Centre for Internet and Society

Inclusive Financial Services

praskrishna — 2015-05-03T01:55:21Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/inclusive-financial-services.pdf

Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for Persons with Disabilities

nirmita — 2013-10-04T14:46:21Z

This report is a review of the needs, challenges, effective policies, and practices for inclusive disaster management practices. It was submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority of India (NDMA) on September 17, 2013 for their action.

Note: The report is co-authored by Deepti Samant Raja and Nirmita Narasimhan.

Persons with disabilities face unique challenges during every stage of emergency and disaster management due to inaccessible warnings, evacuation, response (including shelters, camps, and food distribution), and long-term recovery efforts. Additionally, disruption to physical, social, economic, and environmental networks and support systems affect people with disabilities in greater proportions.

Common experiences reveal that people with disabilities are more likely to be left behind or abandoned during evacuation in disasters and conflicts. They may be separated from their family members and caregivers, as well as their assistive devices (e.g. wheelchairs, prosthetics) or may be unable to operate them in a disaster (e.g. aids that run on electricity or batteries).

Shelters and relief camps are frequently inaccessible to persons with disabilities, and they may be unable to easily access food and water distribution centres. The paucity of statistical data on persons with disabilities and limited knowledge on how to respond to their needs is another factor that heightens their vulnerability in a disaster or emergency situation (Smith, Jolley & Schmidt, 2012). Resources and necessities may become scarce during a disaster situation, and there is a potential for discrimination on the basis of disability in such scarcity. Common perception is that inclusion and accessibility only matter to a small percentage of the population and thus are not cost effective. Leaving aside the fact that persons with disabilities are not a small and irrelevant percentage, accessible and disability inclusive approaches in fact benefit many others.

Elderly persons are one of the most affected groups in a disaster or emergency situation. Aging and disability are linked with each other, and many persons develop disabling conditions as they age including limited mobility, low vision, and hearing difficulties. They will significantly benefit from physical and communication accessibility in disaster preparedness, evacuation, relief, and recovery. Similarly, providing information in multiple formats beyond text such as graphical and oral formats can make this important information available and accessible to people with low or no literacy as well as children.

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first international human rights treaty that specifically addresses the rights and freedoms of persons with disabilities (Lord, Samant Raja & Blanck, 2012). The CRPD was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2006 and opened for signatures on March 30, 2007. The CRPD had one of the shortest periods to come into force as the required twenty ratifications were achieved barely a month after it opened for signatures. The entire CRPD and its eight operating principles raise the need to make all disaster and emergency planning accessible and inclusive, failing which States Parties will not be able to meet their obligations under the CRPD. Additionally, the CRPD is specific about the need to make emergency and disaster management operations inclusive of persons with disabilities. Article 11 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (UN Enable, 2006) on "Situations of Risk and Humanitarian Emergencies" states that: States Parties shall take, in accordance with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.

The CRPD's direct mention of disasters and emergencies represented the first major global treaty to focus attention on the needs of persons with disabilities in disaster events. In addition, Article 9 on Accessibility requires States Parties to ensure that people can access, on an equal basis with others the physical environment, transportation services, information and communications technologies and systems and all public facilities and services which include emergency services and facilities. Article 9 specifically mentions the need to make "information, communications and other services, including.emergency services accessible." Declarations and initiatives before that such as the Hyogo Framework for Action, which is the widely accepted blueprint for Disaster Risk Reduction in countries, failed to mention and take into account the importance of addressing disability issues.

As of September 16, 2013, 134 countries have ratified and 156 have signed the CRPD (UN Enable, 2013). States parties to the CRPD have to work towards making disaster risk reduction and all stages of the disaster and emergency management process accessible and inclusive of persons with disabilities. Article 32 on International Cooperation focuses on the need to ensure that international cooperation initiatives, including development programs, are accessible and inclusive of people with disabilities. States are encouraged to support capacity building and the exchange of knowledge and best practices, strengthen research collaborations and access to scientific knowledge, and offer technical and economic assistance to help meet a state's obligations under the convention. This provision is very relevant to the aid and humanitarian relief operations conducted by development and aid agencies and international NGOs. It promoted increased technical cooperation on disability and reiterates the need to include disability in all development and aid programming.

Many of the articles of the Convention intersect with different aspects of the disaster management cycle such as education and employment which are relevant in recovery and reconstruction. A few relevant articles are given below.

Article 9 on Accessibility requires States Parties to ensure that people can access, on an equal basis with people without disabilities, physical environments, transportation services, information and communications content, technologies, and systems and all public facilities and services which certainly apply to emergency services and facilities. Article 9 specifically mentioned the need to make "information, communications and other services, including.emergency services" accessible.
Article 31 on Statistics and Data Collection encourages States Parties to collect statistical and research data that can help in formulating and implementing effective policies to give effect to the different articles of the Convention.
Article 26 on Habilitation and Rehabilitation focuses on organizing, strengthening and extending comprehensive habilitation and rehabilitation services and programmes which are important during the response and immediate recovery following serious injuries in disasters and emergencies, as well as for long-term recovery and rebuilding. Other major declarations that raise the need for inclusive disaster and emergency management include the Yogyakarta declaration on disaster risk reduction in Asia and the Pacific 2012, the Phuket Declaration on Disaster Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities in 2009, and the Biwako Millennium Framework for Action 2003-2012. The Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted in 2005 at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, is considered to be a blueprint to guide nations in their disaster risk reduction efforts until 2015. The framework which was signed by 168 countries does not address disability specifically, resulting in continuing exclusion of persons with disabilities in most DRR plans (Scherrer, 2013).

However, efforts are underway to promote the inclusion of disability in the next iteration of the Hyogo Framework. The goal of this report is to serve as a primer on the needs of persons with disabilities in disasters and emergencies, and to provide a comprehensive compilation of effective policies, practices and strategies for inclusive disaster and emergency management. This report utilizes a literature review of policy, practice, and research documentation on the different dimensions of inclusive disaster and emergency management.

A diverse set of sources were compiled for this review including:

research articles, reports, and evaluations of responses in past disasters
country policies and initiatives for disaster management
best practice manuals and handbooks, and
reports from advisory groups and discussion forums

Click to read the full report here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/inclusive-disaster-and-emergency-management-for-persons-with-disabilities

In Memoriam of Rahul Cherian

praskrishna — 2013-02-25T01:51:22Z

The Centre for Internet & Society is organising a memorial function for Rahul Cherian who passed away recently while on a family visit to Goa. He had succumbed to an infection. The function will be held on February 28, 2013, from 5 p.m. To 7.00 p.m. at TERI, Bangalore. Dinner will be served right after the event. Lawrence Liang, Reuben Jacob and Gautam John will be speaking at the event.

Rahul Cherian

Rahul was a lawyer, disability policy activist and the founder of the Inclusive Planet Centre for Disability and Policy, and a fellow at CIS. He was a partner at IndoJuris Law Offices in Chennai, having acted as a managing partner of the firm between 2003 and 2008. He was also the co-founder of www.inclusiveplanet.com, the world's largest social network for persons with visual impairment. He was one of the experts who drafted the Treaty for the Visually Impaired currently being negotiated at the World Intellectual Property Organization. His areas of expertise include disability law, intellectual property law and technology law.

