Centre for Internet and Society

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook (Daisy)

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T12:46:16Z

Daisy format of e-accessibility policy handbook

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/daisy-format

August 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-13T05:13:23Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs: Re: Wiring Bodies by Asha Achuthan, Archive and Access by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, Porn: Law, Video, Technology by Namita Malhotra, The Last Cultural Mile by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities by Pratyush Shankar were officially launched at the Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop in Ahmedabad.

Workshop organised in CEPT, Ahmedabad

Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation [19 to 22 August 2011]

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

Featured Research

Between the Stirrup and the Ground: Relocating Digital Activism (This paper by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen was published in Democracy & Society, a publication of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society, Volume 8, Issue 2, Summer 2011).

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Interview

An Interview with David Baines (Maureen Agena interviewed David Baines of Mada Centre for Assistive Technology in Khattar).

Access to Knowledge

New Blog Entry

Govt for Legalising Parallel Import of Copyright Works; Publishers Oppose

Openness

CIS believes that innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration and is committed towards promotion of open standards, open access, and free/libre/open source software.

Featured Research

Call for Comments on Draft Report on Open Government Data in India (v2) (Nisha Thompson has updated the Open Government Data Report prepared by CIS last year including additional case studies and the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy).
Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report: Call for Comments (The report has been prepared by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu. It surveys the field of scholarly and scientific publication in India and provides a detailed history of the open access movement in India).

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralized authority that rules the Internet, the Internet does not just run by its own volition: for it to operate in a stable and reliable manner, there needs to be in place infrastructure, a functional domain name system, ways to curtail cyber crime across borders, etc. The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), paragraph 34 defined Internet governance as “the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet.” Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Post

Bye Bye email? (Email might be the default method of communication for most of us, but could it be going the telegram way, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published in the Indian Express on August 21, 2011).

Public Lecture

The Mirror in the Enigma: How Germany lost World War II to a Mathematical Theorem (Rohit Gupta gave a lecture at CIS on August 12, 2011).

CIS is doing a project, ‘Privacy in Asia’. It is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and the International Development Research Centre, Canada and is being administered in collaboration with the Society and Action Group, Gurgaon. The two-year project commenced on 24 March 2010 and will be completed as agreed to by the stakeholders. It was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around challenges and violations of privacy in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Featured Research

IP Addresses and Expeditious Disclosure of Identity in India (Prashant Iyengar reviews the statutory mechanism regulating the retention and disclosure of IP addresses by Internet companies in India and provides a compilation of anecdotes on how law enforcement authorities in India have used IP address information to trace individuals responsible for particular crimes).

New Blog Entries

Whole Body Imaging and Privacy Concerns that Follow (by Elonnai Hickok)
Financial Inclusion and the UID (by Elonnai Hickok)
CCTV in Universities (by Merlin Oommen)
Re-thinking Key Escrow (by Natasha Vaz)

Event Report

Privacy Matters, Chennai – the event was organised by IDRC, Society in Action Group, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Consumer and Civic Action Group, Privacy India and CIS on August 6, 2011.

News & Media Coverage

Net Gain [The Telegraph, 24 August 2011]
IISc students boycott UID, don’t want Big Brother to keep watch [Bangalore Mirror, 23 August 2011]
In the Right Circle [Indian Express, 24 July 2011]
The Siege of Android: How Google Lost The OS War [Business.in, 17 August 2011]
The Unsocial Network [Mail Today, 14 August 2011]
Hazare 'clicks' with city techies [India, 18 August 2011]
Govt wants to monitor Facebook, Twitter [Times of India, 8 August 2011]
Nothing unique about this identity [Deccan Chronicle, 5 August 2011]
Tired of tele-marketing calls? Act on privacy right: Experts [Times of India, 7 August 2011]
When Knowledge Isn’t Written, Does It Still Count? [New York Times, 7 August 2011]
Indian super-cops now patrol the www highway [Hindustan Times, 6 August 2011]
Better Understanding of the Idea of Privacy Sought [Hindu, 7 August 2011]
Converting Indian Slacktivists Takes (Offline) Time [Wall Street Journal, 2 August 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2011-bulletin

An Interview with David Baines

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T09:33:07Z

Maureen Agena interviewed David Baines, Deputy Director, Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Center). Maureen asked questions regarding the status of disabled persons in Qatar, the level of ICT accessibility awareness for PWDs in Qatar, efforts of the Qatar Government towards Mada relating to policy measurements, schemes for PWDs, etc.

