-06-04T01:58:34Z

The training programme was held on February 5 and 6, 2015 at National Association for the Blind in R.K. Puram, New Delhi. Fifteen delegates attended.

The training at NAB at Delhi had representations from organizations serving the blind from all across Delhi. Those who took part were either Heads of IT Department or computer instructors. The aim of inviting the IT heads and computer instructors was to promote the use of NVDA in their training programmes and also facilitate the reading and writing in Hindi.

The workshop at the Blind Relief Association was mainly attended by Special Educators for the Blind. The aim of promoting use of NVDA and knowledge of reading and writing in Hindi using eSpeak amongst these special educators was that these special educators would be working closely with the blind community. If the special educators are sensitized, the use of regional languages can be maximized.

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

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

nirmita — 2015-07-20T15:23:42Z

The training programme was conducted on January 27 and 28, 2015 at Karna Vidya Technology Centre, [KVTC] Guindy, Chennai. A total of 15 delegates attended the show.

We are extremely grateful to Raghuram, Coordinator, KVTC and Shankar from Bookshare, Chennai for organizing the Tamil training within 48 hours of notice, as the said workshop was originally planned at NIVH, Chennai. Due to last minute widrawal of NIVH, Raghu and Shankar excepted the challenge of hosting the training.

The 15 participants mainly comprised of computer teachers and students pursuing higher studies. The Tamil reading and writing training was conducted by E. Sakthivel and S. Pandiyaraj.

The follow up 15 day training for Tamil will be conducted at Coimbatore and it will be conducted by the above mentioned trainers. The 15 day event will be planned by Shankar and Raghuraman.

The participants of the workshop were also shown the assistive devices and made aware about the ADIP scheme. KVTC has now started registering persons with Blindness for the ADIP scheme and shall send in their data to Saksham Delhi.

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

Response to RTI Applications from Different States on Accessibility

anandi — 2015-02-08T08:30:27Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) had sent right to information (RTI) applications from various states seeking information on the allocation and expenditure in the budget for implementing various schemes for persons with disabilities. CIS received the first set of documents.

Click to download the documents received from various states here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/response-to-rti-applications-from-different-states-on-accessibility

Report on Training in Basic Computing for using eSpeak Hindi with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-06-08T02:28:25Z

The training was held at the Conference Hall and Computer Lab, Dr. Shakuntala Mishra National Rehabilitation University, Lucknow from January 20 to 22, 2015.

Guests who attended the inauguration

Dr. Nishith Rai (Vice Chancellor)
Dr. Akhilendra Kumar (Registrar of the University)
Dr. Avnish Chandra Mishra (HoD, Deptt of Special Education)
Dr. Adya Shakti Rai (Coordinator)
Dr. Vijay Shankar Sharma, Associate Professor
Sri Ashish Gupta

Number of participants: 50 students from various departments on the first day for the Bookshare and Training in Assistive devices and 20 during the eSpeak training.

The session on use of online libraries and use and demonstration of various assistive aids and appliances was done by Nirmal Verma from Perkins Products. This session was attended by the dignitaries, as it followed the inauguration.

Training in reading and writing using eSpeak Hindi was carried out on the 21st and 22nd of January. These sessions were attended by 20 students of the university. Most of the students were using JAWS as their primary screen reader till date. Hence NVDA was introduced in detail during the first session. All the participants were hand held in the installation and configuration of NVDA during this session.

The 2nd session on day 2 was dedicated to reading Hindi text using Espeak and NVDA. Most of the students were able to understand Espeak very easily, and were able to read and comprehend the given text.

The final day commenced with introduction of Hindi typing. The participants were guided for activating Hindi keyboard on their systems. This was followed by the introduction of the Hindi keyboard layout.

Important Achievements of the Training

A meeting was held with the Registrar and the HOD of Disability Cell of the University on the 2nd day of the training. The following points were agreed upon by the authorities during the meeting:

Formation of a dedicated Resource / Reading room for the Visually Challenged students of the University.
Permission was granted to the Visually Challenged students to utilize the main computer lab, till the establishment of the Resource room.
The University would allow the students to use Laptops for writing their own Exams in the future.
A 15 day training for new users of computers will be conducted in mid of March, after the semester exams are over.

The 2nd session was dedicated to typing in Hindi. The participants were able to type complex words by the end of the session. The training was concluded by solving queries of the participants and distribution of some softwares and participation certificates.

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

Training of Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-07-20T15:19:35Z

NVDA team conducted a two days training on January 24 and 25, 2015 in Tiruvananthapuram. The programme was inaugurated by Dr. Veeramanikandan, Pro Vice Chancellor of the Kerala University and the eSpeak new version was launched by Suresh S, PSC member, who is an advocate for the blind in getting jobs in Kerala government.

Felicitation speeches were delivered by Prof. L. Unnikrishnan, Head of Department, Economics Department, SB College and Dr. Sindhu Nair, Professor at St. Michales College. Both colleges were running a DAISY resource centre for their students. The programme was chaired Er. N.T.Nair, vice chairman of Chakshumathi.

Chakshumathi’s main trainer Akhil M. took espeak Malayalam classes and Dr. Homiyar took classes on NVDA and accessible equipment. The participants were first given a round of training on reading with espeak and then given a through training on Malayalam keyboard layout and combinations.

Naufal T N, trainer of Chakshumathi gave an orientation to all participants on using mobile phones to read Malayalam newspapers and reading contents.

Closing ceremony on 25th was attended by Chakshumathi’s Chairman Prof. V.K. Damodaran, along with representatives IEEE SIGHT (Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technologies) who are the partners of Chakshumathi’s accessible eyes free science projects. IEEE was represented by their Humanitarian technologies former global chair Dr. Amarnath Raja and Ms. Holly Schneider Brown, SIGHT staff lead from New York headquarters. She was on a journey to Tiruvananthapuram and provided an update on the SIGHT program, as well as SIGHT group activities from around the world. Ms. Holy Brown distributed the certificates to participants.

Chakshumathi is now planning to conduct regional workshops on espeak and NVDA at their resource centres at Calicut University and Kochi office for local participants.

List of Participants

Ali Mon
Sudheer S
Sreehari Narayanan
Ajith Kumar
Subhin H
Abin H
Rajith Kumar
Nandhu C S
Kannan C S
Reshma S
Divya S
Marina Damiyan
Mariyumma C P
Nabeela M
Meharuniza S
Sreeja V.K.
Vineesh Kumar
Chandra Babu
Raghavan
Albert
Safi Saif
Santhosh
Robinraj
Mubina M
Sabeena M
Anil Kumar
Lijin A
Ashok Kumar
Prof. L. Unnikrishnan
Akhil M (Chief Trainer)
Noufal T N (Asst. Trainer)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-e-speak-malayalam-with-nvda

January 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-02-26T17:02:23Z

Our newsletter for the month of January can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the first issue of the newsletter (January 2015). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

Forbes India in an article titled “Minds that (should) matter” names Sunil Abraham as one of the Thinkers who best explain a rapidly-changing India to the world (and the world to India).