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

Rahul Cherian's collaboration with CIS

Feedback / Submissions

Making Public Libraries Accessible to People with Disabilities (January 23, 2013): Thanks to Rahul's efforts, CIS was one of the 20 disability rights groups that wrote to the Ministry of Culture.
Comments and Feedback on the Draft Twelfth Five Year Plan with respect to Persons with Disabilities (December 28, 2013): CIS was one of the ten organizations representing people with disabilities that sent comments and feedback on the draft twelfth five year plan.

Analysis

An Analysis of the Comments by World Blind Union and the International Publishers Association (March 30, 2012): Rahul provides an analysis of the comments by the World Blind Union and the International Publishers Association after the 23rd session of the Standing Committee of Copyright and Related Rights.

Blog Posts

Linking Commercial Availability and Exceptions in the Treaty for Visually Impaired/Persons with Disabilities (January 23, 2013).
WIPO to Convene a Diplomatic Conference in Morocco to Finalise TVI (December 24, 2012).
The HathiTrust Judgment and its impact on TVI negotiations at WIPO (October 30, 2012).
WIPO General Assemblies Approve Road Map on Treaty for the Visually Impaired (October 11, 2012).
WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired — Moving from a Treaty on Paper to a Treaty that is Workable on the Ground (September 28, 2012).
Breaking News on Electronic Accessibility (September 28, 2012).
Ring Side View: Update on WIPO Negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired (August 13, 2012).
Copyright Amendments – Empowering the Print Disabled (May29, 2012).
Copyright Law as a tool for Inclusion (March 30, 2010).
Copyright v. Exercise of Fundamental rights (August 6, 2009).

News & Media Coverage

Rahul was quoted in the following:

Disability groups in India welcome progress on treaty for blind persons (The Times of India, December 20, 2012).
US and EU blocking treaty to give blind people access to books (The Guardian, July 30, 2012).
An online community platform for people with different needs (Press Trust of India, December 9, 2010).
Disability rights groups oppose changes to Copyright Act (The Hindu, April 23, 2010).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/events/in-memoriam-of-rahul-cherian

IDAP Interview Series: Interview with Nirmita Narasimhan

nirmita — 2017-11-26T09:56:06Z

IDIA Disability Access Programme did an interview with Nirmita Narasimhan. This interview was conducted by Madhavi Singh and Anusha Reddy. The interview was transcribed by Veda Singh, IDIA intern and student at Jindal Global Law School.

Read the original published by IDIA Law here

Our interview in this series features Nirmita Narasimhan, a Policy Director with the Centre for Internet and Society. Nirmita did her LL.B. from Campus Law Centre, Delhi University in 2002. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in German and a Ph.D. in Music. As a part of CIS she has done extensive work on web accessibility and was involved in drafting the Indian National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility. She has worked closely with different departments of the Government of India to bring accessibility into their policies and programmes.

In recognition of her path-breaking work in the field of digital accessibility, she has received numerous awards such as the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (2010), the NIVH (National Institute for the Visually Handicapped) Excellence Award (2011) and the NCPEDP-Emphasis Universal Design award in 2016. She played a key role in amending the Indian Copyright Act to incorporate exceptions for people with print disabilities and launched the widely acclaimed nationwide Right to Read campaigns.

Nirmita’s experience is not just limited to policy work – she is a widely published author and has assisted national and international bodies in the creation of several reports on promoting accessibility rights of people with disabilities.

This interview was conducted by Madhavi Singh and Anusha Reddy. The interview was transcribed by Veda Singh, IDIA intern and student at Jindal Global Law School. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Could you please describe to us the exact nature of your disability?

I have something called Stargardt disease. For me it came when I was 9 or so. When I started, I could read with the help of a magnifying glass and I would enlarge things to read and now I completely rely on screen reading software.

Could you please describe to us the reasonable accommodation provided by your school and college, if any?

In school nothing! I used to read and write using a magnifying glass –reading was a bit of a struggle. My handwriting was really bad and people didn’t understand it. I never asked for anything. Only for my Board exams I had asked for a writer because that’s something you really can’t risk.

Most schools use boards to teach. How did you manage?

No, it just depended on the individual teacher and maybe I was also very inhibited at that time in my life. I wouldn’t go up to the teacher and simply say “please read it out.” Consequently, I always regretted that I was not good at math, because it was always on the board. I managed back then with the help of my parents and sister.

You have a large number of educational qualifications to your name. You initially studied German and Carnatic music and only pursued law later. What factors influenced you in deciding to study law?

It may not be anything glamourous as really being passionate about it. But going back to German – I really liked the language, and more so due to the teaching methods because this was the first time I was out of a classroom setting into a setting where there were 10-12 students and the teachers were really good and used unconventional methods. They were accommodative about exams. The teacher could write exams for me or tell me what to do – it was not like a fixed system. Whenever a system came into play, inaccessibility also came into play. Whenever it was an individual, and usually somebody who was not heartless, it was pretty okay.

One time in an exam, they gave a printout, and I couldn’t read it. At that time, I wrote the one answer I could, left the rest of the question, gave the paper and walked out. When the results were declared, I got an A or A+! I was shocked. I went to the teacher and said “How can you do this to me?” He said “I know that had you been able to read it, you would’ve written because I see you every day in class. That was probably wrong of us and we should have ensured that you could’ve read the paper.” I think that was a unique experience. It happens to very few people and it certainly never happens very often in one’s lifetime, unless you’re extraordinarily lucky. But these kinds of experiences during my graduation really helped get a better sense of the world.

After that I started my M.A. When you’re trying to do translation you keep referring to a dictionary. Until my M.A., I used to keep enlarging a basic dictionary into such thick volumes that I couldn’t even carry them. I realised that this couldn’t go on all my life and beyond a point I could not expect my father or mother to read out, because they did not know German and would not always be with me. So, I thought that this is not going to work out and at that time I gave the law entrance exam.

As for music, I did my diploma while I was doing my B.A. I didn’t consciously take up music immediately after my B.A. because people thought that was the obvious career for me since I had a visual disability and that really irritated me. After having finished my law, somewhere along the way I thought that so what if music is the expected career for someone who is visually impaired, it’s just something I wanted to do.

My main motive was actually not to fall into things which people expect are easy. When I was joining law many people said “You shouldn’t join law, you won’t be able to refer to anything.” I got so annoyed and would say – “Listen it’s my life, if I’m going to live for 85 years and if I waste one year in between, I have no problems. So why does it bother you? I don’t mind failure, but at least let me try. If I can’t, I’ll leave it and go back to sociology or some other subjects.” So, that’s why I got into law, and I have no regrets. It was tough for multiple reasons.

Out of all your diverse educational courses (law, Carnatic music and German) with their varied teaching methodology and course work which field do you think was the most exclusionary of people with disabilities and which one was the most accommodative?

I think it depends on the institution. It’s not fair to compare Delhi University with JNU. JNU was more open and the teachers were creative in the ways they taught, recognising individual abilities. It was completely different from DU which had approximately 80 people in a class and typically the lecturer came, gave a lecture and left. I had a good experience in JNU, because it was not bound by systems and is generally a good place to study.

The Faculty for Music and Fine Arts at DU was also very accommodative, especially so because my Guru ensured that I got what I needed. However I found studying law to be really difficult – at that time I didn’t have any books. If I would go to the library, each and every book you pick up would be underlined with a pen. If you try to scan it – at that time the technology was very slow but even if I was ready to do that, if something is underlined the scan is obsolete. How much can one human being read out to you – a constitutional law book is of 300-1000 pages? You have to refer to so many books!