Following is the transcript of an interview by Maureen, a CIS consultant from Uganda with David Banes, Deputy Director, Mada Assistive Technology Centre, Qatar:

What is the status of disabled persons in Qatar or Mada in terms of number, age and gender and the kind of the work Mada is engaged in?
There are officially some 10,000 disabled people in Qatar across a wide range of needs. This doesn’t include people who are ageing and acquiring moderate disabilities as a result of their age. Mada works with any disability, any age for any purpose, supporting both Qatari citizens and residents. We work with both men and women including the Arabic and non-Arabic speaking visitors.
What is the level of ICT accessibility awareness for PWDs in Qatar?
As more and more people in Qatar use ICT every day so the awareness of barriers is increasing. Mada has been working hard to raise public awareness through cinema, television and radio ads and even video ads in the local shopping malls! More importantly we are working hard to make sure that disabled people are aware of the potential of technology to change their lives, and so we work closely in partnership with other services for people with a disability to integrate accessibility activity.
Are there any efforts of the Qatar Government towards Mada in terms of policy measures, programmes, schemes for PWDs? How about efforts by companies or universities?
IctQatar currently has an e-accessibility policy out for consultation. The policy is wide ranging and offers detailed expectations across the public sector for websites, but also requires accessible ATM’s, telephone and emergency services to be introduced.
What is the situation of copyright law in Qatar?
Copyright and IPR are both respected in Qatar. We are delighted that creative commons is being introduced to the country allowing for alternative formats of documents to be more readily produced.
Do you have an exception in your copyright law permitting conversion into any format for the disabled without permission?
Not yet.
What is the level of development at Mada in terms of assistive technologies? Specifically screen readers in Arabic.
Mada is extremely busy in supporting both commercial and open source development of AT in Arabic. We have eight projects due to announce in the very near future. Screen readers are well developed in Arabic, but we are looking forward to seeing a more basic text to speech tool created to lower the cost of entry point for blind users on a limited budget.
Does Mada have any collaborative development with surrounding Arabic nations?
We welcome collaborations across the region and internationally. We speak regularly to organisations in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and then more widely to Egypt and Tunisia. Collaboration is very much central to our approach.
Approximately how many organizations are working actively in Qatar on accessibility for Persons with Disabilities? (Name any)
Mada is the hub for accessibility in Qatar. But we work closely with the Shafallah Center for Special Needs, Al Noor Institute for the Blind and Hamad Medical Corporation.
Kindly share some details about the different areas of work of Mada centre?
Probably best to look at our new updated website www.mada.org.qa, and http://mada.org ;http://twitter.com/madaQATC or http://facebook.com/madaQATC.
What do you feel are important factors/ resources which are helpful to you in your advocacy?
Maintaining effective networks both within Qatar and beyond. One ambition is to establish an online forum whereby the views of disabled people on priorities for digital inclusion can be gleaned.
And what are the kinds of resources that PWDs would find useful if they had access to?
Great levels of Arabic accessible digital content and Arabic supported assistive technologies.
There is a draft ICT accessibility legislation. What are the highlights of this draft policy?
The policy is wide ranging and identifies targets for government websites, banks and telecoms.
How long do you think it may take to get it adopted and what are the implications for the Government, NGOs, industry and others?
Unable to answer this currently.
Do you at Mada have any digital libraries for the blind? If yes, approximately how many books are there?
No. But we are collaborating with Bookshare internationally to deliver this.
Is Mada, Centre of Assistive Technology able to exchange books with neighbouring countries?
Yes, where licences allow, we choose Bookshare as our partner to encourage international sharing of books for the disabled community.
At Mada, you do focus a lot on training. What are your different target audiences?
Training people with a disability in both accessible IT training and assistive technologies
Professionals including teachers and therapists
Parents and family
IT professionals including Web developers
Human resource professionals and employers.
How many people have you trained to date?
Over 200 including the first accredited AT training in Qatar for 20 participants.
Anything about Mada disability legislation which is relevant to ICT accessibility?
N/A.
Did Qatar sign the UNCRPD? How is implementation going on?
Yes, Mada is a direct response to that action.
Any specific details about web accessibility, audits/ evaluations conducted to look at accessibility of public web sites- details. (Any report which is available in English?)
We are completing an initial benchmarking study currently – no details have yet been made available. We are completing around 2 full site audits a month on major private and govt sector websites and feedback is being provided directly to those organisations to develop an action plan.