Subhashish Panigrahi won the 2015 Opensource.com Community Awards under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay has joined CIS team as Research Director. Sumandro has replaces Nishant Shah who stepped down from the position.
Rishika on behalf of CIS prepared an analysis of the disability exceptions in Copyright Legislations . The blog post provides in detail the country-wise exceptions in copyright legislations.
NVDA team conducted a training programme on Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA in Thiruvananthapuram on January 24 and 25, 2015. Chakshumathi's main trainer Akhil M. took eSpeak Malayalam classes and Dr. Homiyar took classes on NVDA and accessible equipment.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India invited comments on the First Draft of India's National IPR Policy. CIS made its submission.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Nehaa Chaudhari has produced a research methodology document which maps the existing literature around questions of competition law intersecting with intellectual property law on the specific issue of enabling access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices .
Maggie Huang, an intern at CIS as part of the Pervasive Technologies project has written a blog entry which documents, synthesizes, and analyses learnings from attending various music industry trade conferences.

CIS-A2K team on December 28, 2014 organized a MediaWiki hackathon event for Telugu Wikimedia community members to enhance their skills and understanding of technical matters related to MediaWiki usage. The theme of the workshop was “Mediawiki, its extensions and tools to work around” and it aimed at allowing Wikipedians to use MediaWiki tools more effectively.

Subhashish Panigrahi authored an op-ed that highlights the need for taking Odia language to the international fora instead of keeping it confined in the books. The op-ed was published in the Samaja on January 30, 2015.

A journal article by Subbiah Arunachalam, Perumal Ramamoorthi and Subbiah Gunasekaran the steps taken by scientists and librarians in the West to reclaim ease of access to research findings with what is happening in India along with a few suggestions was published by the Indian National Science Academy Journals.
The Supreme Court, in Sabu George v. Union of India and Ors. (WP (C) 341/2008), is looking into the presence of material regarding pre-natal sex determination on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo that has been falling foul of section 22 of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 as amended in 2002. Geeta Hariharan and Balaji Subramanian analyse this in their blog post.
As part of its Making Methods for Digital Humanities project, CIS-RAW organized two consultations on new figures of learning in the digital context. For a proposed journal issue on the theme of 'bodies of knowledge' which draws upon these conversations, participants were invited to write short sketches on these figures of learning. Tejas Pande wrote an abstract which examines the figure of the visual designer, and emerging practices of mapmaking.

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 Update

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

Event Organized

Training of Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA (Co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Thiruvananthapuram; January 24-25, 2015).

Other

Blog Entries

Disability Exceptions in Copyright Legislations (Rishika; January 12, 2015).
Response to RTI Applications from Different States on Accessibility (Anandhi Viswanathan; January 31, 2015).

Access to Knowledge

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

Pervasive Technologies

As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Maggie Huang conducted interviews with fabless semiconductor industry professionals in Taiwan. The findings from the samples are highlighted in four part series. The third and fourth parts have been published:

Blog Entries

Pervasive Technologies Project Working Document Series: Document 2 Literature Review on Competition Law + IPR + Access to < $100 Mobile Devices (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 1, 2015).
Relationship between App Developers and App Platforms: An Intellectual Property Perspective (Anubha Sinha; January 7, 2015).
Beyond Alcohol and Angel Investors: Building Business Models in an Age of Mobile Music Streaming (Conference Learnings) (Maggie Huang; January 20, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: The Development of the National IPR Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 22, 2015).
RTI Responses - MHRD IP Chairs: Details of Funding & Expenditure (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 31, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: CIS Comments to the First Draft of the National IP Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 31, 2015).

Participation in Events

Global Intellectual Property Convention (Organized by ITAG Solutions; Mumbai; January 15 - 17, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended the event.
Library and Information Professionals Summit (LIPS) 2015 (Organized by Society for Library Professionals, National Law University Delhi with UN Information Centre for India & Bhutan and Special Library Association (USA), Asian Chapter; January 23 - 24, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari was on a panel discussing Internet Technology and Challenges for Libraries in IPR Regime. She made a presentation on Technology (Internet?), Libraries and the Law (?).

Upcoming Event

Announcing the Institutional Partner for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015 (Organized by the National Law School of India University; New Delhi; December 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).

Op-ed

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଅନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ (Subhashish Panigrahi; The Samaja, January 31, 2015).

Blog Entries

Telugu Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Rahmanuddin Shaik; January 31, 2015).

Telugu Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Rahmanuddin Shaik; January 31, 2015). The event was conducted on December 28, 2014. However, the blog post was published in January 2015.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Works of Veerasalingam Pantulu on web (Hans India; January 1, 2015).
Centre should partner local communities in 'Digital India': Expert (IANS and mirrored in Zee News; January 9, 2015).
Musician donates Gwalior Gharana songs to free e-library (Times of India; January 20, 2015).

Announcement

2015 Opensource.com Community Awards : Every year, Opensource.com awards people from our community who have excelled in contributing and sharing stories about open source. Subhashish Panigrahi from the CIS-A2K team won the award under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
CIS-A2K team also published the Telugu Wikipedia Stats tables. Most metrics have been collected from a partial dump (aka stub dump), which contains all revisions of every article, meta data, but no page content.

Participation in Event

Citizen Media Summit 2015 (Organized by Global Voices; January 24 - 25, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker.

Openness

Journal Article

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The Intransigenc of STM Publishers (Subbiah Arunachalam, Perumal Ramamoorthi and Subbiah Gunasekaran; Indian National Science Academy Journals, Proc Indian Natn SciAcad 80 No. 5 December 2014 pp. 919-929).

Internet Governance

Articles and Blog Entries

Indians Plead for #NetNeutrality as Airtel Raises Data Charges (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; December 30, 2014). The article was published in the month of December but mirrored on CIS website in January.
Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of 'Jihadi' Content (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; January 6, 2015).
Security and Surveillance - Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights (Elonnai Hickok; January 19, 2015).
Search Engine and Prenatal Sex Determination: Walking the Tight Rope of the Law (Geetha Hariharan and Balaji Subramanian; January 29, 2015).

Event Co-organized

Security, Governments, and Data: Technology and Policy (Organized by CIS and Observer Research Foundation; January 8, 2015, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this event.

Participation in Events

Symposium on Human Rights and the Internet in India (Organized by the Center for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg; New Delhi; January 17, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a panelist.
Winter School on Privacy, Surveillance and Data Protection (Organized by the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg and the Hans Bredow; Delhi; January 19 - 23, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a facilitator.
ASSOCHAM National Council on IT / ITes (Organized by ASSOCHAM; New Delhi; January 30, 2015). Geetha Hariharan participated in the event.