So, I couldn’t read any book, I didn’t know where to start. Then I was actually forced to rely on these dukkhis. I think the main reason they were useful is that they weren’t underlined, I could purchase them, tear them and scan them. By that time I had also been introduced to computers, and had bought an OCR having paid $1000 for it at that time. Even after that since the paper quality was not good I couldn’t read much.

I know this is probably an awful thing to say, and though I would’ve loved to have a more nuanced understanding of the law but it required me to read a lot which I was unable to do – not because I didn’t want to but because I just couldn’t.

You were an exceptional student – topper of your batch and a gold medalist. To what extent was your hunger for success fueled by your desire to demonstrate your capabilities and to not let your vision impairment become your defining characteristic?

Is my success driven by my desire to show the world? No. Even when I did law– forget showing other people, I just needed to do something “normal” or something that other people were doing – something that is a profession, that’s it. Everything else I did was not to prove anything. After a point, I didn’t really think much about having a disability it’s just a part of who you are. I just wanted to study well.

You have worked in the field of policy research, as a lawyer in a corporate law firm as well as in advocacy, how do you think these professions are different in terms of the obstacles they pose to lawyers with disabilities? Have there been any reasonable accommodation?

Policy research is my current work. The fact that I am currently using technology and my office is pro-accessibility shows that reasonable accommodation is provided here. I tried both courts and corporate law, they were never areas I wanted to be in permanently but I thought having studied law I should have some kind of exposure. At that point of time there were a number of documents, annexures, etc. and to file them you could always hire somebody, but it wasn’t something you could have done for yourself– this was around 2002. And in the corporate field, what I found difficult was working with track changes and deadlines. I was not very excited by the work to stick it out and really prove a point. I know some people that did. I think you need to be motivated enough to tackle the issue, I was not motivated enough by the people to conquer these issues and it didn’t excite me.

You started your career in law with Mr. Rungta. Could you kindly let us know your reasons for choosing to work for a blind lawyer?

I wanted to know how he worked. If you mean whether it was difficult getting into other law firms, yes it was. I did try to ask people in firms but they were completely not open to having me. One or two said that we could have a trial – without pay however, to which I asked if they were paying other juniors, and if so then I didn’t want to join. I worked with Mr. Rungta for a few months and then moved on.

This is a problem most students face wherein employers are apprehensive of hiring people with disabilities, so what advice would you give especially to the corporate field?

I think it is a really negative attitude – people see what you cannot do and not what you can do. And at some point everyone has certain skills, and you as an employer need to be discerning– it shows how smart you are whether you can identify how to tap into that person’s skill or not.

It’s not the time for people to be telling them what they cannot do. The students already know that tasks are difficult for them – they don’t need to hear it from their employers too. So, I think there is a huge issue there. It’s for them to figure out and work with the person to see how to make it happen. It can happen! It might not be exactly the same thing that you envisaged but something can be worked out.

I never came across an employer who was willing to do this. Believe me, I’ve gone from door to door after I finished my law degree and it was a very demotivating time. I feel that it is sad especially now with the kind of technology we have. Maybe at that time I could agree and understand their concerns that I wouldn’t be able to look up case law, but things are different now. Another problem is that the student does not know the range of the work there is, hence it becomes difficult to articulate what he/she wants/can do. I think it is important, even for institutions to ensure that they help place their students, in some of these big law firms, starting from internships.

If you had to tell employers why they should hire people with disability, what would it be?

Do not judge a person merely by virtue of whether he/ she has a disability. Be fair and give them a chance as well. There are many people who became great, just because they got a break. There is great value in making your work place more inclusive and diverse. One can evolve work arounds for most issues and technology has made many things possible.

As a Policy Director with the Centre for Internet and Society, you have done extensive work on web accessibility for persons with disabilities. Given that technology has been an enabler for persons with disabilities, do you believe that the government and society (technologists/businesses/start-ups) have a responsibility to design keeping accessibility in mind from the very beginning?

Definitely, there are no two ways about it. They should, but they aren’t doing it. The first policy on accessibility was in 2009 by the NIC and it continued to remain inaccessible. The second one in 2013 was the national electronic accessibility policy. However, even today many websites are not accessible. After that policy, so many government initiatives, some 700 mobile applications, etc. came up, of which most are inaccessible.

Now everything is on mobile apps, whether private or government, so we did a lot of studies on that and wrote about it. We put together a set of guidelines and submitted them to the government to look at– otherwise there’s really no point in Digital India or Inclusive India. Of course the situation is now vastly changed, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act was passed in December 2016 and now makes compliance with accessibility standards in different domains mandatory, hopefully this will now be a game changer. It is binding not only on the government, but on the private sector as well.

It is not just a question of ‘responsibility’ –the government’s responsibility to its citizens is also not just regarding disability but about inclusiveness and the kind of society you want to be. It is about being nice and fair not just because you are responsible. It’s how you want your society to evolve.

Very often I think the most accessible products benefit everyone in society. It’s not just a person with disability that is getting benefit out of it. Do you agree?

So a lot of accessibility features came up as just a market feature, for example – in the U.S., so many people read audiobooks, they just listen while they’re driving to their place of work. Another example – those squeaky shoes children wear could help a mother who is blind know where her child is moving. You can say subtitles are for deaf persons, but for a Telugu movie, people who cannot understand Telugu also can go watch it now. I think every accessibility feature has a use. So, for society and the government accessibility should be a universal goal.

For private players a lot of times when you speak to them about accessibility they’re clueless or they think it is an expensive process which requires special knowledge. Do you have anything to say to such private entities like Flipkart, or Ola?

I think they’re not recognising the situation. If there are 1.3 billion people that are disabled in the world, there are 150 million people in India that are disabled – they need to realise that it is a huge market out there. Blind people are using Uber and not Ola. If they made their application accessible their market would grow. For Ola, for example it’ll ask me to rate my previous drive, and it only gives the option of 3 star with a screen reader – I can’t increase or decrease it. Now if I keep giving 3 stars only, I won’t get a driver the next time (laughs)! Uber and Amazon, both are entirely accessible and they’re international brands. You should ensure that your service is accessible in the starting itself when it is not expensive. Later it becomes more expensive and difficult to do. Private entities really need to look more into their diversity and it shouldn’t just be something they do for CSR, it is good business. It’s a good contribution to society.

Recently, in a move to digitise the courts in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the integrated case management system of the Supreme Court. Given that this move could be a game changer for lawyers and litigants with disabilities, do you believe that accessibility of such platforms will be given foremost importance by the government? If not, what steps can we take to ensure that it is given importance?

The RPWD Act 2016 requires all legal services, documents etc. uploaded to be accessible. If this is not done, it would be a tragedy. Just like the case of the Digital Library of India which has over 5 lakh books, most of which are image files and inaccessible. The government should ensure that this mistake is never again replicated. The website and the documents should be accessible as per notified standards. When you’re uploading documents, sometimes you might need scanned versions in which case you must have an unofficial version or some alternative that is accessible. Even if it is for tracking new cases, or filing things through apps, it should all be accessible as per guidelines – that’s the bottom line. So, involve the experts right from the beginning.

You have worked on digitization of books and general accessibility of educational resources for persons with disabilities. What in your opinion is the most resource efficient solution to the book famine currently plaguing students with print disabilities?

Every time a publisher publishes a book, they should give an accessible PDF to the public library or they should give it to the Sugamya Pustakalaya, which is an accessible online library. They’re anyway creating a PDF, they can make it accessible. As we get more organisations to connect to the library and network, you can reach out to all the students who go to these organisations. Publishers should also consider creating and commercially selling accessible format books such as e-text and audio books.

