Centre for Internet and Society

September 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T01:26:03Z

Welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014).

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

Highlights

Nishant Shah was part of a working group writing a white paper on big data and social change, over the last six months. This white paper produced by a group of activists, researchers and data experts was published by Oxford.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project Maggie Huang interviewed Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan on the trends and changes in technology and understanding mobile chip manufacturing.

CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Loyola College for a period of 5 years to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan wrote a report on the workshop Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages for which CIS-A2K was one of the organizers.

CIS joined the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility towards creating due diligence recommendations for online platforms.
CIS organized a workshop on an evidence-based framework for intermediary liability at the IGF held in Istanbul on September 3, 2014. Jyoti Panday coordinated the workshop in collaboration with Stanford Centre for Internet & Society.
Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance in the GISWatch Report.
The Supreme Court of India revised the law on electronic evidence in the case of Anvar v. P. K. Basheer. Bhairav Acharya has done an analysis on this. It was published by Law and Policy in India and subsequently mirrored on our website.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for September (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Study on Budget Allocation and Expenditure by States on Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (Anandhi Viswanathan; September 29, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

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

Pervasive Technologies

Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Trends and Changes in Technology (Maggie Huang; September 26, 2014).
Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Understanding Mobile Chip Manufacturing (Maggie Huang; September 30, 2014).

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).

Event Report

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan; September 30, 2014). The workshop was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS-A2K.

Blog Entries

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia (T. Vishnu Vardhan; September 6, 2014).
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia - CIS-A2K and ALC join hands (T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik; September 17, 2014).

The following were published in August and mirrored on our website in September:

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (Subhashish Panigrahi; OpenGLAM; August 27, 2014).
We are Wikipedia (By Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Deutschland; August 25, 2014). Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

Event Organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Students (Tumkur University; Tumkur; September 27, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. Fifty people participated in the event.

Event Co-organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (Organized by Basaveshwara Science College and CIS-A2K; September 20, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

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

Implementation of IT in Kannada (Prajavani; September 21, 2014).
105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons (Shyam Prasad S; Bangalore Mirror; September 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education" (Co-organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan, Bhubaneswar; September 14, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.
Publishing Next (Organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing; Goa; September 19 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a panelist at the 5th edition of Publishing Next the annual conference on the future of publishing. He spoke on Open Access, Copyright and Copyleft.

Internet Governance

Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Note: The White Paper below is not a part of the SAFEGUARD project .

White Paper

Big Data and Positive Social Change in the Developing World: A White Paper for Practitioners and Researchers (Nishant Shah; Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute; September 30, 2014). Nishant Shah was part of a group of activists, researchers and data experts in producing this white paper.

Analysis

Anvar v. Basheer and the New (Old) Law of Electronic Evidence (Bhairav Acharya; September 30, 2014).

Announcement

CIS joins the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility (Jyoti Panday; September 23, 2014).

Blog Entries

The Aadhaar Case (Vipul Kharbanda; September 5, 2014).
UID: A Data Subject's Registration Tale (Mukta Batra; September 11, 2014).
Biometrics: An 'Angootha Chaap' nation? (Mukta Batra; September 19, 2014).
UID and NPR: Towards Common Ground (September 19, 2014): This is an anonymous post.

CIS @ IGF

The ninth Internet Governance Forum ("IGF2014") was hosted by Turkey in Istanbul from September 2 to 5, 2014. A BestBits pre-event, which saw robust discussions on renewal of the IGF mandate, the NETmundial Initiative and other live Internet governance processes, flagged off a week of many meetings and sessions. CIS participated in multiple workshops and panels:

WS112: Implications of post-Snowden Internet localization proposals (Organized by Center for Democracy and Technology, Istanbul, September 2, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS63: Preserving a universal Internet: Costs of fragmentation (Organized by OECD and Centre for International Governance Innovation; September 3, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS2 Mobile, Trust and Privacy (Organized by GSM Association; September 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Transparency reporting as a tool for Internet governance (Organized by Global Network Initiative; September 3, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
WS149: Aligning ICANN policy with the privacy rights of users (Organized by Yale ISP; September 5, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a moderator.

Other Participation

Launch of the GISWatch Report (Association for Progressive Communications and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos). Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance to this report.

Participation in Events

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age (Organized by IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI; September 13 - 14, 2014). Rohini Lakshane was a speaker.
Workshop on Enabling Information Systems for Local Governance (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia, Tagore Hall; New Delhi; September 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a participant.
National Consultation on Media Law (Organized by Law Commission of India and the National University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari, Jyoti Panday and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Fighting battles online (Nikhil Varma; The Hindu; September 2, 2014).
Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance? (Vidya Venkat with additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai; The Hindu; September 7, 2014).
Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir (Anjana Pasricha, September 10, 2014).
Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One (Varun Aggarwal; Economic Times; September 11, 2014).

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:

Event Organized

Consultation on New Figures of Learning in the Digital Context (CIS, Bangalore, September 22, 2014). P.P. Sneha wrote a report on the event.

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/september-2014-bulletin

Central Guidelines and Schemes

anandi — 2014-11-06T14:59:31Z

The Department of Disability Affairs under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is responsible for the welfare of persons with disabilities in India. The office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities has been set up under the Ministry to safeguard the rights of persons with disabilities.

Certification of Disability

1.1 The Persons with Disabilities Amendment Rules, 2009[1] provide detailed guidelines for issue of disability certificates. The Rules lay down that disability certificates may be issued either by a medical authority competent to issue disability certificates in the district of residence of the applicant or by the concerned medical authority in the government hospital where the applicant has undergone or is undergoing treatment in connection to the disability.

The certificate issued by the Medical Board makes a person eligible to apply for facilities, concessions and benefits admissible under schemes of the Government or Non-Governmental Organisations, subject to such conditions as the Central or the State Government may impose.

1.2 The Government has notified the guidelines for evaluation of locomotor, blindness, low vision, hearing, mental retardation and multiple disabilities and the procedure for certification vide notification No. 16-18/97-NI I dated 1st June, 2001. As per the guidelines, the Director General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Nirman Bhawan, New Delhi is the final authority for any controversy / doubt regarding the interpretation of the definitions/classifications / evaluations tests etc.

1.3 Procedure for Certification 2002[2] via Notification No. 16-18/97-NI dated 18 February 2002 provides guidelines for Evaluation and Assessment of Mental Illness.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1.	Guidelines for Assessment and Certification of various disabilities	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2001
2.	Guidelines for Assessment and Certification of Mental Illness	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2002

Education

2.1 Article 41 of the Constitution of India titled Right to Work, to education and to public assistance in certain cases states that the State shall, within the limits of its economic capacity and development, make effective provision for securing the right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, and in other cases of undeserved want.

2.2 The 86^th Amendment to the Constitution introduced a new Article 21-A that made the right to education a fundamental right of all children from the age of six to 14 years. It also substituted Article 45 as Provision of early childhood care and education of children below the age of six years that states that the state shall endeavour to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years.

2.3 Section 26 of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 (PWD Act) provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall-

(a) Ensure that every child with a disability has access to free education in an appropriate environment till he attains the age of eighteen years;

(b) Endeavour to promote the integration of students with disabilities in the normal schools;

(c) Promote setting up of special schools in Government and private sector for those in need of special education, in such a manner that children with disabilities living in any part of the country have access to such schools;

(d) Endeavour to equip the special schools for children with disabilities with vocational training facilities.

2.4 Section 27 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall by notification make schemes for-

(a) Conducting part-time classes in respect of children with disabilities who having completed education up to class fifth and could not continue their studies on a whole-time basis;

(b) Conducting special part-time classes for providing functional literacy for children in the age group of sixteen and above;

(c) Imparting non-formal education by utilizing the available manpower in rural areas after giving them appropriate orientation;

(d) Imparting education through open schools or open universities;

(e) Conducting class and discussions through interactive electronic or other media;

(f) Providing every child with disability free of cost special books and equipments needed for his education.

2.5 Section 28 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments shall initiate or cause to be initiated research by official and nongovernmental agencies for the purpose of designing and developing new assistive devices, teaching aids, special teaching materials or such other items as are necessary to give a child with disability equal opportunities in education.

2.6 Section 29 of the PWD Act provides that he appropriate Governments shall set up adequate number of teachers' training institutions and assist the national institutes and other voluntary organizations to develop teachers' training programmes specializing in disabilities so that requisite trained manpower is available for special schools and integrated schools for children with disabilities.

2.7 Section 30 of the PWD Act provides that without prejudice to the foregoing provisions, (be appropriate Governments shall by notification prepare a comprehensive education scheme which shall make Provision for-

(a) Transport facilities to the children with disabilities or in the alternative financial incentives to parents or guardians to enable their children with disabilities to attend schools.

(b) The removal of architectural barriers from schools, colleges or other institution, imparting vocational and professional training;

(d) The grant of scholarship to students with disabilities;

(e) Setting up of appropriate fora for the redressal of grievances of parent, regarding the placement of their children with disabilities;

(f) Suitable modification in the examination system to eliminate purely mathematical questions for the benefit of blind students and students with low vision;

(g) Restructuring of curriculum for the benefit of children with disabilities;

(h) Restructuring the curriculum for benefit of students with hearing impairment to facilitate them to take only one language as part of their curriculum.

