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National Resource Kit: The Manipur Chapter (Call for Comments)

CLPR — 2013-11-07T06:12:54Z

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research on the state of laws, policies and programmes for persons with disabilities in the state of Manipur.

Executive Summary

In June 2013, the State Platform of Disabled People’s Organization in Manipur submitted a memorandum to the Social Welfare Minister and the Chief Minister demanding a proper budget allocation for persons with disability and an official State Policy on disability[1] and to ensure its proper implementation.

Quick Statistics
Capital:Imphal
Population (2011): 2,721,746
Number of people with disabilities: 28,380
Literacy (2011): 79.85%

Legal Provisions

The State Government of Manipur has not created or implemented any state specific legislation on persons with disabilities. The Government of Manipur has devised the following schemes:

Accessibility
Free bus travel facility is available for persons with disabilities on the State Transport buses.

Aids and Appliances
There are no state government schemes created by the Government of Manipur. The Central Government sponsored ADIP scheme has been implemented:

Assistance to Disabled Person Scheme (ADIP): The main objective of this Scheme is to assist persons with disabilities in procuring durable, sophisticated and scientifically manufactured, modern, standard aids and appliances that can promote their physical, social and psychological rehabilitation, by reducing the effects of disabilities and enhancing their economic potential. The quantum of assistance and income limit under the ADIP scheme is as follows:

Quantum of assistance and income limit under the ADIP scheme:
	Total Income	Amount of Assistance
1	Up to Rs. 6,500/- per month	Full cost of aid/appliance
2	Rs. 6,501/- to Rs. 10,000/- per month	50% of the cost of aid/appliance

The scheme is implemented through implementing agencies such as the NGOs, National Institutes under this Ministry and ALIMCO (a PSU).

Education
Various scholarships by the Government of Manipur are also available, as follows:
Pre-metric scholarships (typically for studies between Std I and Std X)

Scholarship Name	Scope of Study	Eligibility			Benefits
		Income (p.a.)	Social	Academic
Financial Assistance to dependent	Age 6 - 16 studying in recognized schools	Less than Rs 500/- p.m.			Rs 720/- p.a.
Scheme for students with disabilities	Grade 1 - 5	Less Than Rs 2,000/- p.m.	Disability	40%	Grade 1-2: Day Scholars: Rs 40/- p.m.; Hostellers: Rs 60/- p.m.; Grade 3-5: Day Scholars: Rs 40/- p.m.; Hostellers: Rs 80/- p.m.;

Secondary Education Scholarships (typically for studies between Std IX and Std XII)

	Scholarship Name	Scope of Study	Eligibility			Benefits
			Income (p.a.)	Social	Academic
1	Scheme for students with disabilities	Grade 9-10	Less than Rs 2,000/- p.m.	Disability	40%	Day Scholars: Rs 720/- p.a.; Hostellers: Rs 1,200/- p.a.; Only blind: Rs 300/- for 6 months

Higher Education Scholarships (typically for graduation and post-graduation studies)

	Scholarship Name	Scope of Study	Eligibility			Benefits
			Income (p.a.)	Social	Academic
1	Scheme for students with disabilities	Under Graduation	Less Than Rs 2,000/- p.m.	Disability	40%	1st and 2nd year - Day Scholars: Rs 90/- p.m.; Hostellers: Rs 130/- p.m.; Blind only: Rs 75/- p.m. for 6 months
2	Scheme for students with disabilities	Post Graduation	Less Than Rs 2,000/- p.m.	Disability	40%	Day Scholars: Rs 120/- p.m.; Hostellers: Rs 170/- p.m.; Blind only: Rs 100/- p.m. for 6 months
	Scheme for students with disabilities	Professional Courses (MBBS / LLB / B.Ed. etc.	Less Than Rs 24,000/- p.a.	Disability	40%	Day Scholars: Rs 120/- p.m.; Hostellers: Rs 170/- p.m.; Blind only: Rs 100/- p.m. for 6 months

Criteria:
A candidate applying for scholarships must be a Manipuri by birth or a person who has settled in the state for at least ten years. The person should be citizen of India and resident of Manipur at least for the last six years. The candidate should have secured at least 40% mark at the previous annual examination. No scholarship will be admissible if the combined monthly income of the parents / guardian of the candidate is more than Rs 2,000/-.

The Social Welfare Department of Manipur offers a scholarship of Rs 300 per annum to students with mental health problems.

The Social Welfare Department, Government of Manipur created a special employment exchange window for persons with disabilities in 1982 to ensure that there are employment opportunities for persons with disabilities.
3% of posts in the direct recruitment of Class - III and IV posts are reserved for persons with disabilities in the following rosters.
i) 1% for Visual Impaired in the 34th roster.
ii) 1% for Hearing Impaired in the 67th roster.
iii) 1% for Locomotors Disability in the 100th roster.[2]
The upper age limitfor applying to Government jobs was extended by the Government of Manipur by 10 years for persons with disabilities from all categories.
The State Government also provides financial assistance to persons with disabilities who are self-employed.
The Manipur Government also provides for unemployment allowances for candidates with disabilities who have been listed on the special employment exchange for more than two years but have not been able to find employment.

Health and Rehabilitation
Grameen Purnavas Yojna is a central government sponsored scheme and under this scheme, a rehabilitation centre has been set up in Manipur for persons with disabilities. Wheel chairs/tri-cycles have been distributed to members of the centre.

Social Protection
The Government of Manipur provides financial assistance to persons with disabilities, who have a family income of less than Rs. 60,000 per annum. The amount fixed as financial assistance varies each year depending on the availability of funds. Under this scheme, the Government aims to provide assistance to 1000 persons.

The Central Government sponsored Indira Gandhi Disability pension scheme has been implemented in 8 districts of Manipur and a total of Rs 13.4 lakhs has been received by the State Government for this scheme in 2010-11.

Sources

[1].(http://imphaltimes.com/disable-people-demand-state-policy/)

[2]. http://socialwelfaremanipur.nic.in/disable.htm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kit-manipur-chapter-call-for-comments

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

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

Accessibility of Banks and Financial Services Institutions: A Global Survey

Nilofar Ansher — 2013-10-29T06:51:20Z

The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs (G3ict), a non-profit initiative advocating digital inclusion for persons with disabilities, has launched a global survey called ‘Banking and Financial Services Accessibility Initiative’. The project aims to be a repository of information on the measures that banks, insurance companies and allied financial services firms are undertaking in order to make their offerings more accessible and user-friendly for persons with disabilities and senior citizens.

Towards this end, G3ict, together with Scotiabank, requests senior managers, COO / CEOs, Managing Directors, IT Directors, HR Directors, and accessibility professionals from banks and financial services companies to participate in this Global Survey.

Aim

The survey will help us develop accessibility benchmarks and identify best practices in the field. The aim is to design options for banks and financial services institutions to increase their customer base by enabling them to cater to a group that might currently not be able to fully access financial services. The outcome will also help promote diversity and inclusion in the banking communities from a CSR standpoint.

Survey

Please take the survey at this link http://bit.ly/17h67lu (opens as a Survey Gizmo webpage). Help us spread the word, by passing on this message to your bank manager or financial services consultant.

Contact

For further information about the survey and its results, please get in touch with Ms. Pina D'Intino, G3ict Financial Access Team Lead at pina.dintino@scotiabank.org.

Organizers

G3ict – The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs - is a non-profit advocacy initiative of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development (UN-GAID). Its mission is to facilitate and support the implementation of the dispositions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the accessibility of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and assistive technologies.