Thank you

Maureen Agena

About the Mada Centre

Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Centre) is committed to using assistive technologies (AT) as a means of creating more accessible workplaces. As part of connecting people with disabilities to the world of information and communication technology, Mada launched a nationwide accessibility initiative with its partners, Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and Vodafone Qatar on 7 December 2010. The purpose of the initiative named "Connected" will ensure that persons with disabilities do not have to pay more than others to use mobile telecommunications technology.

The centre enables adults and children with disabilities to use computers, mobile devices and the Internet at home by offering a full range of services and resources related to assistive technologies. At Mada, people of all ages, with any type of disability are able to visit the interactive resources centre to try out the latest assistive technology and access assessment and training services. The Mada team is able to assist in choosing a suitable solution through impartial and expert advice.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/interview-mada-centre

July 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T07:00:26Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs: Re: Wiring Bodies by Asha Achuthan, Archive and Access by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, Pornography and the Law by Namita Malhotra, The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem – An Inquiry into Technology and Governance by Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities by Pratyush Shankar were sent for peer review.

Upcoming Event in CEPT, Ahmedabad

Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation [Deadline for submission – 26 July 2011; Participants to be selected by 30 July 2011; Workshop from 19 to 22 August 2011]

Digital Natives with a Cause?

The Digital Natives Newsletter

"Links in the Chain" is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the "Digital Natives with a Cause?" community members. It includes opinion posts by participants from the three workshops — Talking Back (Taipei, 15 – 18 August 2010), My Bubble, My Space, My Voice (Johannesburg, 6 – 9 November 2010) and From Face to the Interface (Santiago, 8 – 10 February 2011) as well as the facilitators, interviews with them, comics and cartoons highlighting current issues affecting the community, as well as current news and discussions happening at the project website, www.digitalnatives.in.

The Digital Dinosaurs [Links in the Chain, Volume 7]
Special Mid Year Edition [Links in the Chain, Volume 8]

Accessibility

Featured Research

Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective (Revised Edition 2011) [A G3ict White Paper researched and edited by the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. Editor: Nirmita Narasimhan, Revised edition: May 2011]

Access to Knowledge (previously IPR Reform)

CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential as it promotes creativity and innovation and bridges the gaps between the developed and developing world positively. Hence, the campaigns for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-impaired, advocating against PUPFIP Bill, calls for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, questioning the demonization of 'pirates', and supporting endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.

Featured

Don't Shoot the Messenger: Speech on Intermediary Liability at 22nd SCCR of WIPO (speech by Pranesh Prakash at a side-event co-organized from 15 to 24 June 2011, by WIPO and the Internet Society on intermediary liability).

Openness

Documentary

People are Knowledge – Experimenting with Oral Citations on Wikipedia (co-produced by CIS in association with the Wikimedia Foundation, on Oral Citations in India and South Africa)

Featured

Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector (published by Transparency & Accountability Initiative, CIS contributed the section on Open Government Data).