Blog Entries

Overview of the Constitutional Challenges to the IT Act (Pranesh Prakash; December 15, 2014).
Reply to RTI filed with BSNL regarding Network Neutrality and Throttling (Tarun Krishnakumar; December 22, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Government blocks 32 websites to check ISIS propaganda (Kim Arora; The Times of India; January 1, 2015).
Internet users fume as govt blocks 32 sites (Jaison Lewis; Mumbai Mirror; January 1, 2015).
India 'jihadi' web blocking causes anger (BBC; January 2, 2015). This was also mirrored in Puffington Post.
Govt cracks down on cyber jehad network, blocks access to 32 websites (India Today, January 1, 2015).
Indian Government still blocks 20+ websites - Indian Censorship on Internet (Times of Assam; January 2, 2015).
350% surge in Cyber crimes in last 3 years (Devanik Saha & Indiaspend.org; Hindustan Times; January 20, 2015).
TOI literary festival kicks off today (The Times of India; January 31, 2015).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Staff Movement

Sumandro Chattapadhyay has joined CIS as Research Director. His academic interests span over topics of history and politics of informatics in India, new media and technology studies, and data infrastructures and economies. He is also keenly interested in questions and techniques of digital humanities. Recently, Sumandro has completed a study on policy and practices of open data in India as part of the Open Data Research Network managed by the World Wide Web Foundation. He is an involved member of DataMeet, a leading community of open data and data science enthusiasts from India. Sumandro studied economics in Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, and in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has variously worked on topics of urban development, information technology in governance, data visualisation, and early electronic governance in India with MOD Institute, Azim Premji University and the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Blog Entry

Figures of Learning: The Visual Designer (Tejas Pande; January 30, 2015).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@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/january-2015-bulletin

Disability Exceptions in Copyright Legislations

rishi — 2015-01-12T02:14:53Z

In the year 2006, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) conducted a study on different national approaches to copyright exception for persons with disabilities. Over 60 countries have an exception in their Copyright laws permitting conversion of works into accessible formats for the benefit of persons who cannot read print. The scope of the exception varies, in terms of the beneficiaries covered, formats permitted, restrictions on who can convert, etc.

On June 28, 2013 the Marrakesh Treaty was signed by 51 countries, to facilitate the creation of accessible copyrighted works for the disabled. The treaty, however, will not come into force until 20 countries ratify it. India, in June 2013, became the first country to ratify it. In this report, we aim to provide an update to the 2006 WIPO study, whereby all relevant details, including whether the countries are signatories to the Treaty are given in a simplified manner. This is to ensure that the information is readily accessible in a simple and comprehensive table for all readers.

A consolidated list of copyright legislations can be found here. See table below for the country-wise exceptions.