If you require any further details, please do get in touch at nansh@g3ict.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessibility-of-banks-and-financial-services-institutions

National Resource Kit: The Delhi Chapter (Call for Comments)

anandi — 2013-11-12T10:07:33Z

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research on the state of laws, policies and programmes for persons with disabilities in the state of Delhi.

Note: The chapter is an early draft and will undergo subsequent modifications. We welcome comments and feedback from our readers.

Executive Summary

The Department of Social Welfare is responsible for the welfare of persons with disabilities in the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Delhi NCT). The territory has an estimated population of 2,35,886[1] persons with disabilities in a total population of 16,753,235 [2] people.The government of Delhi NCT offers two schemes in Education, three schemes in Skill Training & Employment, and five schemes and three services in Social Security, Health, Rehabilitation & Recreation.

Legal Provisions

The government of Delhi NCT has framed the Delhi Persons with Disabilities (Protection of Rights, Equal Opportunities and Full Participation) Rules 2001[3] and the National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Rules 2000.[4]

The various schemes brought out by Delhi NCT for persons with disabilities are listed below.[5]

Education

The government provides scholarships to students with disabilities in the following scale:

Year	Day Scholars (per month)	Hostellers (per month)	Reader Allowance
Class I – Class V	Rs. 50
Class VI – Class VIII	Rs. 70
Class IX – Class XII or equivalent	Rs. 125	Rs. 300	Rs. 150
BA / B Com / B Sc, etc.	Rs. 200	Rs. 400	Rs. 200
Professional Courses / In Plant Training	Rs. 250	Rs. 500	Rs. 250
PG Courses	Rs. 300	Rs. 500	Rs. 250

The government provides three per cent reservation in seats at I. T. I.s for persons with disabilities.

Skill Training & Employment

Delhi NCT provides three per cent reservation in Grade C and Grade D state government posts in direct recruitment for persons with disabilities.
Persons with disabilities are provided ten years relaxation in the upper age limit for applying to state government posts.
The government provides persons with disabilities five per cent reservation in allotment of DDA shops and kiosks. Persons with disabilities are also provided two per cent reservation in allotment of municipality shops.

Social Security, Health, Rehabilitation and Recreation

Persons with disabilities are issued Disability Identity cards at the offices of the sub-divisional magistrates under whose jurisdiction they reside from 9.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. on all working days.[6] Applicants should carry the following at the time of application:

Filled-in application form
Attested photocopy of first three pages of ration card showing proof of three years residence in Delhi
Attested photocopy of medical Certificate in respect of disability from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital, Hindu Rao Hospital, Safdarjung Hospital, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Ram Manoher Lohia Hospital, Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences etc.
Two passport size photographs – one should be attested by a gazetted officer
For issuance of duplicate identity card, Rs. 10/- to be deposited with the cashier of District and the receipt should be attached with the application form
Ration Card is required at the time of submission of application form

Persons with disabilities may also apply for Disability Identity card at the offices of the Deputy Commissioner / Additional Commissioner (Disabilities) of their respective districts.[7]

The government has identified the following hospitals for issuing disability certificates:

Lok Nayak Hospital
Aruna Asaf Ali Government Hospital
Hindu Rao Hospital
Satyavadi Raja Harish Chander Hospital (for rural areas)
Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital
Jag Pravesh Chandra Hospital, Shastri Nagar
Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital
Guru Gobind Singh Hospital
Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital
Rao Tula Ram Hospital (for rural areas)
Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital
Dr. Hedgewar Arogya Sansthan, Karkadoona
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Hospital, Rohini
Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Mangolpuri
Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital, Pitampura
Maharishi Valmiki Hospital, Pooth Khurd

Persons with mental illness, mental disabilities and neurological disorders can obtain disability certificates from:

Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences
GB Pant Hospital

Persons with disabilities up to the age of 60 years are eligible to receive financial assistance from the government under the 2009 scheme.[9]

Assistance of Rs. 1000 per month is provided to meet the rehabilitation and daily living requirements to those fulfilling the following requirements:

Disability should be at least 40 per cent
Total family income should not exceed Rs. 75,000 per annum
Should have resided in Delhi for at least five years before applying
Should possess disability certificate from the medical board of a government hospital
Should not be in receipt of similar assistance from another source

Persons with disabilities above the age of 60 years are eligible for financial assistance under the Scheme of Old Age Assistance. [10] Under this scheme persons in the age range of 60 to 69 years are eligible for a monthly pension of Rs. 1000 and persons 70 years and above are eligible for a pension of Rs. 1500 per month. Beneficiaries will be automatically transferred from the disability pension scheme upon completion of 60 years to the old age pension scheme. Likewise, upon completion of 69 years, beneficiaries will be automatically eligible for the higher pension. Applicants fulfilling the following conditions may apply in the prescribed format with proof of domicile, age and income:

Should have resided in Delhi NCT for the last five years
Total family income should not exceed Rs. 60,000 per annum
Should not be in receipt of pension from any other source

All voluntary organisations working for persons with disabilities will have to register with the department to be recognised by the Social Welfare Department under the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995.[11]

The Joint Director (Social Welfare) is the competent authority for this purpose. Organisations fulfilling the following conditions are eligible to apply to the office of the District Social Welfare officer:

Should have been in the field for not less than three years
Should be already registered under the relevant law
Should have a properly constituted managing body according to its written constitution
Should be a non profit organisation
Should be able to run the organisation without funding from the government
Professionals should be RCI registered
Premises should be disability friendly and have barrier free access
Should have audited accounts for the last three years

The Department of Social Welfare organises disability camps annually in association with government hospitals, DTC, Department of Education, Office of the Divisional Commissioner, National Trust, Indian Railways and disability NGOs.[12] The following services are provided at the camps:
Disability certificate from the government hospital of the area

DTC passes
Identity card from the office of the DC
Registration in integrated school
Railways concession pass
Services for autism and cerebral palsy
Aids and Appliances
Forms to avail various schemes

Persons with disabilities are provided one per cent reservation in allotment of DDA plots.

DTC issues free passes for persons with disabilities. Escorts for persons with visual impairment are given 50 per cent concession.

Persons with disabilities who are owners of vehicles are exempted from payment of road tax.

[1].http://socialjustice.nic.in/statewisedisabled.php

[2].http://censusindia.gov.in/2011census/censusinfodashboard/stock/profiles/en/IND007_NCT%20of%20Delhi.pdf

[3].No. F.2 (DDHW)/DSW/PDA/Pt.I/1949 dated 27.12.2001

[4].GSR 639(E) dated 26.7.2000.

[5].http://punarbhava.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=150&Itemid=89

[6].http://www.delhigovt.nic.in/dept/pubserv/Handicap.asp

[7].http://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_socialwelfare/SocialWelfare/Home/Our+Services/Welfare+of+Persons+with+Disabilities/Office+for+Issuance+of+I-Card

[8].http://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_socialwelfare/SocialWelfare/Home/Our+Services/Welfare+of+Persons+with+Disabilities/Hospitals+for+Issuance+of+Disability+Certificates

[9].http://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_socialwelfare/SocialWelfare/Home/Our+Services/Welfare+of+Persons+with+Disabilities/Schemes

[10].http://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/DOIT_SocialWelfare/socialwelfare/home/our+services/financial+assistance+welfare+scheme+details+and+notifications+etc.