Internet Governance

New Blog Post

RTI and Third Party Information: What Constitutes the Private and Public? [by Noopur Raval]

Events Organised

Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla [at CIS, Bangalore on 8 July 2011]
Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden [at TERI, Bangalore on 27 June 2011]

Featured

Privacy & Media Law (by Sonal Makhija). The research examines the existing media norms governed by Press Council of India, the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and the Code of Ethics drafted by the News Broadcasting Standard Authority, the constitutional protection guaranteed to an individual’s right to privacy upheld by the courts, and the reasons the State employs to justify the invasion of privacy.

Comments

Right to Privacy Bill 2010 — A Few Comments (by Elonnai Hickok). CIS has given specific recommendations and specific comments on the Right to Privacy Bill, 2010, which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha by Rajeev Chandrashekhar.

Event Report

Privacy Matters, Guwahati – the event was organised by IDRC, Society in Action Group, IDEA Chirang, an NGO initiative working with grassroots initiatives in Assam, Privacy India and CIS on 23 June 2011.

New Blog Entries

My Experiment with Scam Baiting (by Sahana Sarkar)
When Data Means Privacy, What Traces Are You Leaving Behind? (by Noopur Raval)
Video Surveillance and Its Impact on the Right to Privacy (by Elonnai Hickok)
Consumer Privacy in e-Commerce (by Sahana Sarkar)
An Overview of DNA Labs in India (by Shilpa Narani)
UID: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear? (by Shilpa Narani)

News & Media Coverage

Indian SMEs still fail to harness the power of Net [Sunday Guardian, 19 June 2011]

Sorry Wrong Number [Telegraph, 3 July 2011]

Aadhaar’s moment of truth [Deccan Herald, 5 July 2011]
The Walls Have Ears [Outlook, issue, 11 July 2011]
Transparent Government, via Webcams in India [New York Times, 17 July 2011]; news also published in other languages in wprost (Polish), ictnews (Vietnamese) and @rret sur images(French)
NYT lauds Oommen Chandy’s 24/7 office webcast [Deccan Chronicle, 19 July 2011]
UID: The World’s Largest Biometric Database [International School on Digital Transformation, 21 July 2011]. Sunil Abraham made a presentation.
Facebook, my boyfriend is lousy [Bangalore Mirror, 24 July 2011]

Portal augurs well for transparency [The Hindu, 25 July 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter

Follow CIS on identi.ca

Join the CIS group on Facebook

Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2011-bulletin

Accessibility

kaeru — 2016-06-04T12:32:42Z

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and accessibility policies. We have organised Right to Read campaigns in the four metro cities of Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai, made a submission to amend the Indian Copyright to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, researched on accessible mobile handsets in India, analysed the Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, and published a policy handbook on e-accessibility and a book on universal service for persons with disabilities.

Key Research

Publications

National Compendium of Laws, Policies, Programmes for Persons with Disabilities (CIS and the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Department of Disability Affairs, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India; January 3, 2016).
Enabling Elections (CIS and the Centre for Law and Policy Research; March 24, 2014).
Accessibility of Government Websites in India: A Report (CIS and Hans Foundation; September 26, 2012).
Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective (G3ict and CIS; February 28, 2012).
Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices (Axel Leblois, Nirmita Narasimhan and Deepti Bharthur; G3ict and CIS, December 27, 2011).
e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian) (November 4, 2011).
e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (CIS, ITU and G3ict with support from Hans Foundation; October 27, 2010).

Submissions

Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for Persons with Disabilities (Deepti Samant Raja and Nirmita Narasimhan, submitted to the the National Disaster Management Authority of India, September 17, 2013).

Accessibility in the New Telecom Policy 2011 (submitted to the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India, December 9, 2011)
Right to Knowledge for Persons with Print Impairment: A Proposal to Amend the Indian Copyright Regime (submitted jointly by CIS and Inclusive Planet and Alternative Law Forum to the Ministry of HRD, November 2009).