Country-wise Exceptions in Copyright Legislations

Country	Legislation	Scope	Works Covered	Formats covered	Who can convert	Marrakesh Treaty Signatory	Ratified UNCRPD
Armenia	Article 22 (h), Law on Copyright and Related Rights adopted by the National Assembly of Armenia on 15 June 2006	Persons who require Braille and other formats designed for blind people	Lawfully disclosed work, except those created for the blind	Braille and other special means for the blind	No restrictions	No	Yes
Australia	Sections 47A, 112, Part VB Division 3, 116A, The Copyright Act 1968 as amended up to 2014	Persons with print disability, persons who by reason of old age, disability or literary problems are unable to handle books or newspapers or to read or comprehend written material	Sound recordings of literary or dramatic works, published editions of literary or dramatic works,	Sound recordings, Braille, large print, photographic or electronic, sound broadcast	By body administering an institution assisting persons with print disability, persons holding print disability radio license	Yes	Yes
Austria	Section 42d, Federal law on Copyrights on Literary and Artistic works and Related Rights as amended up to 2011	Covers all 'disabled persons' however does not define who is disabled	Published works, which are not possible or it is substantially difficult on account of their disability for the person to access a published work	Any suitable format	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Azerbaijan	Article 19.6, Law on Copyright and Related Rights, 1996 as amended up to 2013	Persons requiring Braille and other formats designed for blind people	Any lawfully disclosed works, except those created especially for the purpose	Braille or other special means for the benefit of the blind	No restrictions	No	Yes
Belarus	Article 19, Law on Copyright and Related Rights, 1998 as amended up to 2003	Persons requiring Braille and other formats designed for blind people	Any work other than those created especially for this purpose	Braille or other special means for the benefit of the blind	No restrictions	No	Yes
Belize	Section 83, The Copyright Act, as amended up to 2008	Persons who are hearing-impaired, or physically or mentally handicapped in other ways	Television broadcasts or cable programs	Copies which are sub-titled or otherwise adapted for the special needs of the persons	A body designated for the purposes of this section by order of the Minister	No	Yes
Brazil	Section 46.I(d) of Law No 9610 on Copyright and Neighboring Rights, 1998	Visually handicapped persons	Literary, artistic or scientific works	Braille or by means of another process using a medium designed for visually handicapped users	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Bulgaria	Articles 24(1)10, 24(2), 23, 25a(1) and 25a(2) of the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, 1993 as amended up to 2006	Persons requiring Braille and analogous specialized formats	Lawfully disclosed works, except computer programs	Braille or other analogous formats	No restrictions	No	Yes
Cameroon	Section 29(1)(g) of Law No. 2000/011 on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, 2000	Blind persons	Works published with the authorization of the author	Limited to Braille	No restrictions	Yes	Signed but not ratified
Canada	Section 32, Copyright Act, 1985 as amended up to 203	Persons with 'perceptual disability' and 'print disability' which is any disability which prevents or inhibits a person from reading or hearing a literary, musical, dramatic or artistic work in its original format, including disability resulting from (a) severe or total impairment of sight or hearing or the inability to focus or move one's eyes; (b) the inability to hold or manipulate a book; (c) an impairment relating to comprehension.	Literary, musical or dramatic works other than cinematographic work and not where the work is commercially available in a format specially designed to meet the needs of a person with the disability	Formats specially designed for persons with a perceptual disability, but not large print books	Any person at the request of a person with a perceptual disability or non-profit organization acting for his or her benefit	No	Yes
China	Section 22(12), Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China (as amended up to 2010)	Persons requiring Braille	Published work and additionally applies to the rights of publishers, performers, producers of sound recordings and video recordings, radio stations and television stations	Braille	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Croatia	Sections 80, 86, 98, Copyright and Related Rights Act as amended up to 2013	Persons with disability.	Lawfully disclosed work	Any format required by the disabled person	No restrictions	No	Yes
Czech Republic	Article 38, Copyright and Rights Related to Copyright as amended up to 2006	Persons with disability	Lawfully published works with the exception of computer programs	Reproduction to the extent required by the specific disability	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Denmark	The Consolidated Act on Copyright, 2010	Blind, visually impaired and deaf people, people suffering from a speech impediment and people unable to read printed text on account of a handicap	Lawfully published works	Any format specifically intended for those with such disabilities	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Dominican Republic	Article 44, Law No 65-00, on Copyright of 21 August 2000	Sightless persons and persons with other physical disabilities. However, only public communication if permitted	Scientific, literary or artistic works	No reproduction is permitted	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
El Salvador	Article 44 (d) of the Law on Promotion and Protection of Intellectual Property, 1993	Blind and other handicapped persons	All works of the mind including literary, scientific, artistic, musical and dramatic works. However, mere public communication is permitted and not reproduction	Reproduction is not permitted	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Estonia	Section 19, Copyright Act (as amended up to 2000)	Blind persons	Works made available to the public except those created especially for the blind.	Braille and other technical formats for the benefits of blind persons	No restrictions	No	Yes
Fiji	Section 185, Copyright Act 1999	People who are hearing-impaired or physically or mentally handicapped in other ways	Television broadcasts or cable programs	Copies which are sub-titled or otherwise modified for the benefits of the beneficiaries	Designated body	No	Signed but not ratified
Finland	Section 17, Copyright Act, 1961, as amended up to 2010	Persons with visual impairments and others who, owing to the disability or illness cannot use the works in the ordinary manner	Published literary or musical works	Text readable by visually impaired persons	No restrictions. However, sound recordings can be made only by institutions	Yes	Signed but not ratified
France	Articles L122-5 and L331-5 to L331-21 of the Intellectual Property Code as amended up to August 2006	Person with motor, psychological, hearing or visual disability which must be at least 50 % assessed against specified relevant standards	Any lawfully disclosed work	Any format used to the extent consistent with the nature of the disability	Disabled persons or organizations listed by the relevant administrative authority	Yes	Yes
Gabon	Article 33, Copyright Law	Persons with a disability including people who are visually impaired	Lawfully published work	Limited to formats for "welfare purposes"	No restrictions	No	Yes
Georgia	Article 23, Law of Georgia on Copyright and Neighboring Rights (as amended up to 2010)	Persons requiring Braille or other means for blind people	Lawfully disclosed work other than those specially created for use by blind people.	Relief dotted print or other special means for blind people	No restrictions	No	Yes
Germany	Articles, 45a, 63 and 95b, Copyright Act, 1965 as amended up to 2013)	Disabled persons	All works, except where the accessible version is available	Formats accessible to the disabled persons to the extent required	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Greece	Articles 28A, 28C and 66A, Law No. 2121/1993 on Copyright, Related Rights and Cultural Matters (as amended up to 2003)	Blind and deaf-mute persons	Any lawfully disclosed work	Formats directly related to the disability and specifically required by the disability	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Hungary	Articles 41(1) and 33, Act No LXXVI of 1999 on Copyright (as amended up to 2007)	Disabled persons	Any lawfully disclosed work	Formats designed specially to benefit the disabled	No restrictions	No	Yes
Iceland	Article 19, Copyright Act No 73 of 1972, as amended up to 2006	Blind and visually impaired persons	Published literary or musical works	Braille	No restrictions	No	Signed but not ratified
India	Section 52, Copyright Act 1957 (as amended up to 2012)	Disabled persons	Any lawfully disclosed works	Any accessible format	Any person to facilitate persons with disability to access works including sharing with any person with disability and any organization working for the benefit of the persons with disabilitites	Yes	Yes
Indonesia	Article 15d, Law of the Republic of Indonesia regarding Copyright, No 19 2002	Blind persons	Scientific, artistic and literary works	Braille	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Ireland	Sections 104, 106, 374, Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000	Persons with physical or mental disability	Any lawfully disclosed work	Modifications permitted to meet the special needs of a the disabled persons	A designated body	Yes	Signed but not ratified
Israel	Section 28A, Copyright Law, 2007	Persons with disabilities	Any lawfully disclosed work	Formatted to meet the needs of the disabled persons	Any Not for Profit Institution where one of its objectives or primary activities is education, training or welfare of persons with disabilities, A Government Office, or An educational institution determined by the Minister	No	Yes
Italy	Articles 71 bis and 71 nonies of the Law for the Protection of Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, (as amended up to 2010)	Persons with disability in the categories as defined by Ministerial decree	Any lawfully published work	Formats directly related to the disability and only to that extent	No restrictions, but could be set by Ministerial decree	No	Yes
Japan	Articles 33bis, 37, 48, Copyright Law as amended up to 2004	Visually handicapped persons and visually handicapped children/pupils	Works that have been lawfully disclosed and school textbooks (for children)	Braille, including electronically recorded Braille and Large prints	No restrictions found, Braille libraries and other establishments designated by the Cabinet order for sound recordings	No	Yes
Kazakhstan	Articles 19 and 16, Law on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, 1996, as amended up to 2012	Blind persons and persons requiring Braille	Any work, except those created in special formats for the blind	Braille or other special means for the benefit of the blind	No restrictions	No	Signed but not ratified