[11].http://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_socialwelfare/SocialWelfare/Home/Our+Services/Welfare+of+Persons+with+Disabilities/Registration+Certificate+Under+Section+52+of+Disability+Act

[12].http://delhi.gov.in/wps/wcm/connect/doit_socialwelfare/SocialWelfare/Home/Our+Services/Welfare+of+Persons+with+Disabilities/Disability+Camps

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/the-delhi-chapter

October 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-01-04T04:31:01Z

Our newsletter for the month of October 2013 can be accessed below.

Highlights

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research for the states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the Union Territory of Daman and Diu.
The Department of Electronics and Information Technology invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.
The Access to Knowledge team in collaboration with the Goa University re-released the Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA-3.0.
Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia from October 21 to 25. Overall CIS spoke in 7 panels.
In an article on Spy Files, Maria Xynou examines the legality of India’s surveillance technologies and their potential connection to India’s central monitoring system.
A clause-by-clause comments on the Working draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 was sent to the Ministry of Science and Technology.
CIS started the first Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country.

Accessibility

As part of our project (under a grant from the Hans Foundation) on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India, we bring you draft chapters for the states of Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, and the union territory of Daman and Diu. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 24 states and 5 union territories. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the following chapters:

National Resource Kit

The Daman and Diu Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 28, 2013).
The Arunachal Pradesh Chapter (by CLPR, October 29, 2013).
The Madhya Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 30, 2013).
The Delhi Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, October 31, 2013).

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Survey (Other Organisation)

Accessibility of Banks and Financial Services Institutions: A Global Survey (posted by Nilofar Ansher, October 20, 2013). G3ict and Scotiabank, requests senior managers, COO / CEOs, Managing Directors, IT Directors, HR Directors, and accessibility professionals from banks and financial services companies to participate.

Blog Entry

Bengali eSpeak Aids in Disaster Management (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 15, 2013).

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers and human rights, and critically examines Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, and Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We produced a column in the Economic and Political Weekly, submitted our feedback on Framework on Open Source Software Adoption in E-Governance Systems, and conducted 3 Wikipedia workshops:

Article

The Fight for Digital Sovereignty (by Sunil Abraham, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII No. 42, October 19, 2013).

Blog Entries

Mobile Phone Patents: Prior Art Survey (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 23, 2013).
Ambiguity in the App Store: Understanding India’s emerging IT sector in light of IP (by Samantha Cassar, October 24, 2013).

Submission

Feedback on the Framework on OSS Adoption in E-Governance Systems (by Nehaa Chaudhari, October 26, 2013). In September, 2013, the DeitY invited comments on the Framework on the proposed adoption of Open Source Software in E-Governance Systems. CIS gave its feedback.

Events Participated In

OSOD 2013: International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data (organised by Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, October 7, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari participated as a panelist and gave a presentation on Government Accessibility and Copyright Conundrum.

National Conference on Opening up by Closing the Circle: Strengthening Open Access in India (co-organised by UNESCO, Central Library, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, October 21, 2013). Nehaa Chaudhari was a panelist in the discussion on "Why Open Access?". She gave a presentation on 'Pondering Copyright and Recasting Openness'.

Note: The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we held 3 Wikipedia workshops in October:

Event Co-organised

Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (organised by Goa University and CIS-A2K, Goa University Conference Hall, September 26, 2013). Nitika Tandon has blogged about the event.

Events Organised

Workshop on Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classrooms (October 1, 203, Christ University, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Programme (October 3 – 6, 2013, CEO Center, Gubbi, Bangalore. CIS-A2K Team conducted the workshop. Seventeen people participated in the event.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization (Goa University, October 19-20, 2013). CIS-A2K team conducted the workshop. Thirty-seven people participated in the event.

Events Participated In

Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production (organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, October 29, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”.

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:

Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference (Daijiworld, October 1, 2013).
Wikipedia in Indian Languages on Mobile Phones (by Megha Prakash, Sci Dev Net, October 15, 2013).
कोंकणी विश्‍वकोश ‘विकिपीडिया’वर (Navprabha Daily, October 22, 2013). A detailed article about the digitalization of Konkani Vishwakosh.

Internet Governance

CIS is doing a project (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) on conducting research on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). So far we have organised seven privacy round-tables and drafted the Privacy (Protection) Bill. This month we bring you clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012, and a map monitoring privacy in India. As part of its project (funded by Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and support from the IDRC) on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia we did an interview with Anja Kovacs on cyber security. With this we have completed a total of 10 video interviews:

Internet Governance Forum

Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash and Chinmayi Arun participated in the Internet Governance Forum held in Bali, Indonesia in the month of October. Overall, CIS spoke in 7 panels:

Charting the Charter: Internet Rights and Principles Online (organised by IRP Coalition, October 22, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
Fair process frameworks for cross-border online spaces (organised by the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of France, Western Europe and Others Group and Internet & Jurisdiction Project, Civil Society of Germany, Western Europe and Others Group, October 22, 2013). Sunil Abraham and Chinmayi Arun were panelists for this workshop.
Removing Barriers to Connectivity: Connecting the Unconnected (organised by Internet Society and ETNO, October 23, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
FOSS: Smart Choice for Developing Countries (organised by TechNation and Open Source Alliance of Central Asia, October 23, 2013). Sunil Abraham spoke on FOSS and IT Growth Policies in South Asia.
Privacy: from regional regulations to global connections? (organised by Internet Society, Bali, October 24, 2013). Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists.
Human rights, freedom of expression and free flow of information on the Internet (a Focus Session on Openness, October 24, 2013). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker at this event.
Taking Stock: Emerging Issues - Internet Surveillance (a session on Internet Surveillance, October 25, 2013). Pranesh Prakash made intervention in this session.
Tweets from Bali IGF 2013: To enable research by those who didn't want to mess around with Twitter's APIs, CIS has made available tweets from the IGF as downloadable .CSV files.

Privacy

Magazine Article

What India can Learn from the Snowden Revelations (by Elonnai Hickok, Yahoo, October 23, 2013). The title of the article was changed in the version published by Yahoo.

Blog Entries

Concerns Regarding DNA Law (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013): http://bit.ly/1aoxXM9.
Interview with Big Brother Watch on Privacy and Surveillance (by Maria Xynou, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cRDMbV.
Interview with Bruce Schneier (by Maria Xynou, October 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/GS6oDX.
An Interview with the Tactical Technology Collective (by Maria Xynou, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/1i1lVNo.
Interview with Dr. Alexander Dix (by Maria Xynou, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/1a7dgtQ.
Open Letter to Members of the European Parliament of the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (by Elonnai Hickok, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17eZntz.
An Interview with Jacob Kohnstamm (by Elonnai Hickok, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/17NcQmD.
Spy Files 3: WikiLeaks Sheds More Light on the Global Surveillance Industry (by Maria Xynou, October 25, 2013): http://bit.ly/1d6EmjD.

Comments

Re: The Human DNA Profiling Bill, 2012 (by Bhairav Acharya, October 9, 2013). CIS provided clause-by-clause comments on the on the Working Draft version of the Human DNA Profiling Bill: http://bit.ly/17Jpp63.

Announcement

The India Privacy Monitor Map (by Maria Xynou with assistance from Srinivas Atreya, October 9, 2013). CIS has started a first of its kind Privacy Watch in India. The map includes data on the UID, NPR and CCTNS schemes, as well as on the installation of CCTV cameras and the use of drones throughout the country: http://bit.ly/19A5mCZ.

Event Organised

Privacy Round-table, New Delhi (organised by FICCI, DSCI and CIS, FICCI, Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, October 19, 2013): http://bit.ly/GAsStr.