Could you tell us about your experience so far, in interacting and working with different government departments as part of various projects? As a policy researcher and advocate with a focus on the rights of persons with disabilities, what are the biggest obstacles you face in effectively lobbying for a change?

I think the obstacles are similar to the issues that you face typically while working with the Government on any issue, not just accessibility. It’s about meeting the right person. If you’re interacting only with one person, then that person gets transferred or the other people don’t know about it. I think that they need to see accessibility as something which cuts across every issue, not just something for the disabled, and that’s not happening. One also comes across people who do not consider accessibility a priority issue.

A lot of students with disabilities in India, even after the completion of their education, are not in a position to compete with their able-bodied counterparts. They don’t possess soft skills like knowing how to spell correctly, socializing and corresponding with others and speaking correct English. How can this be addressed at a micro as well as macro level?

I think there is a need for more organisations who are trying to prepare candidates after their education to deal with a corporate situation. Otherwise you’re just suddenly taken and put in a place you don’t fully understand. People might be conscious about their English or other things. If not on the individual level, if corporates are hiring they may also consider seeking help from and supporting such organisations.

You should also have policies for accommodation of persons with disabilities. It is useful to have mentors, networks or groups where they can share experiences and exchange ideas on how they tackle different situations.

What can law colleges do to make the educational experience better for law students with disabilities?

I think starting with the college level or institutions –I feel what we learn there shapes our confidence and grasp of the subject – where it is important to ensure that at least the reading list is available as accessible digital copy. I wouldn’t even accept if they say “2 out of the 10 on the reading list are available and that’s enough for you”, if you’re giving the 10 options to other students to pick from, even these students should get such an opportunity. They must also ensure that the admission process/ entrance exam is accessible.

Just getting admission is not enough if institutions can’t provide the required resources. Once that first step is done, they should consciously have a committee of students and teachers who can help in the process of studying, getting internships, or talking on their behalf to firms or other organisations. They may also consider accessible exam practices suited to the needs of different students. There are several things that can be done, institutions should evolve processes and practices based on discussions with their students with disabilities.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/idap-interview-series-interview-x-with-nirmita-narasimhan

ICT, transaction cost and development: The flip side

radha — 2013-02-05T08:56:35Z

A presentation by Prof. Pradoshnath at CIS, Bangalore on Nov 25th, 2009 from 3.30pm to 5pm

Abstract

The main observation is that the connectivity matters if and only if it connects the right way. The danger of being at the flip side looms large, if connected wrong way.

The conclusion is based on a rigorous theoretical understanding of the role of network technology in general and ICT in particular for augmenting the process of social and economic transformation. The theoretical framework also allows us to discover the danger of flip side of the network technology, and tells us that it is not always hunky-dory between ICT (or any network technology for that matter) and social and economic backwardness. Colonial plundering was possible through the adoption of network technologies in colonies.

ICT is believed to contribute to economic development by reducing the transaction and information cost associated with any economic activities. Transaction cost arises when transactions are made away from the market. There are two streams of arguments here; one, that suggests minimisation of transaction cost as means towards economic efficiency, and the other that considers the act of transactions away from the market is actually the process of value creation of a capitalist enterprise. We argue that both the arguments can be synchronised by partitioning the transaction costs in two broad components of production activities, namely, production (the value creation component, where in lies profit) and procurement. It is in the latter component where transaction cost can be minimised for efficiency, whereas in case of former transaction cost is created by a value creating capitalist enterprise. In reality both the processes are concurrent, and one complements the other.

It is this comprehensive perspective that enables us a fresh look at the ongoing programmes, and, therefore a general observation that ICTisation in less developed economies in effect make market operations friendlier for the capitalist ventures or inroads in the marginal economies, and create new varieties of distortions in the system. We call this distortion – the flip side of ICTisation, because in the absence of factors that enable make use of connectivity for economic and social gains, the marginalised population of a marginal economy runs the risk of falling in to a new dynamics of exploitation.

Profile of Prof. Pradosh Nath

An economist working on issues related to applications of science and technology for social and economic development. He is a scientist at National Institute of Science Technology and Development Studies (NISTADS), New Delhi. At present affiliated to the Centre for Culture Media and Governance, Jamia Millia University, New Delhi as Senior Research Fellow, ICSSR, New Delhi. His present research interest is in the area of application of ICT for social and economic development of the marginal economies. He has published widely in both national and international journals. He has co-authored two books and edited another. He has worked as consultant for IDRC, Canada, WAITRO, Copenhagen, Denmark, and ITU, Geneva. He has been the coordinator of the WAITRO sponsored international programme on ‘Knowledge management for R&D organisation’ conducted in different countries in Asia and Africa.

Videos

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/ict-transaction-cost-and-development-the-flip-side

ICT Accessibility in Sri Lanka

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T10:32:25Z

During a recent visit to Lirne Asia in Colombo, thanks to the efforts of the Lirne Asia team, I had an opportunity to meet the Sri Lankan regulator-TRC, the ICT Agency-ICTA and the Jinnasena Trust to discuss their initiatives for providing ICT and Telecommunications access for persons with disabilities in Sri Lanka.

This was quite a unique opportunity for me since I have never before interacted on a one-to-one basis with the regulator of any other country, other than my own. So I did a preliminary background check of Sri Lanka’s ICT and general legislative framework which revealed that it already had sufficient legislative mandate to ensure that persons with disabilities had equal access to information and ICTs, an obligation under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Sri Lanka signed way back in 2007. In fact Sri Lanka has mentioned persons with disabilities in its Constitution. Access to ICTs is also covered in the Protection of Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 1996, National Policy on Disability for Sri Lanka, 2003, the Telecommunications Ten Year Development Plan, 2006-2016 and the Universal Service Obligation. Para 18 of the telecommunications Service Providers License also obliges service providers to ensure that their services are accessible for persons with disabilities. So in fact, as far as I could see, Sri Lanka had more commitment in terms of legislation/ policy to facilitate ICT access to the disabled than India had.

However, discussions with the officials and organization revealed that implementation remains a challenge in Sri Lanka as with several other developing countries including India. In Sri Lanka, there are primarily three languages for which accessible content and assistive technology needs to be available. At present, there is a text to speech synthesizer for Singhala, but not for Tamil. There doesn’t appear to be a robust screen reader with which this has been integrated. There is as yet no OCR software to recognize scanned books and convert them into a machine readable format and no fair use exception in their Intellectual Property legislation to facilitate conversion into accessible formats.

In Sri Lanka, most of the accessibility projects funded by the TRC revolve primarily around setting up infrastructure in schools and some amount of capacity building. The TRC hopes to extend it in the next phase of its funding to include development of assistive technologies (ATs).

While this definitely seemed to be on the way towards progress, there still remained one point which I found very troubling. Why is there such a communication gap between persons with disabilities and the policy makers? Even in India, we come across projects where the Government of India is spending precious funds developing technology which they feel is required for the blind, while the blind in fact are already using more advanced technology. For instance, there is a project with the government which is to develop a special browser for the blind, when the blind and visually impaired are already navigating the Internet using screen readers like Jaws and NVDA. My meetings with the regulator and other agencies confirmed for me that persons with disabilities in Sri Lanka and India are facing similar problems. A severe challenge for persons with disabilities is to make policy makers and developers aware of their needs and new developments in technology so that appropriate initiatives are taken which are low cost, available in local languages, and scalable. Increasingly it seems important to involve the private sector as well in accessibility initiatives to increase variety, competition and solutions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/ict-sri-lanka

Human Machine Interfaces: The History of an Uncertain Future

sharath — 2013-01-04T11:30:47Z

"Multimodal interfaces maybe re-engineered much more easily now and can transform the ways in which the physically,cognitively and sensorially disabled can access information and interact with the digital world", says Sharath Chandra Ram.