Republic of Korea	Articles 30 and 34, Copyright Act No 3916, 1989 as amended up to 2013	Blind persons	Works that have been made public	Braille or sound recordings	No restrictions for Braille, sound recordings can be used only at facilities established for the promotion of the blind as prescribed by Presidential Decree	Yes	Yes
Kyrgyztan	Articles 19, 16, Law on Copyright and related Rights,1998 as amended up to 2014	Persons requiring Braille and Blind persons	Lawfully published works, except those created for this purpose	Braille copies or those produced by other means for blind persons	No restrictions	No	Signed but not ratified
Latvia	Sections 19, 22, Copyright Law as amended up to 2011)	Visually and hearing impaired persons	Any work published lawfully	Formats that permit a visually or hearing impaired person to use it	Organizations for the visually and hearing impaired and libraries providing services to such people are permitted to undertake this activity. However, other persons are not barred other than by limitations imposed	No	Yes
Lithuania	Article 25, Law on Copyright and Related Rights No VIII-1185, 1999 (As amended up to 2014)	Visually and hearing impaired persons	Lawfully published works other than those created in special formats for this purpose	In any format that would benefit the persons having hearing or visual impairment	No restrictions found	Yes	Yes
Macau	Articles 65, 66, Decree-Law No 43/99/M of 1999	Blind persons and those who require Braille	Published works and lectures by Professors	Braille copies or any other format for blind persons	No restrictions on making copies on Braille. However, fixation of lectures may be done only by the Blind persons	No	No
Malaysia	Section 13, Copyright Act 1987 as amended up to 2006	Persons who require Braille copies and persons who are deaf, hard of hearing, physically or mentally handicapped in other ways	Any published work, and television broadcasts	Braille copies and copies with subtitles or other modifications for the end beneficiaries	Braille copies can be used only by the Braille MAB Library, and for television broadcasts, bodies and institutions which the Minister has prescribed	No	Yes
Republic of Moldova	Article 22, Law of Republic of Moldova on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, 2004	Blind persons	Published works except those created for this purpose	Braille only	No restrictions found	Yes	Yes
Mongolia	Article 24, Law of Mongolia on Copyright as amended up to 2006	Visually and hearing impaired persons	Lawfully published works	Any format that can be used by the disabled	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Netherlands	Articles 15i, 15c and 29a of the Copyright Act 1912 as amended up to 2008	Handicapped individuals	Literary, scientific and artistic works	Formats directly related to the handicap and necessary because of the handicap	No restrictions found	No	Signed but not ratified
New Zealand	Articles 69, 89, Copyright Act 1994 (version 2014)	A person with a print disability [as defined in Article 69(4)] and persons who are deaf or hard of hearing, or physically or mentally handicapped in any other way	For print disabled, literary or dramatic works and for others, television broadcasts or cable programmes	Braille copies or copies with other modifications for the special needs of the people, and copies that are subtitled or otherwise modified for the special needs	A body prescribed by regulations	No	Yes
Nicaragua	Articles 32 (2), Law on Copyright and Related Rights, 1999 (version 2001)	Visually impaired people	Any lawfully published work	Copies made using the Braille system or any other format necessary	No restrictions	No	Yes
Nigeria	Second Schedule, Copyright Act, 1988 No 47 (No. 42) (version 2004)	Blind people for Braille copies, disabled persons for sound recordings	Any lawfully published works	Braille copies or sound recordings	For sound recordings, only institutions or establishments approved by the Government for the promotion of the welfare of other disabled persons	Yes	Yes
Norway	Sections 17, 17a, 17b, 11, 53b and 12, of Act No 2, relating to Copyright in Literary, Scientific and Artistic Works Etc (version 2005)	Blind persons and other disabled persons	Any published literary, scientific, musical work, film and, any published film or picture or transmitted broadcast program , except any work which has been made specifically for this purpose	For blind persons, any form other than a sound fixation and for the disabled, a fixation on a device that can reproduce the fixation.	No restrictions for the Blind, however, for the disabled, only organizations and libraries as specified by the Kind	Yes	Yes
Panama	Article 47 of Law No. 15 of 8 August 1994	Blind and other handicapped persons. Mere public communication is permitted	Any lawfully published work	No reproduction permitted, hence no accessible formats can be made	No restrictions founds	Yes	Yes
Paraguay	Articles 39 and 45, Law No. 1328/98 on Copyright and Related Rights	Visually handicapped persons	Lawfully disclosed work	Braille or another specific form for the use of visually handicapped	No restrictions found	Yes	Yes
Peru	Articles 43, 50 of Copyright Act- Legislative Decree No 822 of 23 April 1996	Blind people	Lawfully disclosed works	Braille or another specific format to assist blind persons	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Poland	Articles 33¹, 34, 35, Act on Copyright and Related Rights, 1994	Disabled persons	Lawfully disseminated works	No restrictions on the format; any format which is required by the disabled shall be permitted	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Portugal	Articles 75, 76, 80, 221, 222 of Copyright and Related Right as amended up to 2008	Blind people and people with disability	Lawfully published works	Braille or another system for blind people, and formats directly related to the disability	No restrictions	No	Yes
Russian Federation	Articles 19, 16 of Law of Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, 1993	Persons needing access to Braille copies or other formats for the blind	Lawfully published works, other than those specifically created for this purpose	Braille copies or other special formats for the blind	No restrictions	No	Yes
Singapore	Sections 54, 261D of Copyright Act (Chapter 63) version 2008	Handicapped readers	Literary or dramatic works that have been published, and where the format has been published, it can be made under the exception that it is not possible to obtain the published copy in a reasonable time and at an ordinary commercial price	Sound recording, Braille copies, large print or photographic version	Body administering an institution assisting handicapped readers, which includes educational institutions	No	Yes
Slovakia	Sections 29, 25, 38 of Copyright Act, 2004	Handicapped persons	Lawfully disclosed works	Formats used exclusively for the needs of the handicapped people	No restrictions	No	Yes
Slovenia	Articles 47a, 46, 166c, Copyright and Related Rights Act, 1995 (amended up to 2001)	Persons with disability	Any work that is not available in the desired format	Formats used directly to assist the disability	No restrictions	Yes	Yes
Spain	Article 31, Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996, (amended up to 2011)	Blind persons	Lawfully disclosed works	Braille system or another specific method	No restrictions	No	Yes
Sweden	Articles 17, 52f of Act on Copyright in Literary and Artistic Works	Persons with disability	Literary and musical works and works of visual art	Formats that can be used to assist the disabled	No restrictions, except for communication of any work to those with a disability, and making, distribution and communication of a sound recording, when the activity can only be undertaken by libraries and organizations as decided by the Government	No	Yes
Ukraine	Articles 21, 15, Law on Copyright and Related Rights 2011	Blind persons	Lawfully disclosed works	Braille only	No restrictions	No	Yes
Uzbekistan	Article 28, Law on Copyright and Neighbouring Rights, 1996 (2011 version)	Blind persons	Lawfully published works, except those specially created for blind people	Relief-dot font or other means for blind people	No restrictions	No	Yes
United Kingdom	Sections 31A to 31F, 74, 28, and 296ZE of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (2003 version)	Visually impaired people, people who are deaf or hard of hearing or physically or mentally handicapped in other ways.	Literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works or published editions, which a visually impaired person has in their lawful possession and which are not accessible to him because of the impairment, television broadcasts, including those delivered by a cable	Any accessible copy, and copies that are subtitled or otherwise modified for the special needs of the beneficiaries	(i) For making accessible copies of works that the person have in their possession, only the visually impaired or someone on his behalf; (ii) for making copies by approved bodies for supply to visually impaired persons, an approved body which is an educational establishment and (iii) for making subtitled or modified copies of broadcasts for supply, only a designated body	Yes	Yes
United States of America	Sections 121, 110 and 1201 of United States Code -Title 17, as amended up to 2004	Blind persons, or other persons with disabilities	(i) For making specialized formats by authorized entities, previously published, non dramatic literary work, but not standardized, secure or norm-referenced tests and related testing material, or computer programs, other than the portions in conventional human language that are displayed to users when the program is in use (ii) For publishers, instructional materials for use in elementary or secondary schools (iii) For transmission of performances of literary works to blind/handicapped persons, any literary work which has been published at least ten years prior to the date of performance	(i) Specialized formats, i.e, Braille, audio or digital texts, exclusively for use by blind people or people with other disabilities (ii) Copies of electronic files as described in legislation relating to individuals with disabilities. The copies must be used solely for reproduction and distribution of the contents in specialized formats (iii) Copies are not permitted except transmissions specifically designed for and primarily directed to blind or other handicapped persons who are unable to read normal printed material as a result of their handicap	(i) Activity must be by an authorized entity, which is non-profit organization or governmental agency that has primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind/persons with disabilities (ii) Activity by publisher of print instructional materials (iii) The transmission must be made through the facilities of a governmental body, a non-commercial educational broadcast station, a radio sub carrier authorization or a cable system	Yes	Signed but not ratified