Event Participated In

'Free Speech and Media in South Asia: Human Rights Concerns in a Globalizing World (organised by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Centre for Media and Governance, National Law University, Delhi, Oxford University, October 25, 2013). Chinmayi Arun spoke about “Privacy and Surveillance in India” in a panel discussion: http://bit.ly/18bRGi5.

Cyber Security

Laird Brown, a strategic planner and writer with core competencies on brand analysis, public relations and resource management and Purba Sarkar who in the past worked as a strategic advisor in the field of SAP Retail are working in this project:

Part 11: An Interview with Anja Kovacs (October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/15EAZOE.

Other IG Updates
Event Organised

Mapping Digital Media: Broadcasting, Journalism and Activism in India (co-organised by Alternative Law Forum, Maraa and CIS, Bangalore International Centre, October 27, 2013). Samantha Cassar has blogged about the event: http://bit.ly/17EVtdw. It was covered by the New Indian Express (http://bit.ly/1dGENE6) and Hindu (http://bit.ly/1bcVUIU) on October 28.

Events Participated In

Religious Pluralism and the Tensions between Freedom of Expression and Respect for the 'Other’ (organised by Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations project, in cooperation with Jamia Millia Islamia, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 10, 2013). Chinmayi Arun was a speaker at the session on “Democracy and the Tension between Freedom of Speech and Respect for the Other’s Religion, Culture, Identity, India and Europe”: http://bit.ly/194dtI7.
Fragmentation in a Democracy: The Role of Social Movements and the Media (organised by the Observer Research Foundation, Delhi and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Berlin at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, October 16, 2013). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session on “Impact of Media, Social Media & Technology on Democracy / Governance”: http://bit.ly/17e3PZ9.
Internet, Mobile & Digital Economy Conference (IMDEC) 2013 (organised by FICCI, in association with the Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India, New Delhi, October 25, 2013). Sunil Abraham participated as a speaker in the session on "The Internet We Want: A Multistakeholder Approach": http://bit.ly/1b8QHDD.

New and Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Decline in web freedom steepest in India: Report (by Javed Anwer, The Times of India, October 3, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cVOJ99.
Google survey: 37% of urban Indian voters are online (by Anuja and Moulishree Srivastava, Livemint, October 8, 2013): http://bit.ly/1gtqqDY.
The quest for genuine clout on the internet (by Karthik Subramanian, October 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1b8TdKa.
India believes in Complete Freedom of Cyber Space: Kapil Sibal (by Elizabeth Roche, Livemint, October 14, 2013): http://bit.ly/1fZgwd1.
Location Tracking: Why the Govt-Mobile Manufacturer War Won’t End Soon (by Danish Raza, FirstPost, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/HkIvF7.
Bouquets & brickbats for Google's new privacy policy (by Indu Nandakumar, Economic Times, October 18, 2013): http://bit.ly/18Rzkqm.
Bali meet to discuss Internet governance issues (by Moulishree Srivastava, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17I4r3M.
Indian politicians yet to tap voters online: CIS’s Abraham (by Venkatesh Upadhyay, Livemint, October 22, 2013): http://bit.ly/17HRV4s.
Beyond the Searchlight (by Debarshi Dasgupta, October 23, 2013): http://bit.ly/17IitlZ.
Nowhere to hide: Govt making your personal details public (by FirstPost editors, FirstPost, October 28, 2013): http://bit.ly/1dGE6KJ.
Your private data may be online, courtesy govt (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/HpQRMp.
Saving privacy as we knew it (by Somesh Jha and Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/16HNYwu.
E-governance hopes rise as India crosses 1 billion transactions (by J Srikant, Economic Times, October 29, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cnJIKd.

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:

Events Participated In

GFM 2013 (organized by the University of Luneberg, Germany, October 3 – 5, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah participated in a panel discussion with Wendy Chun, Tom Levine and Geert Lovink, around 'The End of Bibliographies: New Media and Research'. Nishant also participated as a panelist in a panel discussion on 'Open Up: Pragmatism and Politics of Open Access': http://bit.ly/1f9LCOH.
Digitalization of Culture (organized by Leuphana University, Luneberg, October 8, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah did an introduction keynote to 1600 undergraduate students. A video of the lecture can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/1enWQPv.
RENEW: The 5th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology (hosted by RIXC Centre for New Media Culture in Riga in partnership with the Art Academy of Latvia, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and Danube University’s Center for Image Science, October 8 - 11, 2013). Dr. Nishant Shah was a part of the selection committee for the conference and chaired a session on Network Art on October 9: http://bit.ly/17e41aJ.

Blog Entry

A Hitchhikers Guide to the Cyberspace (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 4, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ga8yfH.

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project to create a knowledge repository on Internet and society. This repository will comprise content targeted primarily at civil society with a view to enabling their informed participation in the Indian Internet and ICT policy space. The repository is available at the Internet Institute website: http://bit.ly/1iQT2UB.

Modules

World Intellectual Property Organisation (by Anirudh Sridhar and Snehashish Ghosh, October 31, 2013). WIPO is a specialized agency of the United Nations which deals with issues related to intellectual property rights throughout the world. Find out more at http://bit.ly/17a8WEk.
An Interview on Internet Governance with Professor Milton Mueller and Jeremy Malcolm (by Anirudh Sridhar, October 31, 2013). Professor Milton Mueller from the Syracuse University School of Information and Jeremy Malcolm, an Information Technology and Intellectual Property Lawyer, spoke about current issues and debates surrounding internet governance: http://bit.ly/17ix3Ro.

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 or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@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 donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2013-bulletin

National Conference on: Harnessing technology for the empowerment for the persons with visual impairments

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T10:38:53Z

Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan participates as a speaker at this event. The event is organized by NIVH.

Click to read the complete agenda published by NAB Centre for Blind Women & Disability Studies

Background Note

As we all are aware, Assistive Technolgy has played an unprecedented role in equalizing opportunities and in improving the quality of life of people with disabilities in last few years, with solutions helping in the elimination of barriers in all kinds of environments.

However, inspite of the advanced development, the Assistive technology for the VI has been confined to special devices leading mostly to disparate solutions. These devices also are most often rendered incompatible with the quickly changing technological landscape interfacing with all sectors of development, making it unaffordable or obsolete for people with disabilities to communicate with the highly digital and networked society in the contemporary world. This disparity further isolates the disabled population calling out for a more holistic approach to make the mainstream technology accessible from the designing stage.

Moreover, increasingly all services in every sphere of life, be it employment, education, communication, entertainment, civic participation, or government functions are moving either primarily or exclusively online worldwide.

While for PWDs, the Internet has a great potential to enhance their freedom to access goods, services and information independently through online services; a sizeable population of people especially with visual impairment are increasingly finding it difficult to access online services and information due to design barriers. This is becoming an alarmingly serious issue in the near future, considering the engagement of vital sectors like banking and publications with technology.

We already face a rate of unemployment that is more than 3 times as high as the rest of the population and experience similar gaps in educational achievement. High levels of inaccessibility on the Web and Internet-enabled mobile technologies are threatening to exclude people with visual impairment even further, who experience disability from the information society.

The potential of an accessible Internet is immense which could not only increase the inclusion of people with disabilities and facilitate online education, telework, participation in e-government, but also would enable social relationships that overcome barriers and challenges presented by the physical world.

We are, therefore, in a situation of necessity, to harness the enormous prospects of technology to create an empowering, economically progressive and inclusive society, with a new approach to implement the public policy to eliminate the virtual barriers that are in place, ensuring that people with disabilities are not marginalized.