2.8 Section 31 of the PWD Act provides that all educational institutions shall provide or cause to be provided amanuensis to blind students and students with low vision.

2.9 Section 39 of the PWD Act provides that all Government educational institutions and other educational institutions receiving aid from the

Government, shall reserve not less than three per cent seat for persons with disabilities.

2.10 Right of Children to free and compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 provides that every child has the right to full time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school that satisfies certain essential norms and standards.

Schemes:

2.11 SSA - Sarva Shiksha Abhyan:

SSA[3] is a flagship central scheme that provides for free and compulsory education for children in the age group of six to 14 years including coverage of children with special needs under special focus groups. SSA will ensure that children with disabilities are provided education in appropriate environment and will adopt a zero rejection policy that will ensure that no child is left out of the education system.

2.12 Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhyan (RMSA)[4]:

RMSA aims to enhance access to secondary education and improve its quality. This scheme subsumes the earlier Integrated Education for the Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS)[5] scheme under its umbrella and supports children with disabilities aged 14 or above for completing their secondary education from Class 9 to Class 12 in government, local body and government aided schools.

The scheme provides for identification of children with disabilities moving from elementary school to secondary and providing them with aids and appliances for their disabilities, access to learning material, transport facilities, hostel facilities, scholarships, books, assistive technologies and provision of scribes and readers.

2.13 Scheme of National Scholarship for Persons with Disabilities:[6]

Scholarship is awarded for pursuing post matric / professional / technical courses of duration more than one year. For students with autism / cerebral palsy / mental retardation / multiple disabilities the scholarship is provided from Class 9 onwards. Advertisements are placed in all national dailies and on the MSJE website in the month of June. Applicants are eligible if they have disability above 40 per cent and the total family income does not exceed Rs. 15,000 per month.

Category	Day Scholars	Hostellers
Graduate / PG courses in Professional / Technical	Rs. 700	Rs. 1000
Diploma / Certificate level professional courses	Rs. 400	Rs. 700

Fees up to Rs. 10,000 are reimbursed every year.

Financial assistance is provided for procuring computer with editing software for students with visual impairment / hearing impairment pursuing graduate / post graduate professional courses and support access software for students with cerebral palsy.

2.14 Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship scheme:

This scheme provides scholarships to persons with disabilities to pursue higher education such as M Phil / Ph D. The scheme offers 200 fellowships every year and covers all the universities and institutions covered by the University Grants Commission. All students with disabilities admitted to M. Phil / Ph. D programmes of any university or academic institution are eligible to receive the fellowship provided they meet the requirements of the scheme. The fellowship will be awarded for a maximum of five years.

2.15 The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has amended its examination by-laws for students with disabilities. [7] The amended by-laws are listed below:

o Rule 23 of Chapter 4 that provides exemption from the third language has been amended to include students with visual impairment, hearing and speech impairment, dyslexia and all other types of disabilities as defined in the PWD Act 1995.

o Rule 24 of Chapter 4 has been amended to permit students with visual impairment, physical disability, dyslexia, autism and other disabilities as defined in the PWD Act 1995 appearing for Secondary School examination or Senior School Certificate Examination, to use amanuensis and is permitted extra time at the rate of

For paper of 3 hours duration 60 minutes

For paper of 2½ hours duration 50 minutes

For paper of 2 hours duration 40 minutes

For paper of 1½ hours duration 30 minutes

o Students with visual impairment, hearing and speech impairment, spastic, dyslexia, autism and other types of disabilities have the option of studying one compulsory language instead of two.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	Sarva Shiksha Abhyan (SSA)	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2001
2	Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhyan (RMSA)	Ministry of Human Resource Development	2013
3	Scheme of National Scholarship for Persons with Disabilities	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
4	Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship to pursue higher education	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2012
5	CBSE Amended Examination By-laws	Central Board of Secondary Education	2008

Employment

3.1 Section 32 of the PWD Act provides that appropriate Governments shall:

(a) Identify posts, in the establishments, which can be reserved for the persons with disability;

(b) At periodical intervals not exceeding three years, review the list of posts identified and up-date the list taking into consideration the developments in technology.

3.2 Section 33 of the PWD Act provides that every appropriate Government shall appoint in every establishment such percentage of vacancies not less than three per cent for persons or class of persons with disability of which one per cent. Each shall be reserved for persons suffering from-

(i) Blindness or low vision;

(ii) Hearing impairment;

(iii) Locomotor disability or cerebral palsy, in the posts identified for each disability:

Provided that the appropriate Government may, having regard to the type of work carried on in any department or establishment, by notification subject to such conditions, if any, as may be specified in such notification, exempt any establishment from the provisions of this section.

3.3 Section 36 of the PWD Act provides that where in any recruitment year any vacancy under section 33, cannot be filled up due to nonavailability of a suitable person with disability or, for any other sufficient reason, such vacancy shall be carried forward in the succeeding recruitment year and if in the succeeding recruitment year also suitable person with disability is not available, it may first be filled by interchange among the three categories and only when there is no person with disability available for the post in that Year, the employer shall fill up the vacancy by appointment of a person, other than a person with disability: Provided that if the nature of vacancies in an establishment is such that a given category of person cannot be employed, the vacancies may be interchanged among the three categories with the prior approval of the appropriate Government.

3.4 Section 38 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall by notification formulate schemes for ensuring employment of persons with disabilities, and such schemes may provide for:

(a) The training and welfare of persons with disabilities

(b) The relaxation of upper age limit

(d) Health and safety measures and creation of a non-handicapping environment in places where persons with disabilities are employed

(e) The manner in which and the person by whom the cost of operating the schemes is to be defrayed

(f) Constituting the authority responsible for the administration of the scheme.

3.5 Section 47 (1) of the PWD Act provides that no establishment shall dispense with or reduce in rank, an employee who acquires a disability during his service.

Provided that, if an employee, after acquiring disability is not suitable for the post he was holding, could be shifted to some other post with the same pay scale and service benefits.

Provided further that if it is not possible to adjust the employee against any post, he may be kept on a supernumerary post until a suitable post is available or he attains the age of superannuation, whichever is earlier.

3.6 Section 40 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall reserve not less than three per cent in all poverty alleviation schemes for the benefit of persons with disabilities.

3.7 Section 43 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall by notification frame schemes in favour of persons with disabilities, for the preferential allotment of land at concession] rates for:

(b) Setting up business

(f) Establishment of factories by entrepreneurs with disabilities

3.8 The government has established special employment exchanges for persons with disabilities in all state capitals and special employment cells have been set up in all district headquarters for recruitment to government posts reserved for persons with disabilities. In places where special employment exchanges have not been established, special employment cells have been set up within regular employment exchanges. Persons with disabilities are required to register themselves with the special employment exchanges / cells to be eligible for government employment under reservation. Special employment registrations can also be done at the 17 vocational rehabilitation centres for persons with disabilities.

3.9 Scheme to provide incentive to private employers:

The government provides for employment of persons with disabilities in the private sector through incentives to employers. [8] The government pays the employer's contribution of the disabled employee's provident fund and employee state insurance up to three years for employment of persons with disabilities to a maximum salary of Rs. 25,000 per month.

3.10 NHFDC schemes:

The National Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation provides loans to persons with disabilities for self employment. [9] The details of the schemes are given as under:

i. for setting up small business in service / trading sector - loan of Rs. 3,00,000 (Three lakh)

ii. For setting up small business in sales / trading sector - Rs. 5,00,000 (five lakh)

iii. For agriculture / allied activities - Loan of up to Rs. 10,00,000 (ten lakh)

iv. Purchase of vehicle for commercial hiring - Loan of Rs. 10,00,000 (ten lakh)

v. For setting up small industries unit - Loan of Rs. 25,00,000 (25 lakh)

vi. For professionally educated / trained persons with disabilities for self-employment - Rs. 25,00,000 (25 lakh)

vii. For building business premises on own land for employment - Rs. 3,00,000 (three lakh)

The business for which financial assistance is sought should be directly operated by the applicant. In case of persons with autism, cerebral palsy or mental retardation, the parent / spouse / legal guardian of the applicant is authorised to enter into contract with NHFDC on behalf of the applicant.

Applicant should fulfil the following eligibility criteria:

Should have a disability of minimum 40 percent

Should be an Indian citizen

Should have the required professional / technical qualification for the business undertaken

Loans should be repaid by a maximum of 10 years.

3.11 Swarna Jayanthi Gram Swarozgar Yojna[10]

This initiative from the Ministry for Rural Development was launched as an integrated self employment programme for the rural poor on 1^st April 1999. The scheme involves establishment of Self Help Groups (SHGs) for social mobilisation, training, capacity building and provision of income generating assets through bank credit and government subsidy. Three per cent reservation is provided to persons with disabilities under this scheme.

The subsidy allowed under SJGSY for persons with disabilities is 50% of project cost subject to a maximum of Rs. 10,000.

In case of persons with disabilities, SHGs may be formed with a minimum of five members.

3.12 Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna (SJSRY):[11]

This is a scheme by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation initiated to provide self employment and wage employment for the urban poor living below the urban poverty line.