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/disability-exceptions-in-copyright-legislations

December 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-12T16:56:54Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) wishes you a very happy new year and welcomes you to the twelfth issue of the newsletter (December 2014).

Highlights

CIS prepared a policy brief that identifies the problem areas with the current work flow being used to publish documents and proposes suitable modifications to make them easy to locate, authentic and accessible.
NVDA team conducted two workshops. The first one was held at the Hyderabad Central University for reading and writing in Telugu. The second one was held at the Blind Empowerment Foundation in Kolkata for reading and writing in Bangla.

Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 29^th WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from December 8 to 12, 2014 and on behalf of CIS gave statements on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations , Limitations and Exceptions for Education, Teaching, Research Institutions and Persons with Disabilities , made a brief pointed intervention on the Broadcast Treaty , and briefly interviewed Prof. Crews on his Updated Study on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives .
Nehaa Chaudhari analyses the broadening of definitions/concepts in the Proposed Broadcast Treaty versus those in pre-existing international instruments.
Maggie Huang, an intern at CIS as part of the Pervasive Technologies projects conducted interviews with fabless semiconductor industry professionals in Taiwan. The findings are highlighted in two separate blog entries. The first one explores some of their views on the current intellectual property system and the second explores the tension between market forces and governmental intervention in providing access to mobile technology .
Tejaswini Niranjana, a distinguished fellow at CIS wrote an op-ed in the Hindu telling readers to see the ongoing Sanskrit versus German controversy as a welcome opportunity to discuss the real and persistent problems of our education system.
Vidushi Marda and Bhairav Acharya have co-authored a white paper that seeks to identify aspects of privacy in Islamic Law and demonstrate that the notion of privacy was recognized and protected in traditional Islamic law.
Ashna Ashesh and Bhairav Acharya have produced a white paper seeks to locate privacy in Classical Hindu Law, and by doing so, displace the notion that privacy is an inherently 'Western' concept that is the product of a modernist legal system.
Vipul Kharbanda authored a white paper establishing the relationship between privacy and confidentiality.
Geetha Hariharan in a blog entry examines the constitutional validity of Section 69A and the Blocking Rules.
Shyam Ponappa in an article published by the Business Standard writes that India's current policies for telecommunications don't serve our interests and tells readers what must change.

Accessibility and Inclusion

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

December 2014 Report (Suman Dogra; December 30, 2014).

Events Organized

Telugu eSpeak Training with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Hyderabad Central University, Hyderabad; December 1-2, 2014).
Bangla eSpeak training with NVDA (Organized by NVDA team; Blind Empowerment Foundation, Kolkata; December 19-20, 2014).

Upcoming Event

Training in Use of eSpeak with Malayalam (Co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Trivandrum; January 24 - 25, 2015, Trivandrum).

►Other

Blog Entry

Availability and Accessibility of Government Information in Public Domain (Sunil Abraham, Nirmita Narasimhan, Beliappa, and Anandhi Viswanathan; December 9, 2014).

Participation in Event

First meeting of the high level committee on National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility (Organized by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology; December 30, 2014; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting.

Media Coverage

When technology is able but the mindset is not (Governance Now; December 1-15 issue). Sunil Abraham and Nirmita Narasimhan gave their inputs.

Access to Knowledge

►Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

[Open] Innovation and Expertise > Patent Protection & Trolls in a Broken Patent Regime (Maggie Huang; December 26, 2014).
"Copyright Management in the Age of Mobile Music" - Living Methodology Document (Maggie Huang; December 26, 2014).

►Other

Blog Entries

Nehaa Chaudhari attended the 29^th WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from December 8 to 12. The following are the outputs:

29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: CIS Intervention on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 9, 2014).
29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: CIS- 2nd (brief) Intervention on the Broadcast Treaty (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 11, 2014).
The Broadening of Definitions in the Proposed Broadcast Treaty Compared to Other International Conventions (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 11, 2014).
29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: CIS Intervention: Questions to Prof. Kenneth Crews on his Updated Study on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 14, 2014).
29th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Education, Teaching, Research Institutions and Persons with Disabilities (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 20, 2014).
Protection of Broadcasting Organisations under the Proposed Treaty as Compared to Other International Conventions (Nehaa Chaudhari; December 21, 2014).

Participation in Event

Save the Date - 10 December 2014: The Broadcasting Treaty: A Solution in Search of a Problem? (Organized at WIPO; December 10, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari was a speaker at this side event. The details were originally published by Knowledge Ecology International.

Media Coverage

SCCR 29: Public Interest Organizations Statements regarding the Broadcasting Treaty (Knowledge Ecology International; December 9, 2014).
SCCR 29 Libraries, Archives and Public Interest NGOs in Q&A with Dr. Crews (Knowledge Ecology International; December 11, 2014).
At WIPO, Study On Copyright Exceptions Stimulates Broad Discussion With Author (Catherine Saez; December 18, 2014).
WIPO Delegates Hear Concerns of NGOs on Exceptions for Libraries (Catherine Saez; IP Watch ; December 19, 2014).

►Wikipedia

Newspaper Article

Beyond the Language Tussle (Tejaswini Niranjana; The Samaja, November 17, 2014).

Blog Entries

Odia Wikisource campus project at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 3, 2014).
Several Publications Now Available under Creative Commons License (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 28, 2014).
Odia Wikisource workshop at New Delhi (Subhashish Panigrahi; December 30, 2014). The event was organized by CIS in collaboration with "The Intellects" on December 14.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Odia Wikipedia (Dhatri; December 1, 2014).
Odia Wikipedia (Odiapua; December 1, 2014).
Access to Rare Books Made Easy (Diana Sahu; Indian Express; December 5, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia gets some push (Hindu Businessline; December 13, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia (Kannada Prabha; December 14, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia (Vijaya Karnataka; December 15, 2014).
Tulu Wikipedia (VijayaVani; December 27, 2014).
Works of Veerasalingam Pantulu on web (Hans India; December 31, 2014).
Wiki Winter Camp - Coverage in Sakshi (Sakshi; December 31, 2014).
Wiki Winter Camp - Coverage in Eenadu (Eenadu; December 31, 2014).

Event Co-organized

Odia Wikisource Sabha 2014 (Co-organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikimedia Community; November 28, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

Participation in Events

ICT for Development (Organized by Christ University; December 3, 2014). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was a speaker at this event.
Swatantra 2014: Fifth International Free Software Conference, Kerala (Organized by ICFOSS, Govt. of Kerala; Hotel Hycinth by Sparsa, Trivandrum; December 18 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan chaired a session on Wikimedia and Access to Knowledge in India and Rahimanuddin Shaik co-presented on Making DLI Accessible.

►Openness

Blog Entry

Department of Science and Technology & Department of Biotechnology adopt Open Access Policy (Anubha Sinha; December 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

Tech for Citizen Engagement 2014 (Organized by Omidyar Network; New Delhi; December 11, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session "Rules of Engagement: Emerging Trends in Citizen Outreach".
Swatantra 2014: Fifth International Free Software Conference, Kerala (Organized by ICFOSS, Govt. of Kerala; Hotel Hycinth by Sparsa, Trivandrum; December 18 - 20, 2014). Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam was a speaker and made a presentation on Open Science.