Other Research

Accessibility of Political Parties Websites in India ( Nirmita Narasimhan; March 24, 2014).
The ICT Opportunity for a Disability-Inclusive Development Framework (Broadband Commission for Digital Development, G3ict, International Disability Alliance, International Telecommunication Union, Microsoft, Telecentre.org Foundation, and UNESCO; September 30, 2013).
Opening New Avenues for Empowerment: ICTs to Access Information and Knowledge for Persons with Disabilities (UNESCO; August 31, 2013).
Accessible Broadcasting in India (Srividya Vaidyanathan; January 11, 2013).
Making Mobile Phones and Services Accessible for Persons with Disabilities (Axel Leblois and Nirmita Narasimhan; ITU and G3ict, September 2, 2012).
The Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010: Does it exceed its Mandate in Including Provisions Relating to Other Disability Legislations? (CIS, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Law and Policy Research; February 24, 2011).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/front-page

Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective (Revised Edition 2011)

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T10:27:00Z

A G3ict White Paper researched and edited by the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India. Editor: Nirmita Narasimhan, Revised edition: May 2011

In 2009, G3ict published a comparative review of the web and electronic accessibility policies of 15 countries and the European Union intended to serve as a guide to policy makers on how web accessibility has been implemented in different countries. Since then, there have been several relevant developments in the policy landscape, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. The White Paper has been updated to keep abreast of these new changes. Some highlights of the revised White Paper include the updated version of Australia's Disability Discrimination Act Advisory Notes, issued by the Australian Human Rights Commission under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 in October 2010; the Equality Act 2010 (replacing the Disability Discrimination Act), The Statutory Code of Practice (2010), BS8878:2010 Web accessibility Code of practice replacing the PAS 78 and the e-Accessibility action plan in the U.K.; and the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 in the U.S.A.

The published G3ict White Paper is available here
Click here to download the White Paper [Word Document, 232 KB]

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

June 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T07:14:57Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research knowledge base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organisations and individuals to focus on its three year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Six monographs Rewiring Bodies, Archive and Access, Pornography and the Law, The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem - An Inquiry into Technology and Governance, Transparency and Politics and Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities are published online and will be launched later this year.

CEPT to Set up Centre to Research Role of Internet in Social Development [Published in the Indian Express on June 18, 2011]

Upcoming Event in CEPT, Ahmedabad

Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum Workshop: Call for Participation [Deadline for submission – 15 July 2011; Workshop from 19 to 22 August 2011]

Digital Natives with a Cause?

The Digital Natives Newsletter

The Digital Dinosaurs [Volume 5]

Pathways

HE Cell's initiative on social justice, in collaboration with CIS, has initiated the Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education. It is supported by the Ford Foundation. Under this project, nine under-graduate colleges in different parts of India will be identified to provide special skills in livelihood, knowledge and technology to underprivileged students in those colleges.

New Blog Entry

Pathways for Learning in Higher Education

Accessibility

New Blog Entries

Policy Spotlight: 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act [Written by Deepti Bharthur; contains an e-mail interview with Jenifer Simpson, Senior Director for Government Affairs and head of the Telecommunications & Technology Policy Initiative at the American Association of People with Disabilities ]
ICT Accessibility in Sri Lanka [Written by Nirmita Narasimhan]

Intellectual Property

Statement

Statement of CIS, India, on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 22nd SCCR

New Blog Entry

Putting a Lid on Royalty Outflows — How the RBI can Help Reduce your IP Costs [Written by Sanjana Govil]

Openness

Submission

Comments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy [submitted to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure]