The need of the hour is to develop an accessible technology plan to

Define the accessible technology strategy,
Identify requirements,
Design, develop, and purchase technology,
Implement and Train in a timely manner

The national conference on ` Harnessing technology for the empowerment for the persons with visual impairments’ being organised by the NIVH, a premier Institute of Government of India in the field of visual disability functioning under the administrative control of Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment to be held on 19th Nov 2013 aims to create opportunities of exploring the potential of inclusive solutions which are designed to serve all people regardless of their physical abilities.

The conference would bring together best practices models from India and abroad. It would facilitate interaction between the inclusive design experts for online services & accessible information and the officials from all levels of government and PSUs. The conference will in particular address the problems and potential solutions with reference to access to banking services, web and online services, access to documents and publications in digital, Braille and audio formats, and access to Digital Television
On the sidelines of the conference, a small exhibition will display a range of products hardware and software rendering possible solutions.

It is understood that all the participants invited to this conference have a critical role in the implementation of legal commitments and policy decisions for creating an accessible, enabling and empowering environment in which people can access all the services and information intended to benefit all citizens of the country.

Draft agenda

9:00 – 9:30 a.m.: Registration
9:30 a.m.- 10:20 a.m.: Inaugural Session
9:30 a.m.: Felicitations
9:36 a.m.: Lighting of Lamp followed by a devotional song
9:40 a.m.: Welcome address by J.S. DDA and objectives of the Conference
9:45 a.m.: Address by Secy. DDA
9:55 a.m.: Key Note address
10:15 a.m.: Vote of Thanks by Director NIVH
10:20-10:40 a.m.: Tea Break
10.40 a.m.: Plenary Session 1
11.40 a.m.: Plenary Session 2
2.15 p.m.: Plenary Session 3
4.00 p.m.: Plenary Session 4

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/nabcentreforwomen-november-19-2013-national-conference-on-harnessing-technology-for-the-empowerment-for-the-persons-with-visual-impairments

July 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-08-11T05:46:53Z

Seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014) below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the seventh issue of the newsletter (July 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

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Highlights
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Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28^th session of the World Intellectual Property Organisation Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) gave its statements on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives and Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.
India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty and the Accessible Books Consortium was launched. Nehaa Chaudhari who participated in the 28^th session of the WIPO-SCCR reports on this in a blog entry.
Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva produced a research paper on patent valuation and license fee determination as part of the Pervasive Technologies project.
Our grant application to the Wikimedia Foundation was approved. CIS has been awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year for the Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) project.
CIS and the University of Mysore organized the Open Knowledge day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. Six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha was re-released under the Creative Commons (CC license).
We helped the Ministry of Science and Technology draft the Open Access Policy for the DST/DBT.
The first of the seven proposed roundtable meetings on “Privacy and Surveillance” conducted by CIS in collaboration with the Cellular Operators Association of India and the Council for Fair Business Practices was held in Mumbai on June 28, 2014. Anandini K. Rathore has blogged on this.
Bedavyasa Mohanty has produced a blog entry that analyses the nuances of interception of communications under the Indian Telegraph Act and the Indian Post Office Act.
Vinayak Mithal has written a blog entry on the Constitutionality of Indian surveillance law that analyses ICANN's reactive transparency mechanism, comparing it with freedom of information best practices. He describes the DIDP and its relevance for the Internet community.
Nishant Shah speaks on the right to freedom of speech and expression in the latest interview conducted as part of the Cybersecurity series being done with a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa.
Nishant Shah’s peer reviewed article “Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore” was published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, on July 3, 2014. Nishant gives a narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.
CIS recruited two new staff members in its Bangalore office. Rohini Lakshane joined as a Program Officer in the Pervasive Technologies project and K.N. Medini joined as a Senior Accounts Officer. Their profiles can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/people/our-team.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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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. We compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). We will be publishing this soon. The draft chapters along with 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

Work Report for July (by Suman Dogra, July 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

India's Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty Celebrated; Accessible Books Consortium Launched (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 1, 2014): India became the first country to ratify the Marrakesh Treaty.

Media Coverage

SpicyIP Tidbit: India ratifies the Marrakesh Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Thomas J. Vallianeth, Spicy IP, July 1, 2014).

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

►WIPO

Participation in Event and Statements
Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the 28^th session of WIPO-SCCR held in Geneva from June 30 to July 4, 2014. The following have been the outputs from the event:

Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations at WIPO SCCR 28 (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 2, 2014).
Opening Comments by India on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 (posted by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 7, 2014). This was the statement made by the Indian delegation at WIPO-SCCR 28^th session on July 2, 2014.
Statement on the Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives at WIPO SCCR 28 (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 3, 2014).
28th Session of the WIPO SCCR: Report on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (by Nehaa Chaudhari, July 29, 2014).

► Pervasive Technologies

Research Papers

Patent Valuation and License Fee Determination in Context of Patent Pools (by Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva, July 9, 2014). Vikrant has produced research that examines patent valuation and license fee determination in detail.
Grounds for Compulsory Patent Licensing in United States, Canada, China, and India (by Maggie Huang, July 29, 2014). In her research paper Maggie tries to answer questions about the grounds of compulsory licensing in international treaties with specific examples from America and Asia.

►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).

Announcement
Our grant application to the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) of the Wikimedia Foundation was approved by its board which met in Frankfurt from May 21 to 24, 2014. CIS had requested a grant of Rs. 18,406,454 and were awarded Rs. 12,000,000 for the next one year.

The following were done this month:

Articles / Blog Entries

Aircel & Wikimedia Foundation announce Wikipedia Zero (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, Prajavani, July 3, 2014). As per this, users of Aircel need not pay for data for accessing Wikipedia.
ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Samaja, July 4, 2014).
State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Sovereign, July 7, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶର ରାସ୍ତା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Sambad, July 23, 2014).
University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, July 24, 2014). Leading English and Kannada dailies like Andolana Kannada, City Today, Deccan Herald, Hosa Diganta, Kannada Jana Mana, Kannada Prabha, Rajya Dharma, Samyukta Karnataka, The Hindu, The New Indian Express, Udayavani, Vijaya Karnataka, and Vijaya Vani published about this. Scanned versions of the published articles can be downloaded here.
Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia (by Dorothy Howard, Wikimedia Blog, July 25, 2014).
Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices, July 27, 2014). This was re-published on the Wikimedia Blog, July 30, 2014.
Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odisha Review, posted on July 28, 2014). The essay was published in the magazine’s June edition.

Event Organized

Open Knowledge Day (co-organized by Mysore University and CIS-A2K, Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies, University of Mysore, July 15, 2014). The event coincided with the Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin from July 15 to 17. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the event. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license.