Internet Governance

►Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. During the month we published the following blog entries:

White Papers

Locating Constructs of Privacy within Classical Hindu Law (Ashna Ashesh and Bhairav Acharya; December 29, 2014).
Relationship between Privacy and Confidentiality (Vipul Kharbanda; December 30, 2014).

Blog Entry

Identifying Aspects of Privacy in Islamic Law (Vidushi Marda and Bhairav Acharya; December 14, 2014).

Upcoming Events

Security, Governments, and Data: Technology and Policy (Co-organized by CIS and the Observer Research Foundation; January 8, 2015; New Delhi).
CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

Event Organized

Security and Surveillance: A public discussion on Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights (CIS; December 19, 2014).

►Free Speech

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Blog Entries

ICANN reveals hitherto undisclosed details of domain names revenues (Geetha Hariharan; December 8, 2014).
Revolving Door Analysis: IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (Lakshmi Venkataraman; December 10, 2014).
Is India's website-blocking law constitutional? - I. Law & procedure (Geetha Hariharan; December 11, 2014).

►Other

Participation in Event

National Seminar on Cyber Security & Cyber Laws - Issues and Concerns (Organized by the Advanced Centre for Research, Development & Training in Cyber Laws & Forensics; National Law School of India University, Bangalore; December 27 - 28, 2014). Sharath Chandra Ram was part of a plenary session on "Multi-Disciplinary Challenges in Ensuring Cyber Security".

Blog Entries

Overview of the Constitutional Challenges to the IT Act (Pranesh Prakash; December 15, 2014).
Reply to RTI filed with BSNL regarding Network Neutrality and Throttling (Tarun Krishnakumar; December 22, 2014).

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

India sees biggest improvement in Internet freedom, says report (Moulishree Srivastava; Livemint; December 5, 2014).
Are Cab Apps safe? (IBN Live; December 8, 2014).
FrndiNeed; an app for passengers' safety (Athira A. Nair; Economic Times; December 10, 2014).
Thank You To Our 2014 Sponsors (Medianama; December 22, 2014).
Why did India fail to discover the ISIS Twitter handle? (Anita Babu; Business Standard; December 26, 2014).
Targeting surveillance (Ajai Sreevatsan; The Hindu; December 28, 2014).
Centre blocks 32 websites for security reasons, restores some later (S. Ronendra Singh; Hindu Businessline; December 31, 2014).
DoT Reportedly Orders Blocking of 32 Websites Including GitHub, Archive.org, SourceForge (NDTV; December 31, 2014).
Govt blocks 32 websites, including Vimeo and Github (Moulishree Srivastava; Livemint; December 31, 2014).
Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin Among Sites Blocked In India For 'Anti-India' Content From ISIS (Jeff Stone; IB Times; December 31, 2014).
Pastebin, Dailymotion, Github blocked after DoT order: Report (Anupam Saxena; The Times of India; December 31, 2014).

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:

Newspaper Column

A Road Map for Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; December 3, 2014 and Organizing India Blogspot; December 4, 2014).

Digital Humanities

Blog Entry

The Spaces of Digital (P.P.Sneha; December 30, 2014).

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

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Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2014-bulletin

Bangla eSpeak training with NVDA

nirmita — 2015-07-20T15:02:25Z

The NVDA team conducted an eSpeak training in Bangla on December 19 and 20, 2014 at Blind Empowerment Foundation (BEA) in Kolkata.

The host BEA, had invited 15 teachers and Computer trainers from all across Kolkata and 1 participant was from NAB Jamshedpur. The event was ably supported by two volunteers who helped in the Bengali typing.

The event began with the round of introductions of the participants. The participants also expressed various reasons for participating in the workshop during the introduction. This was than followed by introduction to NVDA and the importance of an Open Source software compared to piracy.

Out of the 15 participants, only two of the participants were using NVDA in their daily use. Hence the session began with the installation of NVDA and its basic configurations and settings. This was followed by the installation of eSpeak and a demonstration was given as to how to use eSpeak for different language options.

Participants were also shown the different advantages of NVDA, in comparison to other screen readers. This demonstration was received very well by most of the participants, as they had never expected NVDA to perform as well.

The post lunch session was dedicated to reading in Bengali. Each participant was given a word file containing current news items in Bengali. The participants started understanding the eSpeak TTS, but showed some reservations regarding its voice. It was explained in detail the reason for the same and why it was important to introduce NVDA with eSpeak to their students at the initial stage of their training in computers.

The host were very generous in their arrangements for lunch and other refreshments. All the participants enjoyed the hospitality, which included a generous serving of the Bengali fish.

Day 2 started with solving querries from day 1 and than typing was introduced using the Bengali Varnmala typing method. Participants were very receptive to this method and were able to type small sentences withing a few minutes. The volunteers who were helping with the typing also emphasized on special words which included special characters.

The post lunch session was dedicated to problem solving and introduction to various Aids and Appliances. The participants were also informed about the ADIP scheme and the appliances available under it.

The workshop was concluded with a round of photos and thanks from the trainers and the hosts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/bangla-e-speak-training-with-nvda-december-2014

Report on training workshop at NAB Delhi R K Puram

nirmita — 2015-07-20T14:53:03Z

The workshop was held at the National Association for the Blind, Sector 5 R. K. Puram, New Delhi on December 17, 2014. The objective of the workshop was to help the staff members understand NVDA and its functioning with the Indian languages so that they efficiently attend to the queries of the visitors and the callers at helpdesk.

Five staff members lead by Mr. Ajay Sharma, Project Manager of the technical unit at NAB R.K Puram Delhi had attended aa training workshop. Concepts related to the NVDA were discussed in the workshop. It was an interactive workshop. Ms. Suman Dogra had conducted the workshop. The staff members had certain doubts with NVDA, that were cleared. Some new information was imparted to the staff members. The helpdesk was made to understand the functioning of the language section of NVDA. This will help callers to configure their native language on their machines.

Some tips were given to the staff members on imparting training in NVDA in coming training modules at NAB. Object navigation was explained to the computer instructors. The team at NAB is informed that they can inform about any of the problem in NVDA to the Indian development team.

The following individuals attended the workshop:

Ms. Bharti
Mr. Yogesh Chhabra
Mr. Rajesh
Mr. Rajneesh
Mr. Ajay Sharma

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/report-on-training-workshop-at-nab-delhi-rk-puram

When technology is able but the mindset is not

praskrishna — 2014-12-19T01:33:22Z

There are enough digital products and services to help people with disabilities. But widespread ignorance stands between them and digital inclusion reports Geetanjali Minhas.

The story appeared in 1-15 December 2014 issue of Governance Now

Twenty-four-year-old Bhavesh Patel moves around giving a demonstration of the screen reader Dolphin Supernova in such a sure-footed manner that no one can imagine he is totally blind. The device has a voiceover function that can be used on iPhone.