Internet Governance

New Articles

The Present — and Future — Dangers of India's Draconian New Internet Regulations [By Anja Kovacs in the Caravan on June 1, 2011]
Big Brother is Watching You [By Sunil Abraham in Deccan Herald on June 1, 2011]
The Digital is Political [By Nishant Shah in Down to Earth, Issue of June 15, 2011]
Do You Want to be Watched? [By Sunil Abraham in Pragati on June 8, 2011]
Snooping Can Lead to Data Abuse [By Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 9, 2011]
Privacy and Security Can Co-exist [By Sunil Abraham in Mail Today on June 21, 2011]

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues:

Say 'Password' in Hindi [By Nishant Shah in the Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

Upcoming Event

Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla [at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, July 8, 2011]

Featured Research

New Articles

A Street View of Private and the Public [By Prashant Iyengar in Tehelka on June 4, 2011]
The new Right to Privacy Bill 2011 — A Blind Man's View of the Elephunt [By Prashant Iyengar in Privacy India website on June 8, 2011]

New Blog Entry

Bloggers' Rights Subordinated to Rights of Expression: Cyber Law Expert

Event organised in Guwahati

Privacy matters [Donbosco Institute, Kharguli, Guwahati, June 23, 2011]

Upcoming Events

Internet Surveillance Policy: “…the second time as farce?” – A Public Lecture by Caspar Bowden [TERI, Bangalore, June 27, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [Osmania University Center for International Program, Hyderabad, July 9, 2011]

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers. CIS campaigns to facilitate this:

Articles by Shyam Ponappa

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

NTP 2011 Objective: Broadband [published in the Business Standard on June 2, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Technology, Transparency and Accountability: A Bar-Camp in Delhi [June 5, 2011, Delhi]
Communication Policy Advocacy, Technology, and Online Freedom of Expression: A Toolkit for Media Development [June 20 – July 1, 2011, Budapest, Hungary]

News & Media Coverage

Your cyber space is a hackers paradise [Mail Today, June 6, 2011]
Centaur website reveals guests' personal info [Times of India, June 20, 2011]
Mumbai Takes Note of Sexting, the Seamier Side of Texting [Times of India, June 19, 2011]
Look what the state just did to you [Mid Day, June 12, 2011]
Tough neighbourhood tests India's e-tolerance [Times of India, June 12, 2011]
India Weighing Looser Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2011]
Public data on the Web leaves much to be desired [Hindu, May 28, 2011]
What documents will you need, to get UID? [CitizenMatters.in, May 28, 2011]
Mobile education comes to villages [Mail Today, May 27, 2011]
Google now stalks your street [Hindu, May 27, 2011]
Women in love with Facebook [Deccan Herald, May 27, 2011]
Google Unveils Controversial Street View Mapping in B’lore [Economic Times, Mumbai, May 27, 2011]
NGOs say eG8 report must stress internet rights [TELECOMPAPER, May 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2011-bulletin

Policy Spotlight: 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T10:18:29Z

The means and modes of communication have changed drastically in today’s age and the earlier bright lines, if they ever did exist have become increasingly blurred. The mainstreaming of social media has brought forth some new questions to the forefront, the issue of accessibility being one of them. Jenifer Simpson, Senior Director for Government Affairs and head of the Telecommunications & Technology Policy Initiative at the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), elaborates more on the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act in this interview.

The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (21st CVAA) passed in October 2010 by the United States is a response to the regulatory challenges that the new generation of telecommunication, internet and digital communication devices present for persons with disabilities.

What does the Act do?

21st CVAA is an update to the Communications Act of the United States and brings in new rules for ensuring accessibility to persons with disabilities as technologies change and advance.

The Act extends federal law provisions for hearing aid compatibility for manufactured and imported telephones to all equipment and devices that offer IP-enabled communication services such as smart phones, PDAs, tablet devices, etc.

It also requires all internet based communication technologies to be accessible to persons with disabilities except in cases where it would result in an 'undue burden'[1] on the manufacturer or service provider. In such cases, the latter must then ensure that the equipment and services are compatible with third party assistive technologies to enable use by persons with disabilities.