Fundamental inspirations in digital information practices sprouted from the hypothetical electro-mechanical device ‘Memex’ proposed by renowned scientist Vannevar Bush in 1945, who incidentally, as the graduate professor of Claude Shannon, also paved the way for digital circuit design theory. The Memex (Memory + Index) concept entailed a system where a user could add associative trails to notes, books, communication and audio-visual experiences involving both him and others. Memex in Bush’s view was to create trails of links in temporal sequences of subjective experiences of a person, accessible to him (and others) anytime — a sort of augmented and extended memory. So implausible was considered this ambitious proposal of his, that the word ‘vannevar’ has entered the dictionary as a noun used to describe something that is unfeasibly fantastic and imaginative.

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, readymade with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.[1]

The Memex idea had an immediate bearing on the conception of the World Wide Web and also influenced Ted Nelson’s coinage of ‘hyperlink’ that mapped a single word in a document to other associative content. Douglas Engelbart inspired by Bush’s essay, invented an interface that aided the very metaphor of pinpointed navigation through hyperlinks — the X-Y Indicator — that later came to be known to the world as the Computer Mouse. Not much has changed in the ways by which humans have interacted at the interface level. The WIMP paradigm (Windows, Icons ,Menus and Pointers) has been here to stay.

The X-Y indicator that previously mapped motions made on a two dimensional track pad onto the screen has simply been infused onto touch screens. While this may have eased the process of visual design automation, could our interaction be more natural, expressive, immersive and creative? Our experience in the real world is multi modal and we communicate with others using our body, hands, visual cues and sound. Is there a way by which our interaction in the virtual world could closely mimic our real world behavior?

The answer to the above questions came around the same time that the mouse was invented — Myron Kreuger's Videoplace. Unarguably the first and finest immersive virtual reality created way back in the 1970s, ‘Videoplace’ combined two cultural forces — the television (a purveyor of passive experience) and computer (symbol of forbidding technology) to create an expressive medium for communicating playfulness and active participation. Kreuger argued that "computer art which ignores responsiveness is using the computer only for visual design automation, rather than as a basis for a new medium." Kreuger used image processing and gestural interaction as early as in the 70s to interact with virtual objects in the digital world and has inspired a whole generation of computer vision artists including the likes of Golan Levin. If one recalls the seemingly futuristic gestural interface that Tom Cruise used in the film ‘Minority Report’ — be assured it’s already here! Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in virtual reality systems who headed the National Tele Immersion Initiative developed the entire working set of the film.

It seems Kreuger’s work had remained in a niche closet due to early commercialization and large scale adoption of the XY mouse and touch devices. ‘User centric design’ has become increasingly device dependent and really only caters to enticing users to information that the interface wants to disseminate rather than let the user engage with the interface intuitively.

Today, natural interfacing techniques are regaining much commercial interest. A landmark event was the massively viral YouTube video of Johnny Lee Cheung hacking the Nintedo Wiimote’s infrared sensor to track the head movement of a user in real time and provide an illusion of 3-Dimensional Virtual Reality. Within a year, Microsoft hired Cheung to develop the Kinect Camera for gestural interaction with it’s X-box gaming console and also bought all assets of 3DV system’s 3D sensor ‘ZCam’ -- the most affordable option available to new media artists until then. Within a week of the Kinect’s release, it’s drivers were hacked and exposed by the opensource art community that responded to Adafruit’s USD 2000 Kinect hack challenge.

With similar gestural devices by ASUS and the much-awaited Leap sensor, we are on the brink of a paradigm shift in the ways of accessing information that shall redefine concepts in human computer interaction. Cognitive interface solutions by NeuroSky and Emotiv Systems have already paved the way to neuronal signal activated interactions and games. The OpenEEG project has propelled research into open hardware schematics for brain computer interaction.

The linear presentation of search engine results on a browser across millions of pages , I predict, will change this decade as the GUI will transform into a 4 Dimensional Space layered in time, with relevant search results being clustered onto a connected graph node structure and distanced based on their mutual relevance. This calls for a more natural interface that depends not on the traditional keyboard-mouse interaction but on the use of intelligent interfaces such as eye-tracking , gaze , gesture ,speech and thought waves to sift through large databases that shall present themselves in totality along with multimodal feedback to the user.

While all this will transform the ways in which the specially-abled shall access digital information, such transparent interfaces shall also raise a number of policy questions related to privacy and who knows ,one day, even freedom of thought!!

On one hand, we would like to see the price of natural interfaces being made affordable to the commoner, on the other it will require us to unlearn traditional means of information interaction that we have been made quite comfortably accustomed to. Until then it is anyone’s guess what Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Skype along with the desktop version of the Kinect would turn bedroom and boardroom interactions into!

[1].Ironically sourced from a present day Wikipedia article linking to Bush’s 1945 article in The Atlantic Monthly titled “As We May Think”. See http://goo.gl/4mZKx

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/human-machine-interfaces-the-history-of-an-uncertain-future

How tech is making life easier for differently-abled

Admin — 2017-11-08T01:49:38Z

Scattered on technology specialist Amit Bagwe's desk beside his laptop are a Sam sung tablet and an iPhone7.

The article by Shalini Umachandrani was published by Times of India on November 7, 2017. Nirmita Narasimhan was quoted.

It's like any other tech worker's desk, except for the portable electronic magnifier he uses to read what's on his screen. Bagwe, who was born with low vision and lost sight in his right eye in 2005 following an accident in the chemistry lab, works with BarrierBreak in Mumbai, helping companies modify their software to include the needs of people with disabilities as well as train the disabled to use software. "Saying technology is a boon may seem like a cliche but just ask a person with a disability," he says.

Forced to drop out of college after the accident, the turning point came in 2012 when he signed up for a threemonth internship at BarrierBreak."That's when I started using screen readers," he says. He returned to college for a BSc in information technology. "I could study on my own, navigate the city, go to a restaurant for a meal. I never thought I'd own a smartphone let alone use one," he says.

Assistive technology designed to help people with disabilities with their daily tasks is a huge and untapped market in India largely because developers and companies are unaware of their needs. There's been progress in recent years -for instance, buried in the settings of any smartphone are accessibility controls for the disabled -but not all products, apps and devices are easy to use since the needs of the disabled aren't considered at the design and conceptualisation stage.

Dr Nirmita Narasimhan, senior fellow and programme director, Global Initiative for Inclusive ICT, is confident that technology will reduce inequality and inability, and negate frustration. But there are hurdles. "We have screen readers but the technology is not enabled to support a third-party device, or someone hires a consultant to make a website accessible once, then more content is uploaded later and that's not accessible," she says.

Gaurav Mittal, co-founder of EyeD, an app that uses the smartphone's camera to guide people, says the main challenge is empathy. "Observing the world as a person who cannot see is hard. And they are slow to share deeply with us. What makes them laugh, what makes them cry, we need to know this to truly design a product that will help."