Participation in Events

National Level Seminar on Computer Application and Odia Language (organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research, July 6, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi was a panelist.
Open Knowledge Festival 2014 (organized by Google, Omidyar, et.al., Berlin, July 15 – 17, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi represented India as the India Ambassador of OpenGLAM local and made a presentation.
#NAMA: The Future of Indic Languages (organized by Medianama, The Oberoi Hotel, Bangalore, July 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

News and Media Coverage
CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Wikipedia edit-a-thons to add content on LGBTs (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 7, 2014).
Font problem hits Odia (by Bibhuti Barik, The Telegraph, July 7, 2014).
Four volumes of Kannada Encyclopaedia digitised (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 12, 2014).
‘ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ’ಕ್ಕೆ ಇನ್ನು ಲೈಸೆನ್ಸ್ ಹಂಗಿಲ್ಲ (Prajavani, July 14, 2014).
Soon, all 14 volumes of Kannada encyclopaedia to be online (by R. Krishna Kumar, The Hindu, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯಾಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ (Kannada Prabha, July 15, 2014).
ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶದ ಆರು ಸಂಪುಟ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾಗೆ (Udayavani, July 15, 2014).
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾದಲ್ಲಿ kannada ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ : ಈಗ ಆನ್ ಲೈನ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ 6 ಸಂಪುಟಗಳು ಮುಕ್ತ…ಮುಕ್ತ……( Just Kannada, July 15, 2014).
Six Kannada encyclopaedias released (Webindia 123, July 15, 2014).
150 Rare Books Get New Lease of Life Online, Courtesy Students (by Anila Backer, New Indian Express, July 15, 2014).
Open Access: Students help revive and digitize rare books for Malayalam Wiki Library (Spicy IP, July 15, 2014).
'Trolled' from US Congress, Wikipedia bans edits (by Narayan Lakshman, The Hindu, July 25, 2014).
Telugu Wikipedia struggles to stay afloat (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 27, 2014).
The joys of being a Wikipedian (by Svetlana Lasrado, New Indian Express, July 29, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation (Vijayavani, July 30, 2014).
Kannada Wikipedia Presentation for Kannada Science Writers (Prajavani, July 31, 2014).

►Openness

Blog Entries

Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Mozilla Website, July 8, 2014).
Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, July 13, 2014).
Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release Open Access Policy (by Anubha Sinha, July 18, 2014). We have also been acknowledged in the policy.

HasGeek Event

The Fifth Elephant (NIMHANS Convention Centre, July 25-26, 2014). CIS was a community outreach partner.

Media Coverage

Plan for open access to science research (by Renuka Phadnis, The Hindu, July 22, 2014).
Indian Govt looks to provide free access to publicly-funded research works (by Riddhi Mukherjee, Medianama, July 23, 2014).

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Internet Governance
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►Freedom of Expression

As part of our project on Freedom of Expression (funded through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation) to study the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute to the debates around Internet governance and freedom of expression at forums like ICANN, ITU, IGF, WSIS, etc., we bring you the following outputs:

Blog Entries

ICANN’s Documentary Information Disclosure Policy – I: DIDP Basics (by Vinayak Mithal, July 1, 2014).
Reading the Fine Script: Service Providers, Terms and Conditions and Consumer Rights (by Jyoti Panday, July 2, 2014).
Facebook and its Aversion to Anonymous and Pseudonymous Speech (by Jessamine Mathew, July 4, 2014).
Free Speech and Surveillance (by Gautam Bhatia, July 7, 2014).
Delhi High Court Orders Blocking of Websites after Sony Complains Infringement of 2014 FIFA World Cup Telecast Rights (by Anubha Sinha, July 8, 2014).
GNI and IAMAI Launch Interactive Slideshow Exploring Impact of India's Internet Laws (by Jyoti Panday, July 17, 2014).

FOEX Live

We are also posting a selection of news from across India implicating online freedom of expression and use of digital technology: July 7, 2014.

►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. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Blog Entries

Models for Surveillance and Interception of Communications Worldwide (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 2, 2014).
The Constitutionality of Indian Surveillance Law: Public Emergency as a Condition Precedent for Intercepting Communications (by Bedavyasa Mohanty, July 4, 2014).
UK’s Interception of Communications Commissioner — A Model of Accountability (by Joe Sheehan, July 24, 2014).

Event Report

First Privacy and Surveillance Roundtable (by Anandini K Rathore, July 18, 2014).

Article

Private Censorship and the Right to Hear (by Chinmayi Arun, The Hoot, July 17, 2014). The article was also mirrored on the website of the Centre for Communication Governance.

Participation in Events

Information Influx Conference (organized by the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, July 2 – 4, 2014). Malavika Jayaram was a speaker.
Consultation to Frame Rules under the Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2011 (organized by National Campaign for People's Right to Information and Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, New Delhi, July 5, 2014). Bhairav Acharya participated in the event.
Best Practices Meet (organized by DSCI, Hotel Leela Palace, Bangalore, July 9, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a panelist.
Rethinking Privacy: The Link between Florida v. Jardines and the Surveillance of Nature Films (organized by Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, July 11, 2014). Bhairav Acharya gave a talk.
Region as Frame: Politics, Presence, Practice (organized by International Association for Media and Communication Research, Hyderabad, July 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker for these panels: Governing Digital Spaces: Issues of Access, Privacy and Freedom, UNESCO panel debate, and Special Session on Research Paths In and Outside of the Academy.
ICT Awareness Program for Myanmar Parliamentarians (organized by Myanmar ICT for Development Organization, July 26 – 27, 2014, Yangon). Sunil Abraham participated in the event as a speaker and presented on Innovation Ecosystem and Thinking about Internet Regulation.

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

Cyber-crimes shoot up 52% in India over last year (by K.V.Kurmanath, Hindu Businessline, July 2, 2014).
COAI, Centre for Internet & Society to hold pan-India meetings on privacy issues (IANS, July 4, 2014). The news was mirrored in the Times of India , NDTV, Business Standard , Economic Times , and World News.
Living in a Fish Bowl (by Shuma Raha, The Telegraph, July 16, 2014).
Terror recruiters target Indians on internet (by Sandhya Soman, July 18, 2014).
The trouble with trolls (by Vishal Mathur, Livemint, July 22, 2014).
India’s dedicated Cryptology centre gets Rs. 115 crore funding (by Harichandan Arakali, SearchSecurity.in, July 28, 2014).

►Cyber Stewards
As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia with the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and the International Development Research Centre, Canada, CIS conducted 2 new interviews. With this it has finished a total of 19 interviews:

Video Interviews

Lobsang Gyatso Sither (July 31, 2014).

Lobsang Sangay (July 31, 2014).

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Digital Humanities
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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:

Peer Reviewed Article

Asia in the Edges: A Narrative Account of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Summer School in Bangalore (by Nishant Shah, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Journal, Volume 15, Issue 2, July 3, 2014). This is the narrative account of the experiments and ideas that shaped the second Summer School, “The Asian Edge” which was hosted in Bangalore, India, in 2012.

Blog Entry

Reading from a Distance — Data as Text (by P.P. Sneha, July 23, 2014).

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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, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@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/july-2014-bulletin

National Resource Kit: The Rajasthan Chapter (Call for Comments)

Manojna Yeluri — 2013-11-07T06:17:18Z

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research on the state of laws, policies and programmes for persons with disabilities in the state of Rajasthan.

The 2001 Census revealed that in Rajasthan 2.5% of the population consisted of disabled persons. During the same year, the Rajasthan Government conducted a door to door survey in order to categorize the disabilities according to the seven categories listed in the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. Among the disabled, the highest number of 53.4 % was persons with visual impairment. Rajasthan also has 6.45% of the total disabled population in India, the sixth largest in the country.

Quick Statistics:

Capital: Jaipur
Population: 5,65,07,188
Population of Persons with Disabilities:14,11,979
Literacy: 67.1%

The Department of Social Welfare and Empowerment, Rajasthan implements the various rules and schemes concerning persons with disabilities in Rajasthan. The State Government has also appointed a Commissioner for Disabilities. In May 2010, the Rajasthan Government appointed a task force on disability to develop a Comprehensive Disability Policy for the state. The policy aims at including disability rights, values and practices into government developmental strategies, planning and programs and development of an integrated management system for the coordination of disability planning. The policy is still in the pre-cabinet stage.

The State Government has also introduced various schemes for welfare of persons with disability. Out of these, schemes such as the Viswas Yojana to provide loan and subsidy for self-employment, Sukhad Jeevan Yojana to provide assistance for marriage of disabled persons and the Aastha Yojana etc. are some of the more important ones.