Under the Urban Self Employment Programme, three per cent reservation is provided to persons with disabilities under this programme.

This scheme is not applicable to persons educated beyond the 9^th standard.

3.13 Scheme for providing financial assistance to set up new enterprises under PMEGP (Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme): [12]

This scheme initiated by the Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) is implemented through the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) as the nodal body at the national level and through state KVIC Directorates, state Khadi and Industries Boards and Districts Industries Centres and banks at the state level.

The maximum cost of the project/unit admissible under manufacturing sector is 25 lakh and under business/service sector is 10 lakh.

For persons with disabilities: Beneficiaries contribution of project cost is 0.5%;

Rate of subsidy of project cost: 25% in urban areas; 35% in rural areas

The balance amount of the total project cost will be provided by Banks as term loan as well as working capital.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	Identification of jobs	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
2	Incentives for private employers	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2008
3	Financial assistance from NHFDC	National Handicapped Finance & development Corporation	2013
4	Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY)	Ministry of Rural Development	1999
5	Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna (SJSRY)	Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation	2013
6	Scheme providing financial assistance for new enterprises	Ministry of MSME	2014

Social Security

A. Schemes under the Department of Disability Affairs for persons with disabilities

4.1 Assistance to Disabled Persons for Purchase /Fitting of Aids and Appliances

(ADIP ) Scheme:

The main objective of the scheme is to assist needy 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 enhance their economic potential. Aids and appliances which do not cost less than Rs. 50 and not more than Rs. 10,000 are covered under the scheme. The scheme also covers travelling expenses for the beneficiary with one escort to the nearest medical centre for fitting of aids / appliances, cost of surgical / medical intervention before the fitting, and boarding and lodging expenses to a maximum of 15 days.[13]

4.2 Deendayal Disabled Rehabilitation Scheme (DDRS):

This scheme replaced the earlier 'Scheme to Promote Voluntary Action for Persons with Disabilities' on 01.04.2009. Under this scheme financial assistance is provided through NGOs for various projects for providing education, vocational training and rehabilitation of persons with disabilities. It is a scheme to promote voluntary action for persons with disabilities. The maximum level of support could be up to 90% of the eligible amount of grant for the project.

4.3 Scheme of National Awards for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities: In order to recognise their effort and encourage others to strive to achieve excellence in this field, separate awards are being presented to the most efficient/outstanding employees with disabilities, best employers, best placement agency/officer, outstanding individuals, outstanding institutions, role models, outstanding creative disabled individuals and for outstanding technological innovation and adaptation of innovation to provide cost effective technology. Awards are also given to Government Sector, Public Sector Undertakings and private enterprises for creating barrier free environment for the persons with disabilities, the best district in the field of disability rehabilitation, best Local Level Committee of the National Trust and to the best State Channelising Agency (SCA) of the National Handicapped Finance and Development Corporation (NHFDC). Preference is given to the placement of women with disabilities, particularly, from the rural areas and self-employed women.[14]

4.4 Composite Regional Centres for Persons with Disabilities (CRCs): Due to lack of adequate facilities for rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities, the Ministry has set up multiple Composite Regional Centres for Persons with Disabilities at Srinagar, Sundernagar (Himachal Pradesh), Lucknow, Bhopal, Kozhikode, Ahmedabad (No. 6-9/2009-NIS) and Guwahati to provide both preventive and promotional aspects of rehabilitation like education, health, employment and vocational training, research and manpower development, rehabilitation for persons with disabilities etc.

4.5 District Disability Rehabilitation Centres (DDRCs): The Ministry with active support of State Governments is facilitating setting up District Disability Rehabilitation Centres (DDRCs) to provide rehabilitation services to persons with disabilities. Centres are being set up in unreached and unserved districts of the country in a phased manner. These centres are to provide services for prevention and early detection, referral for medical intervention and surgical correction, fitment of artificial aids and appliances, therapeutical services such as physiotherapy, occupational and speech therapy, provision of training for acquisition of skills through vocational training, job placement in local industries etc. at district headquarters and local camps.

B. Schemes under the Ministry of Rural Development for persons with disabilities

4.6The Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme :[15] This was inserted as a component of the National Social Assistance Programme on 17^th February, 2009 by the Secretary, Ministry for Rural Development. Under IGNDPS, central assistance of Rs. 300 p.m. per beneficiary is provided to persons with severe or multiple disabilities in the age group of 18-79 years and belonging to a household living BPL as per criteria prescribed by Government of India.

4.7 Indira Awaas Yojana: It is a centrally sponsored housing scheme for providing dwelling units free of cost to the rural poor living below the poverty line at a unit cost of Rs. 20,000 in plain areas and Rs. 22, 000 in the hill/difficult areas. Three percent of its funds are reserved for the benefit of disabled persons living below the poverty line in rural areas.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	ADIP Scheme	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
2	DDRS Scheme	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2009
3	National awards for empowerment of persons with disabilities	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2012
4	Composite Regional Centres for Persons with Disabilities (CRCs)	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	2013
5	District Disability Rehabilitation Centres (DDRCs)	Department of Disability Affairs - MSJE	1995
6	Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme	Ministry of Rural Development	2009
7	Indira Awaas Yojana	Ministry of Rural Development	1985

Accessibility

Accessibility is a measure of the extent to which a product or service can be used by a person with a disability as effectively as it can be used by a person without that disability.[16]

5.1 Article 15 (2) (a) of the Constitution of India States that no citizen shall, on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them, be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to access to shops, public restaurants, hotels or places of public entertainment.

5.2 Section 44 of the PWD Act states that establishments in the transport sector shall, within the limits of their economic capacity and development for the benefit of persons with disabilities, take special measures to-

(a) Adapt rail compartments, buses. Vessels and aircrafts in such a way as to permit easy access to such persons;

(b) Adapt toilets in rail compartments, vessels, aircrafts and waiting rooms in such a way as to permit the wheel chair users to use them conveniently.

5.3 Section 45 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall, within the limits of their economic capacity and development. Provide for-

(a) Installation of auditory signals at red lights in the public roads for the benefit of persons with blindness or low vision;

(b) Causing curb cuts and slopes to be made in pavements for the easy access of wheel chair users;

(d) Engraving on the edges of railway platforms for the blind or for persons with low vision;

(e) Devising appropriate symbols of disability;

(f) Warning signals at appropriate places.

5.4 Section 46 of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and the local authorities shall, within the limits of their economic capacity and development, provide for-

(a) Ramps in public buildings;

(b) Braille symbols and auditory signals in elevators or lifts;

(d) Ramps in hospitals, primary health centres and other medical care and rehabilitation institutions.

5.5 Section 48 (e) of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments and local authorities shall promote and sponsor research, inter alia, in the area of site modifications in offices and factories.

5.6 Section 30 (B) of the PWD Act provides that the appropriate Governments shall by notification prepare a comprehensive education scheme which shall make Provision for the removal of architectural barriers from schools, colleges or other institutions imparting vocational and professional training.

5.7 Guidelines and Space Standards for Barrier Free Built Environment for Disabled and Elderly Persons: [17]

In order to create a barrier free environment in consonance with the provisions of the PWD Act, the Government of India, Ministry of Urban Affairs & Employment (MUAE) is currently engaged in the process of amending/modifying the existing building bye-laws which would be applicable to all buildings and facilities used by the public. With this intention to ensure that everyone, including the physically disabled and elderly persons will have equal access in everyday life in the city, the MUAE has constituted a committee under the chairmanship of DG (W), CPWD for the purpose of developing comprehensive Guidelines and space Standards for barrier free built environment for disabled and elderly persons. The office of the Chief Commissioner of Persons with Disabilities has also developed guidelines for planning barrier free environment for persons with disabilities. The chapter on accessibility in the National Building Code published by the Indian Bureau of Standards also provides guidelines for creating accessible infrastructure.

5.8 National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility:

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology has notified the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility to regulate the provision of accessible electronics and ICTs services & products, and universal design concepts for persons with disabilities.

Sl. No.	Description	Authority	Date
1	Guidelines for Space Standards for Barrier Free Built Environment for Disabled and Elderly Persons	Central Public Works Department	1998
2	Guidelines for Planning Barrier Free Environment	O/O CCPD

6. Tax Concessions

6.1 Persons with disabilities are eligible for income tax deduction under Section 80U of the Income Tax Act. [18] Persons with disabilities in the range of 40% to 80% are eligible for a deduction of Rs. 50,000. Persons with more than 80% disability are eligible for a deduction of Rs. 1,00,000.

6.2 Legal guardians of dependant persons with disabilities are eligible for income tax deduction under section 80DD of Income Tax Act for expenditures incurred on medical care, training and rehabilitation expenses or annuity paid.[19] Deduction of Rs. 50,000 can be claimed for dependents with 40 per cent to 80 per cent disability and deduction of Rs. 1,00,000 can be claimed for dependants with 80 per cent or more disabilities.