With the app and its text reading function, a visually impaired user can navigate streets, find landmarks, and identify objects of interest. His team has also developed a customisable Eye-D keypad that makes smartphones easier to use for the blind. Mittal started Eye-D as "a hobby project" in 2012 after spending a day at National Association for the Blind in Bengaluru during a CSR event for his former employer."I was amazed that visually impaired people could code and use computers easily but struggled to use a smartphone and do things such as navigate the city independently," he says. In 2015, he quit his job and went fulltime; the app is now used by people in 160 countries. EyeD launched a Hindi reading OCR (optical character recognition) version last month, costing Rs 800.

Ajit Narayanan points out that software developed for the disabled community can serve a wider population. His Avaz app and its complementary FreeSpeech app -developed to help children with cerebral palsy, autism and speech impairment use pictures to communicate and learn grammar and language -is now also used by students in China to learn English. "Conversely, the iPad, invented for people without disabilities, had so many features that made it easy for the disabled to use," says Narayanan, 36. He started his company, Invention Labs, in 2007 but struggled initially to create a device."Once the iPad was released in 2010, things took off as we could just focus on the software," he says. Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa are based on speech recognition software devel oped for the blind but are now used widely just to make life easier for everyone. Microsoft recently released a free iPhone app that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell the blind what is around them. If the phone is pointed at a park, the camera app, named Seeing AI, can describe what the scene looks like. Similarly, it can tell the amount of your restaurant bill.

The problem is that most people with disabilities are introduced to technology only at college level."They lose so much time," says Siddhant Chothe, co-founder, Tekvision, a Pune-based startup that helps companies comply with accessibility standards. Chothe, who has had low vision since birth, says he's getting more enquiries for training and compliance since the government passed the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which makes it mandatory for government and private service providers to make all services inclusive and accessible.Legislation means more developers will learn to create inclusive products and clients will demand them."Inclusivity doesn't have to be an expensive afterthought," he says."It's really quite simple to design keeping our needs in mind."

In India, however, only a few can afford this technology. "This is because we are still retrofitting. All the solutions are coming from the West.We need more indigenous development," says Shilpi Kapoor, founder and CEO, BarrierBreak, an accessibility consulting and assistive technology firm. She's also started Newz Hook, an inclusive news website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/the-times-of-india-shalini-umachandrani-november-7-2017-how-tech-is-making-life-easier-for-differently-abled

How tech brings self-reliance to students with disabilities

praskrishna — 2016-05-29T07:47:30Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

praskrishna — 2016-08-10T14:27:18Z

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

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

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

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

Is women and PWD employment increasing in corporate India?

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

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

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

What explains this gap?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GST - A Barrier to Human Rights for Persons with Disabilities

nirmita — 2017-06-25T14:15:05Z

The Centre of Internet & Society made a submission on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which will be coming into play from July 2017 onwards. In this blog post Nirmita Narasimhan assesses the impact of GST on persons with disabilities.


Logo of Shuttleworth Foundation above

The GST Acts - Central Goods and Services Tax Act, Integrated Goods and Services Tax Act and the Union Territory Goods and Services Tax Act passed on 12 April 2017 and the subsequent notification of the Revised GST Rate for Certain Goods on 11th June 2017 have serious and severe implications on basic rights and freedoms for persons with disabilities, hindering them from living independently and pursuing education, and employment. This note outlines the impact of the GST measures as well as recommendations to ensure that the rights of persons with disabilities are not compromised.

Problem Statement

As per the 2011 census, India has over 21 million people with disabilities which is around 2.17% of the population. Persons with disabilities face many hurdles in education and employment which is reflected in the low effective literacy rate of 59%, far below the national level of 74.04% as well as a low work participation rate at 36.3%.[1]

Lower levels of literacy and employment in turn imply lower income levels for this group. Thus, additional support through policy, financial and operational measures is required to help persons with disabilities participate fully in the economy. The new GST rules however, seek to impose tax on assistive technologies and goods and services which are essential for the advancement of persons with disabilities, hampering their mobility and ability to participate in education and employment thus further compounding the disadvantages already faced by this group.

Main Concerns

The specific GST provisions that negatively impact persons with disabilities include:

5% GST on Braille typewriters, Braille paper, Braille watches and Braillers (originally set to 18% for typewriters and 12% for Braille paper and watches and reduced after protests from organizations like the National Centre for Promotion of Employment of Disabled People (NCPEDP), the Disability Rights Organisations Forum (DROF), and various regional groups)[2]
12% GST on Orthopaedic appliances, including crutches, surgical belts and trusses; splints and other fracture appliances; artificial parts of the body; hearing aids and other appliances which are worn or carried, or implanted in the body, to compensate for a defect or disability. Hearing aids have also been listed under the list of goods with nil taxes, which is contradictory.
18% GST on motor vehicles for persons with disabilities.
Braille books are exempt from the tax while other Braille implements are not.
IT software, consulting and support services, online text, audio and video, software downloads etc. have all been classified but no GST rate has been quoted, which implies that they are taxed at 18%. This means software like screen readers, assistive software for persons with cognitive disabilities, online text etc. which are essential aspects of communications and information access for persons with disabilities will also be taxed at 18%, which will severely hamper their ability to communicate and even carry out daily tasks.

GST – Hampering Accessibility and Inclusion

Under the existing tax regime, many of these goods have traditionally been exempt from indirect taxes such as VAT, excise and customs. Even with the exemptions, assistive technologies have not been affordable. However, with the addition of GST, the situation becomes even more dire. For instance, according to India Today, the current market price for a Braille typewriter is about INR 34,000[3], or over 20 times higher than the monthly income of an impoverished urban Indian. Even with the new 5 percent GST (a reduction from the previous 18 percent), this would work out to INR 35,700. Given that 29.5 percent of the total population of India remained below the poverty line in 2011-12 and had a monthly per capita consumption of less than INR 972 in rural areas and INR 1407 in urban areas, [4] assistive technology would be prohibitively expensive even for the average Indian, let alone persons with disabilities.

GST – Discriminatory against Persons with Disabilities

The proposed GST on assistive technology is not only detrimental to the use of assistive technology, it discriminates against the right to equality of persons with disabilities.

Tools necessary for people pursuing their livelihood, such as agricultural implements and hand tools such as spades, shovels, mattocks, etc. used in agriculture, horticulture and forestry are exempt from any tax. However, assistive technologies which are just as vital for the education and livelihood of persons with disabilities, have been included in the list of items taxed under GST. While the Government of India’s move to protect the livelihood of agricultural workers is commendable, it needs to equally protect the right to livelihood of persons with disabilities who are working - 31% of whom are in the agricultural sector and will suffer from the imposition of GST.

GST – Impacting Mobility

The proposed GST on motor vehicles for persons with disabilities also impacts their right to mobility as per Article 41(2) of the Persons with Disabilities Act which calls for the government of India to “promote the personal mobility of persons with disabilities at affordable cost” through measures including incentives and concessions. The imposition of such a high tax on car purchases by persons with disabilities is in direct contravention of this.

Legal Framework

The proposed GST implementation and tax on products and services that are critical for persons with disabilities to pursue independence, literacy and employment with dignity runs counter to both national and international law to which India is a signatory.

Article 38 of the Constitution of India also requires the government to minimize inequalities in income, status, facilities and opportunities among individuals and groups of people.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, enjoin the government to utilise the capacity of persons with disabilities by providing appropriate environment (Art 3(2) ) and take necessary steps to ensure reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities (Art 3(5)).