Click to download the Rajasthan Chapter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kit-rajasthan-call-for-comments

CIS Gets ITU-D Sector Membership

nirmita — 2013-07-11T10:11:54Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has become a sector member of ITU-D, the development sector of the International Telecommunication Union, the specialized UN Agency dealing with telecommunications and information communications (ICTs).

Over the past years, CIS has had the opportunity to work with ITU on specific accessibility related projects. With this membership, CIS will be able to participate more regularly in ITU activities and contribute to key policy and regulatory debates surrounding telecommunications and ICTs at the global level. CIS is one of six civil society organizations registered as ITU members from the Asia-Pacific region.

CIS profile on ITU membership can be viewed here. Click to view the ITU Membership Certificate

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/cis-itu-d-sector-membership

April 2013 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2013-05-31T08:07:38Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the fourth issue of its newsletter for the year 2013. In this issue we bring you an overview of our research programs, updates of events organised by us, events we participated in, news and media coverage, and videos of some of our recent events.

Celebrating 5 Years of CIS
We at the Centre for Internet and Society celebrate 5 years of existence with an exhibition showcasing our work and accomplishments over this time. The exhibition will be held concurrently at both our Bangalore and Delhi offices from May 20 to 24, 2013, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Google Policy Fellowship
CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India fellow who will be selected by July 1, 2013. Fellowship focus areas include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom Send in your applications for the position by June 15, 2013.

Jobs
CIS invites applications for the posts of Developer (NVDA Screen Reader Project), and Programme Officer (Internet Governance). To apply send your resume to sunil@cis-india.org and pranesh@cis-india.org. CIS also invites applications for the post of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge, Pilot Projects). To apply for this position send your resume to vishnu@cis-india.org.

Accessibility

CIS is doing two projects in partnership with the Hans Foundation. One is to create a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India and another is for developing a screen reader and text-to- speech synthesizer for Indian languages. CIS is also working with the World Blind Union and many other organisations to develop a Treaty for the Visually Impaired helped by the WIPO:

National Resource Kit for Persons with Disabilities
Anandhi Viswanathan from CIS and Manojna Yeluri from the Centre for Law and Policy Research are working in this project. Draft chapters have been published. Feedback and comments are invited from readers for the chapters on Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir and Rajasthan:

The Himachal Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, April 30, 2013).
Goa Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, April 30, 2013).
The Jammu & Kashmir Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, April 30, 2013).
The Rajasthan Chapter (by Manojna Yeluri, April 30, 2013).

Note: All of these are early drafts and will be reviewed and updated.

Events Organised

Girls in ICT Day (April 25, 2013, Mitra Jyothi Auditorium, HSR Layout, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Social Media and Kannada Language for Women with Disabilities. Sara Morais wrote an event report.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (May 9, 2013, TERI, Southern Regional Centre, Domlur, Bangalore).

Announcement

CIS Gets ITU-D Sector Membership: CIS has become a sector member of ITU-D.

Access to Knowledge and Openness

The Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop the growth of Indic language communities and projects by community collaborations and partnerships. This is being carried out by the Access to Knowledge team based in Delhi. CIS is also doing a project (Pervasive Technologies) on examining the relationship between production of pervasive technologies and intellectual property. CIS also promotes openness including open government data, open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software through its Openness programme.

Wikipedia
Beginning from September 1, 2012, Wikimedia Foundation awarded CIS a two-year grant of INR 26,000,000 to support and develop free knowledge in India. The A2K team consists of four members based in Delhi: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi, and one team member Dr. U.B. Pavanaja who is working from Bangalore office. Noopur Raval, Programme Officer has left the organisation. April 24, 2013 was her last working day.

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project

Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #2: Visualising Page Views and Project Pages.

Blog Entries

Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month (by Netha Hussain, April 29, 2013).
Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges (by Nitika Tandon, April 30, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment (by Subhashish Panigrahi, April 30, 2013).

Event Organised

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (April 29, 2013, Govinda Pai Research Centre, MGM College Udupi). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja led the workshop and gave a talk on Kannada Wikipedia.

Events Co-organised
The following events were organised in the month of March but reports were written during the month of April. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi held meetings with wikipedians:

Kolkata Wiki Community Meetup (organised by CIS and Kolkata Wiki Community, March 14, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia - Cuttack Community Meetup (organised by CIS and Odia Wiki Community, Cuttack, March 16, 2013).
Odia Wikipedia – Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (organised by CIS and Odia Wiki Community, Bhubaneswar, March 17, 2013).

The following event was organised in the month of April. We will be publishing the report soon:

Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013 (organised by Telugu Wikipedia Community and CIS, Hyderabad, April 9 – 11, 2013). Vishnu Vardhan was one of the trainers at the Wikipedia Academy at Centre for Good Governance on April 9, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan spoke about the Access to Knowledge work in one of the sessions of Wikimedia Meeting with Media Heads on April 10, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on A2K’s plans for the growth of Telegu Wikipedia in 2013-14 at the Telegu Wikipedia general meeting on April 11, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan also gave a talk about Access to Knowledge in the digital era at the Wiki Chaitanya Vedika on April 11, 2013.

Other Access to Knowledge Updates

WIPO

CIS Intervention on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired at SCCR/SS/GE/2/13 (Geneva, April 18 – 20, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in the session and spoke about the rights of the visually impaired.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes. Currently, CIS is doing a project with Privacy International, London to facilitate research and events around surveillance, and freedom of speech and expression.

Information Technology

IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69A Rules: Draft and Final Version Comparison (by Jadine Lannon, April 27, 2013).
Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, 419A Rules and IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69 Rules (by Jadine Lannon, April 28, 2013).
IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69 Rules: Draft and Final Version Comparison (by Jadine Lannon, April 30, 2013).
IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, 69B Rules: Draft and Final Version Comparison (by Jadine Lannon, April 30, 2013).

Resources
The below rules were published recently:

Newspaper Column

Off the Record (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 6, 2013).

Privacy

India´s ´Big Brother´: The Central Monitoring System (CMS) (by Maria Xynou, April 8, 2013).

Events Organised
Maria Xynou gives an overview of the discussions and recommendations from the privacy round tables held in Delhi and Bangalore:

A Privacy Round Table in Delhi (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, FICCI Federation House, Tansen Marg, New Delhi, April 3, 2013).
A Privacy Round Table in Bangalore (organized by CIS and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Jayamahal Palace, Jayamahal Road, Bangalore, April 20, 2013).

Announcements

2nd Expert Committee meeting on draft 'Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012': The Department of Biotechnology has constituted an Expert Committee to discuss various issues of this Bill in detail. Sunil Abraham has been nominated as one of the members of this Committee. A meeting of this Expert Committee has been scheduled for May 13, 2013 under the Chairmanship of Dr. T. S. Rao, Adviser, DBT.
Chinmayi Arun is one of the international experts supporting the Internet & Jurisdiction project, a global multi-stakeholder dialogue process.

Upcoming Events

A Privacy Round Table in Chennai (co-organised with Data Security Council of India and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Residency Towers, Sir Thyagaraja Road, T Nagar, Chennai, May 18, 10.30 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.).
Consilience – 2013 (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 26 – 27, 2013).

Other Event Hosted

Or-bits.com — A Talk by Marialaura Ghidini (CIS, Bangalore, April 19, 2013). Marialaura Ghidini gave a talk abou the creation and activities of or-bits.com, a web-based curatorial platform that she founded in 2009.