In addition, 21st CVAA puts in place accountability measures to ensure better enforcements of the accessibility measures outlined under section 255 of the Rehabilitation Act and identifies persons with disabilities as a specific user group that can receive the benefits of universal service programs including broadband connectivity and USD 10 million annual support for assistive technologies. A section of the Act also deals with emergency access and Real-Time Text[2] support.

Video accessibility is a major component of the Act, with provisions having been created for closed captioning and video descriptions of television and web video content (with the exception of online only video programming), accessible programming guide and user interfaces. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is still in the process of rolling out regulations for these provisions.

Jenifer Simpson

Could you briefly trace the kind of advocacy and work that has gone into getting this law enacted?

Advocacy for the 21st CVAA was, and continues to be based in coalition work by disability organizations. First formed in March 2007, the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT) grew very rapidly due to the strength of its communications advocacy agenda. The groups lobbied the U.S. Congress for three years, conducting both grass roots efforts utilizing the member groups’ leaders and membership, and worked at the national level, providing witnesses and testimony at three Congressional hearings and working hard to bring knowledge of the effort to the larger disability community. The COAT leadership met intensively with industry representatives from the television, communications, and information technology sectors, and then in 2010 saw the legislation passed in both houses (U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate) with signature by the President in October 2010. Note that the final Bill differed somewhat from the Bill that was first introduced in December 2009 as a result of the consultative process with industry and legislators. Critical to advocacy was the role of electronic social media such as a blog-website, an E-list, a Twitter or a Facebook account. This kept everyone informed as to what was going on and is a key way to ensure that everyone knew what was being done.

Where does the 21st CCVA stand as of now, what processes must be completed before it becomes fully effective?

Attached is a copy of the schedule for the rulemakings. Right now this law is enacted. We are in the implementation stage with the implementing federal agency, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent federal government agency, issuing proposed rules or regulations. During that process everyone has a chance to be heard all over again and to influence what will be the final rules. We do have one final rule issued, that is, for the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution program that the new law required. To ensure full implementation, advocacy groups have to be directly involved in the rulemaking processes at the FCC. This includes commenting into the proposed rules, participating in any standards development bodies and otherwise being at the table.

What in your view are its greatest strengths and its failings?

The greatest strength of the new law is that it is based on feasibility. That is, most of the requirements are not new, they are extensions of what was already required, except now, with communications and other technologies connecting largely with the Internet, these older requirements must now be extended to internet-enablement. Furthermore, most of the solutions for accessibility that the new law requires do not require rocket science or major research and development; technological solutions are known in many cases or can be developed easily and widely disseminated. Many will be software solutions that can be developed as part of the usual product design and development cycle, if the entity is willing to do this.

The only failing is that we didn’t really get to go far enough due to industry pushback. For instance, we started out wanting a requirement for captioning and video/audio description of all video material that would be displayed and distributed via the Internet. We did not get this. But we got major steps forward in these areas. That is, a requirement for captioning of any TV shown on the Internet and reinstatement of video description of TV. We also succeeded in ensuring that browsers in cell phones would be designed for accessibility so that blind users who might reach internet content that is accessible would have an accessible ‘ramp’ to that content.

What are the shortcomings of the earlier Communications Act that you would say 21st CCVA addresses?

With technology and communications converging, the 21st CVAA directly addresses newer forms of technology. We previously had section 255 of the Communications Act, enacted in 1996, but regulations were not issued until 2000, four years later. Also, at that time we had a requirement for video description of TV but it was overturned by the federal district court. Disability advocates learned their lessons from these experiences and in the 21st CVAA we redressed these shortcomings.

The 21st CVAA does not address internet content or website accessibility measures that must be taken. These topics are, in the U.S., covered under different statutes. Part of the advocacy process was, early on, to recognize that we needed to craft a law that was feasible despite our need for a comprehensive law. We knew the legislative and regulatory process — this meant some things were not going to be included. COAT works on these other laws to improve and update the regulations for things such as website accessibility.