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which India has signed and ratified, calls on nations to promote the development and adoption of assistive technologies and devices for persons with disabilities, again “giving priority to technologies at an affordable cost.” (Article 4 (g)). Additional provisions include:

Art 4 – General Obligations asks states parties to take into account the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities in all policies and programmes;
Art 5 (3) - asks States Parties to take all appropriate steps to ensure that reasonable accommodation is provided
Article 20 also requires nations to facilitate access to mobility aids, assistive technologies and other intermediaries, and requires that they be made available at affordable cost.
Art 24 on Education enjoins States parties to ensure persons with disabilities have access to inclusive education, that reasonable accommodation is provided and use of Braille, alternative modes and formats is facilitated
Art 27 on Work and employment required nations to protect the rights of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, to just and favourable conditions of work
Art 29 on participation in political and public life advocates the creation of an environment that enables persons with disabilities to participate fully and effectively in the conduct of public affairs

International Practices

While developed countries do levy some tax on assistive technology and devices used by persons with disabilities, these are typically lower than the general rates. Countries in the EU levy lower VAT rates on medical equipment for persons with disabilities [5] for instance 6% in Belgium and 3% in Luxembourg. However, a point to be noted here is that the literacy and employment rates for persons with disabilities in these countries are much higher than in India, where the low literacy and work participation mean that even low levels of taxation on assistive technology make items prohibitively expensive.

An alternative approach more suitable in the Indian context, is that followed by developing countries such as Brazil and the Philippines. In Brazil, which has around 16 million [6] persons with disabilities, the import and sale of assistive technologies such as wheelchairs, Braille machines, calculators with voice synthesizers and hearing aids are exempt from major federal taxes. In addition, persons with disabilities wishing to buy a car also enjoy exemptions from several federal and municipal taxes. [7] In the Philippines, where 1.57 % of the population [8] have some form of disability, the Republic Act 9442[9] guarantees a 20 per cent discount for persons with disabilities and also provides assistance for education. Discounted goods and services include:

Restaurants, hotels and other recreation centers
Theaters, concert halls, carnivals, and other cultural and leisure centers
The purchase of medicines from drugstores
Medical, diagnostic and laboratory fees
Medical and dental service, including doctors’ fees
Domestic air and sea travel
Public railways, skyways, and bus fare

In addition to this, Republic Act 10754 [10] adds an exemption from the 12 percent VAT for persons with disabilities as well. Both of these represent a significant discount.

Conclusion

We fully concur with the representations made by different organisations working for persons with disabilities in India seeking a complete roll back of GST for persons with disabilities. India has in the past, refrained from taxing the disabled deliberately, keeping in mind their particular needs and circumstances and nothing has changed in the past few years to warrant this move. Persons with disabilities remain below the poverty line, without access to information, resources and the ability to enjoy even their basic human rights to live a life of freedom, independence, dignity, inclusion and participation. It is unconscionable to place such articles of basic need such as crutches and wheel chairs without which a person cannot even move on the same level as other goods. Certainly these are more basic than other items such as glass bangles or kajal which are not subject to GST or semi-precious stones which are taxed at a very minimum.
Rolling back GST would be in accordance with national and international legal commitment. India cannot place itself on the same level as countries in the EU for taxing the disabled; we do not have the same infrastructure and resources which these countries have made available for their disabled citizens, nor the social security measures which they offer. They are better placed in terms of development and progress of the disabled, with regard to education, employment and daily living. We cannot impose 18% tax on vehicles for the disabled while we are not providing them with a completely functional accessible transport network, accessible roads and a barrier-free environment. A very small percentage of persons with disabilities in India is actually living a full and complete life with access to resources and aids, an imposition of tax will further minimise chances of progress in the years to come of empowerment and emancipation of persons with disabilities. India has been a thought leader in the field of disability internationally in terms of its policies and served as an inspiration to countries around us. We were one of the earliest countries to sign and ratify the UNCRPD, as well as the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty more recently in 2014. We do not lack in spirit, however do not always follow up with action. The roll back on GST would be an appropriate move in line with our commitment to enable human rights for persons with disabilities and empower them with the use of technology and other tools and resources.
Specified exemptions for use of assistive technologies- Technology has proven a source of tremendous empowerment to persons with disabilities. Given that most ICTs are to be taxed at 18%, we strongly urge the government to specifically exclude all ICTs and downloaded software and content which are intended for persons with disabilities from tax. By imposing tax on an enabling technology, it would be tantamount to imposing tax on a sensory organ, i.e., by imposing tax on a hearing aid or screen reader, which would enable a deaf person to hear/ a blind person to read, it would be like imposing tax on ears or eyes. We hence strongly urge the government to reconsider the present move and set right the error which has been committed by subjecting goods and services for persons with disabilities to tax. We recommend review, complete roll back and explicit exemption on all goods and services for persons with disabilities from the purview of GST.

23 June, 2017

[1]. http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/population_enumeration.html

[2]. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-otherstates/drag-seeks-rollback-of-gst-ondisability-aids/article19123085.ece

[3]. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/gst-goods-and-services-tax-arun-jaitley-narendra-modi-disabledbraille/1/967920.html

[4]. http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/pov_rep0707.pdf

[5]. http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/resources/documents/taxation/vat/how_vat_ works/rates/vat_rates_en.pdf

[6]. https://www.disabled-world.com/news/south-america/

[7]. http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/tax-reduction-for-people-with-disabilities

[8]. https://psa.gov.ph/content/persons-disability-philippines-results-2010-census

[9]. http://www.ncda.gov.ph/disability-laws/republic-acts/republic-act-9442/

[10]. http://www.ncda.gov.ph/disability-laws/implementing-rules-and-regulations-irr/irr-of-ra-10754-anact-expanding-the-benefits-and-privileges-of-persons-with-disability-pwd/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/gst-a-barrier-to-human-rights-for-persons-with-disabilities

Groundbreaking disability rights activist Javed Abidi dies at 53

Ambika Tandon — 2018-03-06T14:42:47Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) expresses profound regret at the demise of Mr. Javed Abidi, a groundbreaking disability rights activist.

As Director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), he was instrumental in bringing issues pertaining to various disabilities under an umbrella organisation, and ensuring greater visibility in mainstream media. He labored to make educational resources, employment opportunities and public spaces more accessible for PwDs across barriers of class and gender.

A noted voice in the field of disability rights, Abidi contributed immensely to shifting the conversation around disability from a welfarist and paternalistic approach to one that was grounded in rights and freedoms over the past two decades. He worked at the intersection of civil society and government, and under his aegis, the NCPEDP played a key role in the passing and implementation of the landmark Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act, 2018.

Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan, Senior Fellow and formerly Policy Director at the CIS, says, “I met Mr. Javed Abidi when we started CIS way back in 2008. At that time I was completely overwhelmed by his personality and totally in awe of him and his work. This feeling only grew over the last decade. We first worked on pushing the National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility. He also supported our right to read campaign and spread the word about our copyright work. Over the years, he supported and promoted our work on multiple issues, and included us in key discussions amongst the disability leadership in India.”

As part of his work with CIS, he advocated for greater legislative rights and institutional support through measures such as universally accessible government data and services in the digital space, and affordable aid technology. Dr. Narsimhan continued, “He looked to CIS as an ally and expert in ICT accessibility and always ensured that we were included in discussions on this topic in government committees and outside. At a personal level, I feel privileged that he took a keen interest in my work.” A central concern within this work was to highlight the intersection of disability with poverty, gender disparity, lack of education, and social stigma.