News and Media

Clarify and define terms in IT rules, panel tells govt. (by Prashant Jha, Hindu, April 1, 2013).
India takes its first serious step toward privacy regulation – but it may be misguided (Privacy Surgeon, April 9, 2013).
Regulating Social Media: Unrealistic, Impossible, Necessary? (NDTV, April 11, 2013). Pranesh Prakash participated in a discussion on social media aired on NDTV.
Social media may influence 160 LS seats in 2014 (by Zia Haq, Hindustan Times, April 12, 2013).
Vote: Will Social Media Impact the Election? (by R. Jai Krishna, Wall Street Journal, April 15, 2013).
Untangling the web of India's 'ungovernable' Net (Deutsche Welle, April 15, 2013).
CIS in GNI Annual Report (April 25, 2013). CIS gets mentioned in GNI Annual Report. Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.
Is free speech an Indian value? (by Satarupa Sen Bhattacharya, India Together, April 27, 2013).

Knowledge Repository on Internet Access

CIS in partnership with the Ford Foundation is executing a project on Internet Access. It covers the history of the internet, technologies involved, principle and values of internet access, broadband market and universal access and will touch upon various polices and regulations which has an impact on internet access and bodies and mechanism which are responsible for formulation policies related to internet access. The blog posts and modules will be published in a new website: www.internet-institute.in.

Upcoming Event
We are hosting an “Institute on Internet and Society” with the support of Ford Foundation India, which is to be held from June 8, 2013 to June 14, 2013. Call for registration and relevant details have been announced.

The following units have been published:

Internet Infrastructure (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, April 30, 2013).
Internet Service Provider – Introduction (by Srividya Vaidyanathan, April 30, 2013).

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility of 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

Prioritizing Communications & Energy (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot, April 4, 2013).

Blog Entry

From Open Citizen Radio Networks to the Race for .RADIO gTLD (by Sharath Chandra Ram, April 30, 2013).

Event Participated

Broadband Policy Course (organised by Lirne Asia, Bangalore, April 5 – 6, 2013). Nirmita Narasimhan and Snehashish Ghosh attended the course.

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

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

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 or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2013-bulletin

A Treat for the Blind

praskrishna — 2013-07-11T06:02:27Z

The WIPO treaty will provide copyright exceptions on books making them available to blind people in formats they can use.

The article by Chitra Narayanan was published in Business World on June 26, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

For millions of visually impaired people around the globe, it’s a landmark treaty that could open up the kingdom of books for them. After days of intense deliberations at Marrakesh in Morrocco, about 600 World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) negotiators, including delegates from India, reached a consensus on a treaty that will provide copyright exceptions on books making them available to blind people in formats they can use.

Wipo, a United Nations agency, is dedicated to the use of intellectual property as a means of stimulating innovation and creativity. The agency has 186 member states.

Sure, content is king. But for the visually impaired, the right platform for accessing content is what makes the difference. Thanks to audio books, a host of apps, and digital platforms such as Bookshare, which provides content in accessible formats, the technology is already there to bring the rich world of 'hardcovers' and 'paperbacks' alive for those who cannot see. What’s more, these books are compatible with all kinds of devices from mobile phones to tablets to PCs.

Now, at last, there is legal sanction as well to content that was not being made available in accessible formats by the copyrights holders. For the 15 million people who are blind in India, the treaty is expected to open education doors as well as provide entertainment needs. India has the world’s largest number of blind people.

Bangalore-based Centre for Internet Society, a policy research organisation, has been at the forefront of negotiations at WIPO to get the treaty through. Minutes after the session concluded, Pranesh Prakash, policy Director at CIS and his colleague Sunil Abraham were tweeting ecstatically about the “win”.

For five long years, this Wipo treaty has witnessed contentious discussions on issues such as including exports of copyrighted works, translations of copyrighted works and so on. According to Prakash, who responded over twitter, “On Exports we won, but re-exports which was earlier permitted has become much more difficult.”

There are also other grainy areas such as commercial availability of the books. According to a post on the Intellectual Property Watch website, soon after the agreement was reached, commercial availability still stands under Article 4 (National Law Limitations and Exceptions on Accessible Format Copies) but has disappeared from Article 5 (cross border exchange of accessible format copies).

Although blind music legend Stevie Wonder, one of the most ardent supporters of the treaty, must be crooning Signed, Sealed, Delivered... it’s early days yet. The draft of the treaty has to be ratified by governments before being adopted.

But for five long years, it has been a long hard battle between copyright owners and those fighting for human rights of the visually impaired. Finally, as one observer, put it: 'a rare victory is in sight for human rights'.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/business-world-june-26-2013-chitra-narayanan-a-treat-for-the-blind

National Resource Kit: The Jammu & Kashmir Chapter (Revised)

anandi — 2014-02-20T09:46:00Z

The National Resource Kit team is pleased to bring you its research on the state of laws, policies and programmes for persons with disabilities in the state of Jammu and Kashmir

The Department of Social Welfare is responsible for the welfare of persons with disabilities in Jammu & Kashmir. The state has an estimated population of 3,02,670 persons with disabilities in a total population of 12,548,926 people.

Click to download the full chapter (PDF, 179 Kb)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-resource-kit-jammu-kashmir-call-for-comments

CIS anniversary

praskrishna — 2013-05-06T07:28:07Z

The Centre for Internet and Society will celebrate five years of its existence with an exhibition showcasing its works and accomplishments.

This was published in Hindu Business Line on May 5, 2013

The exhibition will be held concurrently at both Bangalore and Delhi offices from May 20 to 24, 2013, said a press release.

“To promote transparency, we're getting the general public to be our auditors by throwing open our account books and contracts which show how we have spent the Rs 8.3 crore received from our donors.”

The exhibition will also see artists like Kiran Subbaiah, Tara Kelton, Navin Thomas, Abhishek Hazra, among others exhibiting their works, as well as lectures.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-may-5-2013-cis-anniversary

Stakeholders Meeting of the USOF on Facilitating ICT Access to Persons with Disabilities in Rural Areas

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T05:55:39Z

The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), a fund set up to provide universal access to telegraph services to rural and remote areas in India organized a stakeholders meeting on 7th September in New Delhi to launch a new scheme for supporting pilot projects for facilitating access to persons with disabilities in rural areas. Nirmita Narasimhan participated in this meeting and made a presentation.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the associations of service providers and manufacturers like Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India (TEMA) and Sasken Communication Technologies, civil society organizations working for the disabled like Accenture on "ICT Initiatives for Connecting Persons with Disabilities" (AICB), Saksham, Equal Opportunities Cell from Delhi University, technology companies like Intel, educational institutions like NIOS and representatives from other ministries and departments such as MHRD.

The meeting began with a key note from the Administrator, USOF and a presentation from the Joint Administrator (Finance), USOF, introducing the scheme. This was followed by presentations from various stakeholders. It was agreed that the first step towards inviting projects would be the identification of problems by disability organizations to ensure that project ideas would be in line with the needs of persons with disabilities. Importantly, the Joint Administrator stressed that although projects could only be submitted by service providers, it would be important for each project to have a strong partnership of service providers, content developers and disability organizations to ensure that the solutions sought to be achieved through the projects would be a holistic one. The USOF has not yet settled on any upper ceiling for the projects: this will be determined once the projects start coming in. Projects will be evaluated by a select committee on a qualitative basis. The size of the pilot projects is to be small, possibly at a district level. Based on the success of the projects, these would then be considered for scaling up.

Download Nirmita's presentation here [Powerpoint file, 227 kb]
For agenda, click here
For more info about the event, see the USOF website

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/usof-meeting