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

[2] http://www.ccdisabilities.nic.in/page.php?s=reg&p=guide_mental&t=pb

[3] http://ssa.nic.in/ssa-framework/coverage-of-special-focus-groups

[4] http://mhrd.gov.in/rmsa

[5] http://mhrd.gov.in/inclusive_education

[6] http://socialjustice.nic.in/nsawardadv0809.php

[7] http://www.cbse.nic.in/circulars/amendment-exam-bye-law-020109.doc

[8] http://socialjustice.nic.in/incentdd.php

[9] http://nhfdc.nic.in/

[10] http://rural.nic.in/sites/programmes-schemes-sgsy.asp

[11] http://mhupa.gov.in/programs/upa/nsdp/sjsry/sjsryintro.htm

[12] http://msme.gov.in/Web/Portal/Scheme.aspx

[13] http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/adiprevised010414.pdf

[14] http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/nawardeng2012.pdf

[15] http://nsap.nic.in/

[16] http://e-accessibilitytoolkit.org/toolkit/eaccessibility_basics/accessibility_and_the_purposes_of_icts#what

[17] cpwd.gov.in/Publication/Buildings_aged.pdf

[18] http://law.incometaxindia.gov.in/DIT/HtmlFileProcess.aspx?FooterPath=D:%5CWebSites%5CDITTaxmann%5CAct2010%5CDirectTaxLaws%5CITACT%5CHTMLFiles%5C2010&DFile=section80u.htm&tar=top#

[19] http://law.incometaxindia.gov.in/DitTaxmann/incometaxacts/2007itact/sec_080dd.htm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/central-guidelines-and-schemes

Comments to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014

Nirmita Narasimhan and Anandhi Viswanathan — 2014-10-30T16:13:45Z

On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”), the following are the comments and recommendations on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014 (“RPD Bill”). It was submitted to the Parliamentary Standing Committee in October 2014.

I. Definitions

Section 2(c) “Barrier”: - definition to include attitudinal barriers: Should read as follows: “Barrier means any factor which hampers the full and effective participation of persons with disabilities in society, including attitudinal, communicational, cultural, economic, environmental, institutional, political, social or structural factors which hampers the full and effective participation of persons with disabilities in society.”

Section 2(f) “Communication”: - definition to include sign language: Should read as follows: “Communication includes means and formats of communication, languages, display of text, Braille, tactile communication, signs, large print, accessible multimedia, written, audio, plain-language, sign language, human reader, augmentative and alternative modes and accessible information and communication technology.”

Section 2 (h) “establishment” to include private establishments as well. The UNCRPD places an obligation on State Parties to take ‘appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability by any person, organization or private enterprise’ [Article 4(1)(e)]. It also requires that State Parties promote the employment of persons with disabilities in the private sector through appropriate policies and measures, which may include affirmative action programmes, incentives and other measures [Article 27(1)(h)]. Thus it is important that ‘establishments’ as covered under the RPD Bill, which would refer to rights relating to employment of persons with disabilities, reservation of jobs and provision of reasonable accommodation should include state as well as private establishments. The intention to ensure the representation of persons with disabilities in the private sector was also recognised by the Supreme Court in Union of India v. National Federation of the Blind. Therefore the definition should read as follows:

‘Establishment’ means and includes:

Department and Ministries of Government;

Local authorities and authorities or bodies owned, controlled or aided by the Central or State Government;

Any statutory or non-statutory body created, owned, financially or administratively controlled or aided by the Central or State Government or any such body performing public functions which are primarily welfare activities and includes Government Companies as defined in Section 617 of the Companies Act, 1956;

Any company, firm, cooperative or other society, association, trust, agency, institution, organization, union, landlord, industry, supplier of goods or services, factory or other non-statutory body which is not covered under clause (i) to (iv)

Insertion of the term “discrimination on the basis of disability” Since the term is widely used across the document, it is important to define it. A suggested definition of the term based on the definition available in the e-Accessibility Tool Kit for Policy Makers is as follows: “Accessibility is a measure of the extent to which any infrastructure, product or service can be used by a person with a disability as effectively as it can be used by a person without that disability.”

Section 2(x): definition of specified disability to be deleted.

Section 2(t): Definition of “Reasonable Accommodation” to be altered: 'disproportionate or undue burden’ to be deleted. Because there is no definition given as to what would constitute an undue burden or what would be disproportionate, along with the fact that this can be used as an exit route for public authorities and private employers to evade their responsibility to provide reasonable accommodation. Most other disability rights legislations including the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 do not have this qualification in the definition of reasonable accommodation. The definition should instead read as follows: "Reasonable accommodation" means necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise of rights equally with others. It can include but is not limited to:

(A) making existing facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities;

(B) and job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, acquisition or modification of equipment or devices, appropriate adjustment or modifications of examinations, training materials or policies, the provision of qualified readers or interpreters, and other similar accommodations for individuals with disabilities.”

II. Voting and other Rights

i. Expansion of Section 10:

It is not sufficient to only make polling stations accessible. Section 10 needs to be expanded to include the following:

To make all voter registration stations and facilities accessible to persons with disabilities
All materials and communication must be made available in multiple formats.

Election Commissions to take special measures to promote participation of persons with disabilities in the electoral process- both in terms of casting votes, as well as standing for elections.

ii. Section 11 (4) to be expanded to include Section 11 (4) (c):- to include the following: “The enjoyment of equal right to conduct their own financial affairs and avail of forms of financial credit such as bank loans, mortgages, insurance etc., should be on the same terms and conditions as other customers without discrimination or on special terms which may be advantageous to persons with disabilities.”

III. Education

Section 17 - addition of a sub section requiring the appropriate government to promote alternate teaching methods using new forms of information and communications technologies and pedagogic techniques.
All children with disabilities should have access to and training in the use of computers and educational and knowledge materials in accessible formats.
Appropriate government should promote harmonization of syllabus to enable sharing of accessible resources across the state and recognize and support the efforts of disability and other organizations in imparting training to disabled children.
The present draft limits the provisions of this Act to educational institutions funded by the appropriate government- this needs to be expanded to include all educational institutions, private and public.
The government should also accordingly revise existing schemes for providing financial aid to such families having children with disabilities to keep abreast of present financial needs along with launching new ones.
Section 16(g) - aids and ATs should be provided free of cost till the completion of school education and not just until 18 years since very often children with disabilities start their education late.
Section 15 on education - private schools should also be required to employ special educators for students with disabilities and all private educational institutions- both for school as well as higher education should admit students with disabilities without discrimination if they meet the requisite criteria.

IV. Employment

Section 19 (1) proviso - permitting for exemption of any establishment to be deleted.
Section 33 (3) - The age relaxation in upper age limit has been reduced to five years from the current norm of 10 years. This should be revised to 10 years.

V. Access

Section 40 - provides that the government shall provide for access to transport by retrofitting old modes of transport where “technically feasible and economically viable”. This can potentially lead to a situation where transport is not made accessible on the ground that it is too expensive or technically not feasible. In such instances, persons with disabilities cannot be deprived of access to transport. We thus recommend the insertion of the following clause to section 40 (1)(b): “Where a facility cannot be retrofitted because it is too technically challenging or expensive, there must be made available an alternate means of accessing that transport or facility.” Coupled with insertion of a time frame of 3 years for making all modes of transport accessible – like in the US model.

Section 41 – The following should be inserted

Accessibility of websites: All websites must conform to the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines formulated by the World Wide Web Consortium and all government communication must be accessible electronically as well as in print.

There should be a periodic audit for accessibility of all Government websites and training must be imparted to technology developers to create and maintain accessible products, interfaces and content. Research must be ongoing to develop new and open source assistive technologies for all disabilities and in all languages and for this purpose tenders must be invited from the public as well as private sector.

To insert a new section on Procurement- “Appropriate Governments must ensure that there is a procurement policy in place which mandates that all products (hardware and software), goods and services procured by them must conform to accessibility requirements and this should be introduced in the license terms of service contracts itself.”
Section 44 (1) to refer to all “buildings accessible to the public” instead of “public buildings” - This is to ensure that it is not only government buildings that are made accessible but also all buildings available to the public such as hospitals, hotels, libraries, shops, banks etc., whether public or private, are made accessible. The UNCRPD places an obligation on State Parties to take ‘appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability by any person, organization or private enterprise’ [Article 4(1)(e)]. It also specifically requires that State Parties ensure that ‘private entities that offer facilities and services which are open or provided to the public take into account all aspects of accessibility for persons with disabilities’ [Article 9(2)(b)].
To insert a new sub-section in Section 44 for periodic audit of buildings: “The Central Government must establish a system for periodic audit of all building and physical spaces and use these reports for measuring pace and extent of rectification and adherence to the standards.”
Section 45- the blanket time frame of 2 years is too ambiguous for service providers and has to be revised. The National Commission or relevant authority (for example TRAI in the case of telecom operators) may determine a reasonable time frame for provision of accessible services and such time frame may be a little more in case of rectification/ retrofitting as the case may be. The Rationale for this is that the time to provide accessible billing facilities for mobile phones or making a website accessible would be barely a matter of months, while for something else may be a year, hence such a blanket provision of time of 2 years should be avoided.