“The fire and passion in his work, his fearlessness in advocating for what he believed was right, the sheer strength of his personality and mind, his systematic and meticulous approach towards any issue all served as important learning points for me. He made me feel proud to be an Indian and working for the rights of persons with disabilities in India. He has truly touched the lives of millions of people in a way which very few people have done in their lifetime. I hope that we continue and expand our work in digital accessibility and contribute to making his vision of an inclusive India a reality,” concluded Dr. Narsimhan.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/groundbreaking-disability-rights-activist-javed-abidi-dies-at-53

Government websites: Access denied to special users

sachia — 2011-04-02T16:17:22Z

Article by L. Subramani in the Deccan Herald, 8 December 2008

The homepages of 23 government agencies have been identified as inaccessible to special users, the city-based Centre for Internet and Society has found.

The organisation carried out an automated test using software tools, on websites of agencies like the National Informatics Centre, Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Ministry of HRD etc, the majority of which have failed to meet even the basic access criteria laid down in the guidelines of Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C).

“Except for the Reserve Bank of India and CMC Vellore, all the sites don't even meet priority 1 of WCAG (W3C Access Guidelines), which would ensure availability of text for non-text elements (images) and other graphical contents that can't be read out by screen reader software,” said Nirmita Narasimhan, who carried out the tests at CIS. She mentioned that all of the websites failed in priority 2 and 3 of the guidelines.

“Despite being one of the most important sites for persons with disability, the homepage of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment - which contains documents and important government schemes for persons with disability - has completely failed to meet the accessibility criteria.

This is not only against the spirit of laws that guarantee freedom of information, but also contradicts the government's own policy of making websites accessible to persons with disability,” she added.

Handbook

Nirmita pointed out that the Right To Information handbook - an important reference for persons with disability, demanding information from government and private organisations - has been provided in an inaccessible document format.

She echoed the common contention that persons with disability are deprived of one of the most important aspects of modern technology, despite being empowered by technologies like screen readers and speech recognition software.

The information, coming soon after the International Day for Persons with Disabilities was observed, raises question marks over the government's commitment to break barriers, and its genuineness in creating an accessible society as per the Persons with Disability act (1995) and the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disability, to which it has been one of the early signatories.

Ganesh Prasad, Director (Systems and Process) at Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled described the test results as ‘not surprising, but certainly disappointing.’

“Given the urban conditions, visiting a place in person has become one of the most difficult things for persons with disability,” Prasad said.

Priority 1 of the guidelines calls for text descriptions of images or alternative pages with text contents, while priority 2 asks for the turning off of auto refresh and other deprecated features of W3C technologies, and recommends semantic information of the page for persons with disability to instantly know the contents.

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Read the article on the Deccan Herald website here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/government-websites-access-denied-to-special-users

Government of Madhya Pradesh initiates ICT Accessibility in Public Communication

nirmita — 2013-01-31T10:17:13Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, joined hands with Daisy Forum of India member Arushi in Bhopal to submit a request for a notification mandating that all communication by the Government of Madhya Pradesh should be accessible to persons with disabilities.

Specifically, it was requested that the government ensure that all websites are WCAG 2.0 compliant, that Unicode font is used for all regional language content and that content should be in accessible formats such as Daisy and E-pub. The submission can be found by clicking here.

In January 2013, the Government of Madhya Pradesh issued a notification in Hindi (scanned PDF version of the notification here) requesting all departments to comply with WCAG 2.0 and use Unicode font. The five page notification goes into detail regarding the need for these standards. We welcome this move by the Government of Madhya Pradesh and appreciate the efforts of Arushi in taking up this issue. We are happy to be associated with this initiative.

Click to read the original notification received from the Government of Madhya Pradesh (Image files in Zip folder, size 5.3 MB).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/govt-of-mp-initiates-ict-accessibility-in-public

Google's Optical Character Recognition Software Now Works with All South Asian Languages

subha — 2015-09-26T14:31:15Z

The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software by Google now works for more than 248 world languages, including all the major South Asian languages, and it's easy to use and works with over 90 percent accuracy for most languages.

This was published by Global Voices on August 29, 2015.

OCR software has been extremely beneficial for the study of language, helping to extract text from images of virtually any printed text—and sometimes even handwriting, which opens the door to old texts, manuscripts, and more.

Ketan Pratap at NDTV Gadgets writes:

Users can start using the OCR capabilities in Drive by uploading scanned document in PDF or image form after which they can right-click on the document in Drive to open with Google Docs. After choosing the option, a document with the original image alongside extracted text opens, which can be edited. Google notes that users will not be required to specify the language of the document as the OCR in Drive will automatically determine it. The OCR capability in Google Drive is also available in Drive for Android.

On Twitter, many users have welcomed and even celebrated this new feature from Google:

Optical Character Recognition #OCR in Google Drive recongnizes many indic languages including #Kannada give it a try http://t.co/99UkCJQ6gb

— Omshivaprakash (@omshivaprakash) August 28, 2015

@shylobisnett if you have access to a scanner, you can do OCR through google drive. works a bit faster.

— Whet Moser (@whet) August 27, 2015

Wow. Searching Google Drive for a keyword also returns results for images containing that keyword in the image. Didn't realise it did OCR.

— Mark Osborne (@mosborne01) August 25, 2015

Typically OCR software has difficulty reading the text on old documents or pages with blemishes and ink marks, spitting out gibberish instead of legible text.

Google's support page on this project shares additional details about character formatting, like its ability to preserve bold and italicized fonts in the output text:

When processing your document, we attempt to preserve basic text formatting such as bold and italic text, font size and type, and line breaks. However, detecting these elements is difficult and we may not always succeed. Other text formatting and structuring elements such as bulleted and numbered lists, tables, text columns, and footnotes or endnotes are likely to get lost.

For some of the languages, like Malayalam and Tamil, the OCR works with almost 100 percent accuracy, and includes support for formatting things like like auto-cropping, separating text by discarding images, and ignoring color backgrounds, explains Tamil user and Wikimedian Ravishankar Ayyakkannu on Facebook:

[…] Google Tamil OCR works with 100% accuracy ! Keep testing with various samples and comment here. Performance has been the same for many other Indic languages too. […] Auto crops, discards images and colored background. Recognizes different layouts. I could find only 1 mistake in whole page. Testing latest Vikatan – https://docs.google.com/…/1OXre4…/edit.. […]

(Bangla, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Tamil, and Telugu-language users have commented in the same post with feedback after testing the updated OCR software. For a few scripts, like Gurmukhi (used to write Punjabi), it turns out that the output after OCR is quite poor, resulting largely in gibberish, when testing a screenshot image from Punjabi Wikipedia.)


Issues with Gurmukhi script after OCR using Google's OCR. Screenshot from Punjabi Wikipedia.

This is quite a large leap for the languages with lots of old texts that are not yet digitized. Old and valuable texts in many languages could now be digitized and shared over the internet using platforms like Wikisource and could be preserved and made available for sharing knowledge.

Google's OCR partly uses Tesseract—an OCR engine released as freeware. Developed as a community project between 1995 and 2006 (and later taken over by Google), Tesseract is considered to be one of the world's most accurate OCR engines and works for over 60 languages. The source code is now hosted at https://github.com/tesseract-ocr. Check this link for the OCR outputs in various South Asian scripts.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/googles-optical-character-recognition-software-now-works-with-all-south-asian-languages