Not just that, Patel travels every day from his home in Vikhroli to his office in Goregaon, changing buses and trains with minimal assistance.

Patel’s colleague, Debashish, who is autistic, and no less capable, is known for his immaculate spellings within the company.

Team leader Priti Rohra, despite low vision, skillfully heads the testing team for websites and meticulously ensures that guidelines for the disabled are adhered to. Rohra works on policies and research and has prepared many reports for BarrierBreak, a company where 75 percent of the staff has disabilities like autism, inhibited vision and impaired hearing.

Its unique competitive advantage has allowed the company to help develop niche products and services for converting textbooks into more disabled-friendly formats like digital talking books (Epub Conversion). Till now, it has produced 1.5 million pages of disabled-friendly textbooks.

“When the government provides technology to its own employees it is enhancing their productivity,” says Shilpi Kapoor, founder-director of BarrierBreak and a member of the Nasscom Disability Advisory Group. “The fundamental difference here is that internationally, disability inclusion is a mandate, whereas in India it is considered charity and therefore a challenge. As a result many disabled are denied jobs as per their calibre and given salaries as doles.”

The priority given to policies for development of disabled-friendly information technology tools and services has been relatively low in India. Usually, it stems from an inaccurate understanding that the development of such tools and services will cost more money, and there will be no opportunity to recover it from the market.

A critical component of digital inclusion is to make websites and applications disabled-friendly. Most websites are not compliant with international guidelines on disabled-friendly requirements. Developers, officials and policy makers give disability accessibility a cold shoulder, retrofitting it into existing policies and processes as an after-thought.

An attitudinal shift might come if the new national policy on universal electronic accessibility (NPUEA) notified by DeitY is implemented, resulting in nearly 7,000 government websites becoming accessible to the disabled, especially visually impaired.

Various reports, including a 2012 survey by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), found that almost 25 percent of 7,800 government websites failed to open and the remaining had accessibility barriers. The web accessibility survey report of Indian government websites by the national centre for promotion of employment for disabled people (NCPEDP) in 2012 too revealed that of the 200 government websites tested, only two were found to be disabled-friendly.

“Disability is a major social issue that India is grappling with. It needs to be addressed through not just policy, but also through assistive technology solutions,” says Prakash Kumar, CEO, Goods and Services Tax Network.

CIS executive director Sunil Abraham, who was on the committee that formulated the NPUEA, says besides non-confirmation of websites to international norms, there are many technical hurdles. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text software, mature optical character recognition systems, speech and grammar check and machine translation are some of the features that are still not available for most Indian languages, he adds. “Many government websites use font encoding for Indian languages which results in the failure of text-to-speech technologies.”

DeitY, under the ministry of communication and information technology, is supporting some technology interventions for the disabled, across different Indian languages. This also includes text-to-speech tools. “Mobile phone manufacturers should also provide in-built tools to cater to the needs of disabled people,” points out Ajay Kumar, joint secretary, DeitY.

Emphasising a strong legal framework for implementation of the policy, Kumar adds that though the new policy promotes disability inclusion, the information technology ministry does not have the legal backing to enforce it. “The ministry of social justice and empowerment is creating a legal framework for the bill that is under consideration by the concerned committee to mandate some of these things, including technology assistance for the disabled,” he adds.

Abraham says besides ensuring that websites and services are accessible to the disabled, the new policy must be updated to include a mandate that all parties providing essential services to the general public must comply with accessibility standards. “Manufacturers of ICT products should provide at least one accessible model of their products within each price range that they are operating within,” he says.

Sam Taraporevala, associate professor and head of sociology department, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and the director of Xavier’s resource centre for the visually challenged, says with the government accepting a policy that IT tools should follow accessibility standards, it is now a question of monitoring, and, perhaps, even judicial activism.

Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director, CIS, who works closely with various government departments to bring accessibility into their policies and programmes, concurs. “There must be accountability and a monitoring mechanism to check whether websites are disability compliant,” she says.

Maharashtra is the only state to make it compulsory for every department to have a scheme for procuring disability access products. Yet, compliance remains a problem. “Despite the government holding awareness camps at various districts, barriers are created for accessing government schemes. Resistance on part of government agencies to give out equipment to disabled people and lack of awareness among people about the availability of such facilities are the other stumbling blocks. Yet, there are ways for getting these products,” says Kapoor.

Experts say the needs and requirements of the disabled vary according to their disability and affordability of tools. Also, low income levels of many disabled people is a dissuading factor toprocuring equipment. “Most available tools and technologies are proprietary and, hence, costly and we are not able to scale them up in a big way,” says Kumar.

Taraporevala, born with 100% visual impairment, was instrumental in getting the guidelines for opening and operating demat accounts for visually impaired persons implemented. He also says mainstream consumer product companies are moving into touchscreen modes in mobile phones forgetting a large chunk of disabled population. “While the standards are there, implementation suffers due to lack of awareness which, in turn, leads to less demand,” he says.

The way forward

Governance Now also asked experts if corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards disability inclusion could address challenges in recruitment of disabled persons. “Instead of a hammer approach, a care approach has to be adopted,” says Rita Soni, CEO, Nasscom Foundation. According to Kumar, “Absence of commercial interest in promoting disability accessibility products has afflicted the sector with neglect.” However, Kapoor says, “This has to be an equal opportunity business. There will be differential costs, but at the same time the total number of disabled people in India is close to 70 million and a billion world over. How can you not treat them like a client?”

Speaking of the revised CSR rules under the Companies Act, Soni adds, “You can support skilling of persons with disabilities that has nothing to do with your business and have it considered as CSR expenditure. But if you make your office building or internet accessible, it does not count. Creating incentives around disability will make us a more inclusive society and make disability more amenable to office environment.”

Maharashtra IT secretary Rajesh Aggarwal adds, except for the metro, none of our public transport systems are disabled-friendly. As per national building code of India, while giving permissions for public buildings there must be a checklist to ensure that buildings and toilets are wheelchair and blind-friendly. Similarly, hotels must have few rooms which are disabled-friendly.” This awareness has not yet set in,” he says.

The Asia-Pacific region study of UNESCO global report 2013 has said many countries in the developing world are struggling to attain their millennium development goals of providing universal primary education to all by 2015. Our education system, on the other hand, has serious flaws. “We do not teach professionals about assistive technologies and for that reason an eye doctor does not know about low vision aids or a speech therapist does not know how to use communication devices,” says Kapoor.

Taraporevala is of the view that universal (architectural) design needs to be actively woven into every design curriculum across the spectrum, instead of being an optional subject. Physical infrastructure, building standards, for instance, need to reflect this and there needs to be active lobbying to ensure that certificates for public places are not given if they lack certain standards.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/e-gov-reach-december-15-2014-geetanjali-minhas-when-technology-is-able-but-mindset-is-not