VI. General Comments

Restore section on women and girls with disabilities, which was present in the 2011 draft. The present Act does not contain specific section for them, just mentions them in a diluted manner across the legislation.
Same for children with disabilities- addition of a dedicated section for them- as present in previous draft.
Section 23(1) - the words 'within the limit of its economic capacity and development' must be removed because it is an exit route for states from formulating anything more than the minimum necessary schemes in this area. Our experience with the previous Persons With Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) 1995 Act has demonstrated that almost all the sections with 'within the economic limits' were not complied with by all states and proved ineffectual. Furthermore, the enjoyment and exercise of the fundamental rights of persons with disabilities cannot hinge on the economic capacity of states. All states will have the minimum capacity required - it is a question of priority.
Section 28 needs a sub section, which incorporates the copyright fair dealing exception to make all copyrighted cultural works accessible to persons with disabilities.
Appropriate governments should ensure that one member from the Disability Advisory Committee should be able to participate on all key policy making committees to ensure that the disability perspective is adequately represented across all government initiatives.
Section 61(b) and 67(b) should be deleted since they state unsoundness of mind as a reason for disqualification, which goes against the spirit of the UNCRPD.
Similarly Sections 76(1)(c) and 89(1)(c) should be deleted since they cite physical/ mental incapacity as a disqualification from holding office.
Sections 103 and 104 should include offences committed by the Government, public officials and government companies respectively in the discharge of their duties.
Section 73(2) - The chairperson of the National Commission has to necessarily be a person with disability.
Section 86 (2) on the Chairperson of the state commission- should be made mandatory that the Chairperson should be a person with disability
Duties and Responsibilities of Appropriate Governments: The clause “every appropriate government should set up a help line and other resources to assist persons with disabilities” should be included.
Access to emergency services: The appropriate governments should ensure that:

i. Persons with disabilities have instantaneous access to all emergency services such as ambulance, fire engine, hospital and police and to this end ensure that measures are taken to make these accessible to them;

ii. Steps are taken to ensure that during times of disasters such as floods and earthquakes, mitigation, rescue, relief and reconstruction measures take into account the needs of persons with disabilities and especially women and children with disabilities.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/comments-to-rights-of-persons-with-disablities-bill-2014

Accessibility in the New Telecom Policy 2011

praskrishna — 2012-01-02T05:12:12Z

Responding to the call for comments on NTP 2011, 27 organisations sent a joint letter requesting that accessibility for persons with disabilities be included specifically within the goals and objectives of the policy. The submission is available here. It deals exclusively with the issue of accessibility in telecommunications for persons with disabilities, which has been left out of NTP 2011. We outline below in some detail the rationale for including accessibility in the NTP.

Demographic case

The ‘World Report on Disability’, issued in June 2011 by the World Health Organization in cooperation with the World Bank, estimates that over a billion of the world’s population lives with some form of disability.[1]

According to World Bank estimates, 20 per cent of the world's poorest people are disabled and are understood to be the most disadvantaged sections of society.[2] The global literacy rate for persons with disabilities was reported at approximately three per cent in 1998 by UNDP.[3]

Whether due to discrimination or an inability to work, the unemployment rate amongst the disabled is very high, almost 80 per cent in some countries. In India, while there are no accurate statistics on the number of disabled or their access to ICT, education and employment, it is commonly believed that the number of persons with disabilities can be safely estimated to be above 70 million. Added to this is a vast population of elderly and illiterate persons who are unable to access mainstream telecommunications services as are available today.

Legal case

India has signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and is therefore obliged to ensure the human rights under the UNCRPD, including those of education, employment, to life and access to information and communication technologies and to treat persons with disabilities on an equal basis as others. Even under domestic law, our constitution recognises equality and non discrimination as important guiding principles and under the prevailing as well as new draft disability laws. We are committed to ensuring access to information, ICTs and all other aspects of social life which are essential to enjoy the right to life.

Global best practices:

Countries around the world, both developed as well as developing have recognised the important role that ICTs play in connecting the disabled, and also that special efforts and measures need to be taken to promote accessibility of and access to telecommunications facilities and services for persons with disabilities. For instance, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Japan, Malaysia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, USA, UK and many other countries in the European Union have at least one if not multiple policies and legislations to promote accessible telecommunications and these include both provisions in mainstream as well as exclusive policies. Similarly at least 17 countries around the world have specific provisions for connecting the disabled and providing services through their universal service funds. Many of these countries have included the aim of connecting the disabled as a goal in their national policies and then gone on to achieve this through specific policy initiatives. It is important to identify this as a national commitment within the policy to ensure adequate follow up.

Challenges to disability access to telecommunications in India:

Given below are a few key challenges impeding disability access to telecommunication and ICT services in India today:

Unaffordability of telecommunications products and services for persons with disabilities living below the poverty line and in rural areas.

Unavailability of compatible assistive technologies in local languages and at affordable rates.

Absence of special enabling measures such as provision of hearing aid compatible phones, priority assistance in repairs, low tariff on basic telephony services, accessible services and customer care,

Absence of a national relay service and emergency service system.

Unavailability of low cost handsets in the market which are compatible with assistive technology.

Failure of mainstream programmes and initiatives to reach out to persons with disabilities, for instance the Common Service Centres need to be made accessible to all.

Inaccessibility of broadcast services: includes inaccessibility of hardware like set top boxes which can at present not be navigated by blind persons, as well as inaccessibility of TV programmes because of lack of captioning and descriptions.

Recommendation

Given that there is a lot which needs to be done to connect persons with disabilities to the information society, we strongly urge the DoT to clearly identify this as a national goal under the policy. Without this, it will be difficult to ensure that adequate programmes and policies are created to make telecommunications accessible and universally available and persons with disabilities will be unable to enjoy even the basic rights of life such as the right to health care, to information, education, employment, recreation and many more. Finally we would also like to stress that mention of accessibility in NPIT and other policies alone will not suffice to ensure accessibility of telecom services. While those do govern accessibility of web sites, standards and content, the NTP will take care of accessibility of telecom services like broadband and fixed and mobile telephony, as well as of products. Given that today a large and ever increasing number of persons are relying solely on mobile phones to communicate and transact, creating an accessible
telecommunications environment becomes an inevitable priority goal.

Annexure – List of Signatories

Accessability (Delhi)
Alternative Law Forum (Bangalore)
Andhjan Kalyan Trust (Gujrat)
Arushi (Bhopal)
Blind Persons’ Association(Ahmedabad)
Blind Relief Association (Delhi)
Centre for Internet and Society(Bangalore)
Daisy Forum of India(Delhi)
Deafway(Delhi)
Deaf Mutes Society (Ahmedabad)
Dr. Amrik Singh Cheema Foundation Trusts(Chandigarh)
Fourthway Foundation (Bangalore)
Indian Association for the Blind(Madurai)
Indian Institute for Assistive Technology(Mumbai)
Maraa (Bangalore)
Mitra Jyothi (Bangalore)
National Association for the Blind(Mumbai)
National Association for the Deaf(Delhi)
Saksham(Delhi)
Samrita Trust(Secundrabad)
Score Foundation (Delhi)
Sightsavers International (Mumbai office)
Society for Visually Handicapped (West Bengal)
Sruti Disability Rights Centre (Kolkata)
Technical Training Institute(Pune)
Third Eye Charitable Trust(Chennai and Kolkata)
Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (Mumbai)

[1]http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/en/index.html
[2]http://www.un.org/disabilities/default.asp?id=18
[3]Ibid.

Click to download the file [PDF, 182 kb]

The submission was made to the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India on 9 December 2011.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-new-telecom-policy-2011

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective

nirmita — 2012-09-25T05:33:25Z

G3ict and CIS are pleased to announce the publication of a new, improved edition of the Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective. The report published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and websites are accessible to persons with disabilities.

The report contains a Foreword by Axel Leblois, Founder and Executive Director of G3ict, an introduction and studies from countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union. The report contains contributions from Prashanth Ramadas, Asma Tajuddin, G Aravind, Katie Reisner, Sucharita Narasimhan, Bama Balakrishnan and Nirmita Narasimhan. Axel Leblois, Donal Rice, Immaculada Placienca Porrero, Kevin Carey, Licia Sbattella and Sunil Abraham are the expert reviewers.

Foreword by Axel Leblois

This third edition of our joint report with CIS “WEB ACCESSIBILITY POLICY MAKING: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE” provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and web sites are accessible to persons with disabilities. With 153 countries parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as of December 2011, an increasing number of governments are now in the midst of developing policies and programs to ensure that web sites and services under their jurisdictions are accessible.

Indeed, the Preamble of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognizes “the importance of accessibility to the physical, social, economic and cultural environment, to health and education and to information and communication, in enabling persons with disabilities to fully enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms”. Its article 9 stipulates that: “To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems” (1). It further specifies that “State Parties shall also take appropriate measures to … Promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet” (2.g).

There is therefore no doubt that all State Parties have an obligation to act upon those commitments. However, as this report demonstrates it clearly, web accessibility policies and their levels of enforcement vary considerably among countries with some common denominators such as the compliance with the W3C – WAI guidelines on web accessibility.

G3ict and CIS hope that this new, improved edition, which will now be available in print as well as in electronic format, will help accelerate the development of web accessibility policies and programs around the world. We want to express our sincere appreciation to Nirmita Narasimhan, programme manager at CIS and editor of the G3ict Publications and Reports for her dedication to this report which would not have been made possible without her incredible work and motivation as Disability Advocate.

Download a PDF of the Web Accessibility Policy Making here [335 KB]

Download the Daisy File [23412 KB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility-policy-making-an-international-perspective

Meeting on National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T06:46:19Z

A meeting on National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility is scheduled to be held on 1.7.2014 at 11.30 AM in DeitY. Sunil Abraham will take part in the meeting.

The Centre for Internet and Society is now on the implementation committee. The meeting will be held under the Chairmanship of Dr. Ajay Kumar on July 1, 2014 at the Department of Electronics & IT, New Delhi.

Click to download:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/meeting-on-national-policy-on-universal-electronic-accessibility

Digital Accessibility

praskrishna — 2017-07-09T01:44:08Z

On June 17, 2017, Rakesh Paladugula, a web accessibility trainer and Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation to scientists of the National Informatics Centre in their office in Bengaluru.


Pictured above: Nirmita Narasimhan explaining concepts of digital accessibility to a group of scientists at National Informatics Centre office in Bengaluru

The presentation described what is digital accessibility, who it benefits, how to implement it in terms of policy and technology, standards for different domains of accessibility and focused specifically on making web sites accessible as per GIGW. The presentation was attended by around 40 scientists in person and approx. 40 from the districts of Karnataka via video conferencing. The discussion also revolved on key issues with Government web sites, available resources and tools to check for accessibility and tips on how to make them accessible. Some thought was also given to what could be the plan going forward to implement GIGW and any capacity building requirements in this regard.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/digital-accessibility

Disabled demand rollback of GST on aids

praskrishna — 2017-07-09T02:21:46Z

It has been eight years since Mansoor Ahmed changed his caliper. The one he owns was bought for Rs 20,000. Now, they cost more than double. “It is a challenge to buy a caliper when the cost of living has gone up so much. I know really poor people who haven't changed calipers in 15-20 years. After a point, it could cause the disability to worsen,“ says Ahmed, a senior manager with a Bengaluru-based non-profit.

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Economic Times on July 7, 2017.

For disabled people like Ahmed, the 5% GST on basic aids and appliances like calipers, Braille writers and cochlear implants is an additional load. “We are already burdened by other costs -illnesses and medicines. It's quite unfair if I must pay more if I have to walk,“ says Ahmed.

The decision to tax aids and appliances for the disabled continues to draw flak despite a hastily put together statement last week reducing GST and capping it at 5% for 22 categories of products. Cars will continue to have 18% GST even if they are retrofitted for a disabled driver. The disabled find it hard to reconcile that they will have to shell out more while items such as sindoor and bangles got a waiver. This is the government that launched the Ac cessible India campaign and Inclusive India campaign. I don't understand why they should charge people to walk with a cane,“ says Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director, The Centre for Internet and Society.

The economic burden is accentuated by a lack of institutional support, whether in terms of accessibility to public transport or provision of affordable aids. “There is close correlation between poverty and disability . Most of us can't step out of our houses as roads, pavements and public transport are inaccessible,“ asks Javed Abidi, director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People.

Narasimhan notes in her submission to the government that the 21 million disabled record low literacy level (59%, below national average of 74.4%) and low work participation (36.3%).

To reduce the financial burden, Abidi and others fought to do away with taxes on aids since 2000. “We could bring down tax rates, sometimes as high as 20%, on various items to 5%. In 2006, it became zero and the last decade was the most important one for disability rights. Instead of making aids more affordable, we are now going back 10 years and charging 5% again,“ says Abidi, a wheelchair user.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/economic-times-july-7-2017-sandhya-soman-disabled-demand-rollback-of-gst-on-aids

July 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-08-23T02:03:19Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
In an article published in the Huffington Post on July 1, 2017, Nirmita Narasimhan stated that imposing taxes on assistive devices is unfair. It is unconscionable that disability aids and assistive technology are considered a luxury and taxed at a higher rate than rough semi-precious stones or cashew nuts. A research paper on patent working requirements and complex products in India authored by Prof Jorge L. Contreras, University of Utah, and Rohini Lakshané, CIS has been accepted for publication in the Jindal Global Law School Law Review 2017. Negotiators from 16 countries met in Hyderabad for discussing a free trade agreement titled Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Anubha Sinha along with Arul George Scaria reported this in an article published by Live Law.in. Supreme Court of India while dismissing an appeal by the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization ruled that there was no copyright infringement and no licence was required since the activities fell under the education exception in Indian copyright law. In an article published by EIFL, Anubha Sinha discusses the judgment and what it means for access to educational materials in India. Odia Wikipedians, in conjunction with Indian Athletics Federation and Sports and Youth Services collaborated to document the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships. Hundreds of photos were uploaded and new Wikipedia content added to inform the event’s fans, wrote Sailesh Patnaik and Jnanaranjan Sahu in a blog post. As recently as May 27, 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation (REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 was adopted The Data Protection Directive (1995/46/EC) will be replaced by this Regulation. It is expected that under this Regulation data privacy will be strengthened. Aditi Chaturvedi analyses the developments in a report.

CIS in the news:

UIDAI declining multiple requests by police to share Indian citizens’ biometrics (Justin Lee; Biometrics; July 4, 2017).
Act now to protect yourself against future ransomware attacks (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; July 5, 2017).
Reliance Jio data leaked on website : report (Livemint; July 10, 2017).
Supreme Court sets up constitution bench to hear Aadhaar privacy issues (Priyanka Mittal; Livemint; July 12, 2017).
Centre to form panel to 'encrypt' MGNREGA-DBT database and prevent leaks (Sanjeeb Mukherjee; Business Standard; July 14, 2017).
Calls for law change after Indians left in dark over data leaks (Rahul Bhatia and Sankalp Phartiyal; Reuters; July 14, 2017).
Indians Call For More Stringent Data Protection Laws (PYMTNS; July 17, 2017).
Social Activist Alleges Threat By Police Officer Over Possession of Aadhaar (Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar; Wire; July 16, 2017).

Aadhaar privacy: Key issues that all Aadhaar card holders should bear in mind (Business Today, July 19, 2017).
Data in the open makes it easy for cyber criminals (Kiran Parashar KM; New Indian Express; July 26, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Why GST Is A Step Backward For The Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; July 1, 2017).
Course Packs for Education Ruled Legal in India (Anubha Sinha; EIFL; July 12, 2017).
Digital native: Not only words (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 16, 2017).
Aadhar: Privacy is not a unidimensional concept (Amber Sinha; Economic Times; July 23, 2017).
RCEP IP Chapter: A Serious Threat to Access to Knowledge/ Cultural Goods? (Arul George Scaria and Anubha Sinha; July 27, 2017).
Digital native: Ever on the go (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 30, 2017).

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

Article

Why GST Is A Step Backward For The Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; July 1, 2017).

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

►Pervasive Technologies and Copyright

Research Paper

Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance (Jorge L. Contreras and Rohini Lakshané; SSRN and Jindal Global Law School Review; July 17, 2017).

Participation in Event

19th RCEP Meeting (Organized by Ministry of Commerce, Government of India; July 17 - 28, 2017; Hyderabad). Anubha Sinha participated in the meeting.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Note: The events were organized earlier but reports were published in July 2017:

Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Internship (Manasa Rao and Ananth Subray; July 5, 2017).
Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Faculty Orientation Report (Ananth Subray; July 7, 2017).
How It Came To Be: Wiki Loves Uniformed Services (Krishna Chaitanya Velaga; July 10, 2017).
Tallapaka Pada Sahityam is now on Wikisource (Pavan Santhosh; July 10, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at Yashawantrao Chavan Institute of Science, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; July 11, 2017).
Asian Athletics Championships 2017 Edit-a-thon (Sailesh Patnaik and Jnanaranjan Sahu; July 31, 2017).

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

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Data Protection: Understanding the General Data Protection Regulation (Aditi Chaturvedi; July 4, 2017).

Participation in Event

IViR Summer Course on Privacy Law and Policy (Organized by the University of Amsterdam; July 3 - 7, 2017; Amsterdam). Amber Sinha attended the course.

►Free Speech and Expression and Cyber Security

Participation in Events

OHD on Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; July 25, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.
UNESCO Multistakeholder consultation at 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) (Organized by UNESCO; Bangkok; July 26 - 29, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker. Vidhushi Marda also participated in the event.
Cybersecurity Workshop: Spotlight On GCCS 2017 (Organized by Global Partners Digital (GPD) and the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi, in collaboration with Digital Empowerment Foundation, Digital Asia Hub and Open Net Korea; Bangkok; July 25 - 27, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker. Udbhav Tiwari and Vidushi Marda participated in the event.

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

Participation in Event

Workshop on Public Open Wi-Fi Pilot (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; July 25, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.

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

Event Organized

Dr. Prerna Prabhakar - Impact of Digitisation of Land Records in Rural India (CIS, New Delhi; July 7, 2017).

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

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2017-newsletter

National Consultation on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Development Process

praskrishna — 2014-03-12T13:46:35Z

On February 12, 2014, CBM India in collaboration with United Nations Solution Exchange (UNSE) for Gender Community organized a 'National Consultation on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Development Processes' at the World Health Organization (WHO), Regional office for South-East Asia in New Delhi. Around 85 delegates attended the consultation

Anandhi Viswanathan participated in a panel discussion. She made a presentation on the National Resource Kit project, the challenges faced during the research phase of the project and contributed to the recommendations being submitted to the government of India by CBM regarding inclusion of persons with disabilities in development processes.

See more details of the event of CBM website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/national-consultation-on-inclusion-of-persons-with-disabilities-in-development-process

Accessibility of Political Parties Websites in India

nirmita — 2014-03-24T10:22:34Z

Given the impending elections in India across April and May 2014, a test was conducted to determine the accessibility of websites of the Election Commission of India, the Parliament and some key political parties in India. This report summarises the results of the test.

Introduction

The Internet has rapidly become a preferred medium for accessing information on various topics, ranging from politics, news, governance, recreation, business, education and carrying on social interaction. While this was initially a trend found more in urban areas, with the proliferation of the mobile phone, there is an ever expanding number of rural, elderly and illiterate persons accessing and downloading content from the Internet.

The focus shift of the government to carrying on administration and governance through electronic media and to enable G2C transactions over the Internet underscores the absolute necessity of ensuring that information and communications technologies realise their full potential as a tool for inclusion and participation. Even policymakers and parliamentarians have started using it as an effective medium to engage with the public. The Government of India has made some efforts in this direction, since it formulated Guidelines for Indian Government websites and also the recently notified National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility. Both of these require all Government websites and those of other entities such as essential service providers, research and academic institutions and other stakeholders to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, the universally accepted standard for measuring web accessibility formulated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Since inaccessibility of websites impedes access on all platforms, it is one of the most important domains of electronic accessibility.

Highlights

41 websites were tested
13 websites failed to open or had no official website address / URL
Most of the remaining 28 websites have some accessibility barriers, with only 2 websites having no known accessibility errors
The average number of errors per homepage across all tested websites is 91, with around 10 websites having more than 100 errors.
28.5% of homepages have over 500 cumulative errors
21.4% of websites have no alternate text for non-text objects
21.4% of the websites have no navigation-markup
Only 1 website has a colour change option
Around 50% of the web pages have form links of which only 50% were accessible

Click to download the full report below

as PDF
as Word file

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessibility-of-political-parties-websites-in-india

Enabling Elections

nirmita — 2014-05-10T00:12:00Z

For making the 2014 General Elections in India participatory and accessible for voters with disabilities the Centre for Law and Policy Research and the Centre for Internet and Society have come up with a report. The report addresses the barriers that people with disabilities face during elections and recommends solutions for the same.

Executive Summary

The report examines three main areas:

The barriers that people with disabilities face at the time of elections.
The legal framework around this issue.
The measures which need to be taken to eliminate the barriers in the pre-voting phase, during voting phase and also post-voting phase, so as to enhance the participation of voters with disabilities.

Access to the public sphere and full political participation is a matter of right for persons with disabilities and the state is constitutionally mandated to enforce this right. The rights of voters with disabilities are examined under the constitutional provisions, the Representation of People’s Act 1951, the relevant directions of the Supreme Court and the international conventions. This report also considers international best practices while making recommendations, to the extent that they are suitable and practical in the Indian context.

This report looks at Electoral Participation in two dimensions:

“Pre-electoral Participation” and
“Actual Electoral Participation”

The report then goes on to make recommendations for enhancing accessibility in both these categories.

On Pre-electoral Participation, the report inter alia recommends the following:

Opportunities for people with disabilities to participate in public consultations.
Immediate outreach programs for higher voter registrations.
Making election material and candidate guides available in different formats such as large print, Braille and audio formats upon request so that voters can have full knowledge of the candidate they want to vote for.
Providing information for voters about locations which have special access, wheelchair facilities, technological assistance for visually impaired, etc.

On Actual Electoral Participation, we inter alia recommend the following:

Accessible polling sites.
Training election staff to be sensitive to diverse needs of voters.
Enabling privacy and independent voting by persons with disabilities.
Arranging for mobile polling booths.
Making EVM’s compatible and accessible such as by providing for Braille, large print.
Tactile buttons, 'sip and puff' and audio devices.

The report also recommends the need to monitor participation of voters with disabilities in the forthcoming elections.There is a need to collect data, surveys and studies in the pre-election, election and post-election phases.

Click here to download and read the full report (PDF, 4.5 MB)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/enabling-elections

Global Consultation Report on ICTs and Disability Launched at the UN High Level Meeting on Disability and Development

praskrishna — 2014-03-25T10:30:35Z

A new report released on Monday, 23 September 2013 demonstrates how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), have become a positive force of transformation and a crucial element of any personal development, empowerment and institutional framework for inclusive development.

We are acknowledged in this report (see page 69).

“The ICT Opportunity for a Disability-Inclusive Development Framework” contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which ICTs can enable and accelerate the social and economic inclusion of persons with disabilities. It lists challenges that are still to be addressed while outlining concrete actions to be undertaken by each group of stakeholders and a set of indicators to help measuring progress towards the achievement of a disability-inclusive development agenda.

This report is the result of collaborative input from the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs (G3ICT), the International Disability Alliance (IDA), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Microsoft, the Telecentre.org Foundation and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The content is based on the information gathered during a global consultation on ICT, Disability and Development, carried out from 20 May to 17 June 2013 in support of the preparatory process of the HLMDD. The consultation gathered over 150 expert inputs from relevant organizations and key individuals stemming from over 55 countries and representing multiple categories of stakeholders, including governments, academic institutions, organizations of persons with disabilities, civil society organizations, the private sector and regional and international organizations.

Click to download the report here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/itu-september-2013-global-consultation-report-on-icts-and-disability-launched-at-un-high-level-meeting-on-disability-and-development

Constitution of the High Level Advisory Committee (HLAC) on National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility

praskrishna — 2014-04-06T06:46:15Z

The Centre for Internet and Society has been invited to serve on the high level committee on electronic accessibility policy constituted by the Government of India.

Click to read the notification issued by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hlac-national-policy-universal-electronic-accessibility

February 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-04-07T07:27:46Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) welcomes you to the second issue of its newsletter (February) for the year 2014:

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Highlights
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We published revised chapters for the states of Mizoram, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana, as part of our National Resource Kit project.
In the concluding blog post of a three-part study Ananth Padmanabhan looks at the Indian law in the Copyright Act and the Information Technology Act, and concludes that both those laws restrain courts and private companies from ordering an ISP to block a website for copyright infringement.
Telugu Wikipedia celebrated its 10^th anniversary. An event was co-organized in Vijaywada to celebrate the same.
The second Institute on Internet and Society was held in Pune from February 11 to 17. The proceedings from the workshop are captured in a blog post.
CIS announced an Open Call for Comments for the latest draft of the Privacy Bill, 2013 prepared by Bhairav Acharya.
Forbes India published its “30 Under 30 List”. Pranesh Prakash is featured in the list.
As part of the Making Change Project, Denisse Albornoz wrote a blog post that compares the production behind a performance with the process of storytelling.
Beli gives an introduction to spectrum sharing. The post looks at GSM and CDMA, and touches upon LTE, and how they might share spectrum.

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Jobs
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CIS is seeking applications for the post of Program Officer (Access to Knowledge): http://bit.ly/1fnydB0. There are two vacancies for this post and it is full-time based in Delhi. To apply, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org), Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three writing samples of which at least one demonstrates your analytic skills, and one that shows your ability to simplify complex policy issues.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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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 Mizoram, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. With this we have completed compilation of draft chapters for 35 states.

Based upon discussion with the office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities (CCPD) the following chapters were revised:

► National Resource Kit Chapter

The Mizoram Chapter (by CLPR, February 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1eUSvxW
The Dadra & Nagar Haveli Chapter (by CLPR, February 6, 2014): http://bit.ly/1mv3YhJ
The Haryana Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, February 10, 2014): http://bit.ly/1dVOiKI
The Himachal Pradesh Chapter (by Anandhi Viswanathan, February 12, 2014): http://bit.ly/1jSk03x

► Other

# Participation in Events

National Consultation on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Development Process (organized by CBM India in collaboration with United Nations Solution Exchange for Gender Community, WHO Regional office for South-East Asia, New Delhi, February 12, 2014). Anandhi Viswanathan participated in a panel discussion. She made a presentation on the National Resource Kit project: http://bit.ly/OlkHVq.
Zero Project Conference on Accessibility: Innovative Policies and Practices for Persons with Disabilities (organized by Essl Foundation, the World Future Council and the European Foundation Centre, United Nations Office, Vienna, February 27 and 28, 2014). Pranesh Prakash spoke on Affordable Text-to-Speech Software from India: http://bit.ly/1czo32s. Nominations on e-speak were recognised as examples of innovative practices and policies from India. Pranesh Prakash was also a speaker on Copyright Exception for Accessible Formats: http://bit.ly/1l8HRth.

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Access to Knowledge
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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.

# Analyses

Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 2) (by Ananth Padmanabhan, February 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cddoKm. Analyses the law laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court on secondary and contributory copyright infringement.
Can Judges Order ISPs to Block Websites for Copyright Infringement? (Part 3) (by Ananth Padmanabhan, February 5, 2014): http://bit.ly/1g35mDg. Analyses the Indian law in the Copyright Act and the Information Technology Act.

# Participation in Events

2nd International Conference on Managing Intellectual Property Rights and Strategy (MIPS 2014) (organized by Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay with support from the Ministry of Human Resources Development IPR Chair Project, Government of India): http://bit.ly/PsPEbq.
Consultation on Institutional Arrangements for IP management under MHRD (organized by the Planning Commission and Ministry of Human Resource Development, New Delhi, February 21, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this consultation: http://bit.ly/1fTCoar.
National Conference on Use of Technology in Higher Education (organized by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development and Planning Commission in partnership with Microsoft Research and British Council, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, February 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/P6u78i. Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event as a panelist in the session on "Future of Content Creation".

# Media Coverage

Pranesh Prakash: Influencing India's IP Laws (by Samar Srivastava, Forbes India, February 15, 2014): http://bit.ly/1kBzLMq.

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (http://bit.ly/SPqFOl). As part this project (http://bit.ly/X80ELd), we organised 4 workshops in the month of January, published an article in DNA, and signed a memorandum of understanding with KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences to further the development of Odia Wikipedia:

►Wikipedia

# Articles / Blog Entries

Odia Language's Presence in Digital Media and Wikipedia's Role (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Samaja, March 2, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ieF3sC.
Indian Wikimedia community coordinates Women’s History Month (by Netha Hussain and Jeph Paul, Wikimedia Foundation, March 6, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cyRfqf,

# Events Co-organized

Cinemathon2014 Bangalore (organized by Pad.ma and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, February 8-9, 2014): http://bit.ly/MRRkZz.
Tewiki 10th Anniversary (organized by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia community, February 15, 2014): http://bit.ly/1iI2Pxs. T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaikh were speakers at the event.
Cinemathon2014 Mumbai (organized by Pad.ma and CIS-A2K, CAMP Studio, Mumbai, February 15-16, 2014): http://bit.ly/P5YGL8.
Wikipedia Mangalore Workshop (organized by Roshini Nilaya and CIS-A2K, Mangalore, February 26, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja gave a presentation on Wikipedia with a special focus on students and women.

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

# Media Coverage

Father-son duo promote Punjabi online (by Jatinder Preet, Sunday Guardian, February 1, 2014): http://bit.ly/1l87b2h.
୧୦ ବର୍ଷରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ୱିକିପିଡିଆ (Rabibara Sambad (Sunday supplement of Odia newspaper The Sambad), February 9, 2014): http://bit.ly/1igMynn. This is a feature about Odia Wikipedia's 10th anniversary and the story of a dead volunteer community reviving after 8 years.
Wikipedia Mangalore Workshop (Prajavani, February 27, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gVMG6f.

# Participation in Event

The Dynamics of Education to Employment Journey: Opportunities and Challenges (organized by KIIT School of Management, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, February 21-22, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1ePwqHc.

Event Organized

Wiki Women's Workshop (ICG – Dona Paula, Goa, March 9, 2014): http://bit.ly/MRRJLy. The event is being organized as part of the commemoration of the International Women's Day.

Openness

# Event Organised

Bitcoin & Open Source with Aaron Koenig (CIS, Bangalore, February 7, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fbN6mP.

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Internet Governance
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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. Gautam Bhatia gives an analysis of the right to privacy from a constitutional perspective. Bhairav Acharya prepared an updated version of the Privacy Protection Bill which was published for comments.

# Call for Comments

The Privacy Protection Bill, 2013 (by Bhairav Acharya, February 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1g3TwIX. CIS announced an Open Call for Comments to the latest version of the bill.

# Articles

The Internet Way (by Nishant Shah, Biblio Vol. 19 No.8 (1&2), January – February 2014): http://bit.ly/1kBp9gJ. Dr. Nishant Shah's review of the book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” by Bantam Press/Random House Group, London can be found on page 16.
Surveillance and the Indian Constitution - Part 3: The Public/Private Distinction and the Supreme Court’s Wrong Turn (by Gautam Bhatia, Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog, February 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1kBosnw. This was originally published on Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog.
Big Democracy, Big Surveillance: India's Surveillance State (by Maria Xynou, Open Democracy, February 28, 2014): http://bit.ly/1nkg8Ho.
Will You be Paid to Post a Picture? (by Nishant Shah, Indian Express, February 18, 2014): http://bit.ly/P65d8L.

# Blog Entries

February 11: The Day We Fight Back Against Mass Surveillance (by Divij Joshi, February 14, 2014): http://bit.ly/1e7drCV.
Calcutta High Court Strengthens Whistle Blower Protection (by Divij Joshi, February 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cG8v7t.
CIS Welcomes 52nd Report on Cyber Crime, Cyber Security, and Right to Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok, February 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/1oviMJ4.
UIDAI Practices and the Information Technology Act, Section 43A and Subsequent Rules (by Elonnai Hickok, February 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fbSfep.

# Events Organized

Nullcon Goa Feb 2014 — International Security Conference (organised by Nullcon, Bogmallo Beach Resort, Goa, February 12 – 15, 2014). CIS is one of the sponsors for this event: http://bit.ly/1lrBu5I.
Counter Surveillance Panel: DiscoTech & Hackathon (co-organized by CIS, MIT Centre for Civic Media Co-Design Lab, Tactical Technology Collective, Hackteria.org, and Shristi School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, March 1, 2014): http://bit.ly/NCGMyH

# Participation in Events

First Meeting of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group for India Internet Governance Forum (organized by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, New Delhi, February 10, 2014). Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting: http://bit.ly/1fKu5xz.
Internet Intermediary Liability: Towards Evidence-based Policy and Regulatory Reform to Secure Human Rights on the internet (organized by Association for Progressive Communications, The Wedgewood, Melville, Johannesburg, February 10-11, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fMAEK2. Elonnai Hickok was a speaker.
Towards an Equitable and Just Internet (organized by IT for Change, New Delhi, February 14-15, 2014). Bhairav Acharya was a speaker: http://bit.ly/1cz9EDt.
Workshop on Media Law & Policy Curriculum Development (organized by the Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi and University of Oxford in support with the International Higher Education-Knowledge Economy Partnerships Programme of the British Council, February 16, 2014, National Law University, Delhi): http://bit.ly/1ovoT00. Bhairav Acharya was a speaker.
The Changing Role of the Media in India: Constitutional Perspectives (organized by School of Law, Christ University, February 28, 2014): http://bit.ly/1lB2nTO. Snehashish Ghosh moderated a session at this conference.

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

The Dangers of Birdsong (by Namrata Joshi, Outlook, January 25, 2014): http://bit.ly/1kB8J7L.
A Tale of Two Internet Campaigns (by Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, February 11, 2014): http://bit.ly/1lDdRZy.
Dark days for the creative class in India: Siddiqui (by Haroon Siddiqui, thestar.com, February 16, 2014): http://bit.ly/1gdtgbC.
The Forbes India 30 Under 30 List (by Abhilasha Khaitan, Forbes India, February 21, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ovnvKM. Pranesh Prakash features in the list.
India ‘tea parties’ enable politicians to woo urban youth with technology (by Avantika Chilkoti, Financial Times, February 26, 2014): http://bit.ly/1cGfOMm.

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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:

# Blog Entries

Defending the Humanities in the Digital Age (by Nishant Shah, DML Central, February 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/1czdZqg.
Digital Humanities in India- Mapping Changes at the Intersection of Youth, Technology and Higher Education (by Sneha PP, February 21, 2014): http://bit.ly/1qd6xo4.

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Digital Natives
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CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia:

►Making Change Project

# Blog Entries

Storytelling as Performance: The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise 1 (by Denisse Albornoz, February 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/1jX4qBb.
Storytelling as Performance: The Ugly Indian and Blank Noise 2 (by Denisse Albornoz, February 27, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fKwQil.

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Telecom
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Shyam Ponappa, a Distinguished Fellow at CIS is a regular columnist with the Business Standard. The articles published on his blog Organizing India Blogspot is mirrored on our website:

# Newspaper Column

Centre- or State-Driven Development? (by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, February 5, 2014, Observer India Blogspot, February 7, 2014): http://bit.ly/1ceuWFS.

# Blog Entry

An Introduction to Spectrum Sharing (by Beli, February 24, 2014): http://bit.ly/NZlknd.

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Knowledge Repository on Internet Access
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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.

►Event Organized

Institute on Internet and Society (organised by Ford Foundation and CIS, Yashada, Pune, February 11-17, 2014): http://bit.ly/1fpTdDS. Bishakha Datta, Ravikiran Annaswamy, Kingsley John, Prof. G. Nagarjuna, Nisha Thompson, Prashant Naik, Nehaa Chaudhari, Bhairav Acharya, Manu Srivastav, Dr. Abhijeet Safai, Payal Malik, Nishant Shah, Laura Stein, Sunil Abraham, Madan Muthu and Chinmayi Arun taught at the institute.

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About CIS
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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, MacArthur Foundation, IDRC and 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.

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