The law was enacted in October? What if anything, has changed since then? What are you hoping will change?

We are still in the rulemaking phase and won’t see implementation of many of the requirements until next year. A big negative continues to be the bad attitude of some in the various industries to the need for accessibility. Some commenters into the proposed rules are attempting to influence the rules to delay implementation, to create exemptions or carve out waiver situations, and to otherwise stymie what must occur if we are to see people with sensory disabilities able to use most communications technologies like everyone else. Since the 21st CVAA is comprehensive in scope, there is little doubt that disability advocates have to maintain vigilance as the regulations are developed. Passing the law was just the first step, the next steps are implementation.

Are there any loopholes, grey areas in it that you feel could render it less effective?

Since we do not have final rules for most of the law, there are no known loopholes yet. While the law does not go as far as some would like, there is little doubt that this law has major impact and is stimulating change at the companies and within the industries affected.

Do you feel that ICT accessibility can be achieved through policy intervention alone?

First of all, there is nothing to stop any product or service from being designed and developed at the outset to be disability accessible and usable. In fact, there are several companies that do this already as a matter of corporate policy and a commitment to be leaders in this way. It is the rest for whom public policy has to be developed. Such policy must be developed that includes all stakeholders. However, there must be public policy leadership or nothing will change. Leadership involves Congressional members willing to say the law needs to be changed, willing to stand up for the right of people with disabilities to be included. This is the civil or human rights viewpoint and which must extend to disability to be fully inclusive. Leadership can involve a particular company or group of companies saying they will support the new law once they understand the need for the policy change. This happened with the 21st CVAA. Early on the largest wireline/wireless carriers supported the legislation. Most importantly, there must be strong leadership by consumer disability advocates who must make the key decisions and decide the directions and choices at critical junctures in the policymaking process. Also, critical to disability advocacy is the ability to work together in a consensual fashion, to put aside differences and to understand that “we’re all in this together” and to not give up or become discouraged.

Notes

[1].The term "undue burden" has the same meaning as given to it in the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act – “Undue burden means significant difficulty or expense. In determining whether an action would result in an undue burden, an agency shall consider all agency resources available to the program or component for which the product is being developed, procured, maintained, or used."

[2].Real-Time Text is a conversational text feature which can be sent in real time and can provide captioning of a voice conversation.

* The post has been updated to include an interview with Jenifer Simpson

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/communications-and-video-accessibility

ICT Accessibility in Sri Lanka

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T10:32:25Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:23:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

What Scare a Digital Native Blogathon?

Accessibility

New Blog Entry

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

Openness

Internet Governance

Column in Indian Express

Nishant Shah, Director-Research will be writing a series of columns on Internet and Society issues. His first column on transparency, technology and NGOs in India came out on Sunday:

Power to the People [Indian Express, May 15, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Killing the Internet Softly with Its Rules [By Pranesh Prakash in Indian Express, May 9, 2011]
Rebuttal of DIT's Misleading Statements on New Internet Rules
CDT Provides Answers to Questions on Internet Neutrality

Featured Research

Limits to Privacy

Conference Report

Privacy By Design — Conference Report

Workshop

Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series, National Law School [National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore, May 21-22, 2011]

Upcoming Conferences

Panel Discussion on UID – Its Feasibility, Utility and Legality [May 26, 2011]
Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Hyderabad [The English and Foreign Languages University (TBC), Hyderabad, June 18, 2011]

Telecom

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Spectrum reforms - Good & Bad news [published in the Business Standard on May 5, 2011]

Miscellaneous

Public Lecture

The Task of the Translator after Google [CIS, April 30, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Sunil Abraham, CIS : "Avec l’e-G8, Nicolas Sarkozy veut promouvoir de nouvelles restrictions à la liberté d’expression" [LE MAG IT, May 24, 2011]
As Simple as a Tweet [Deccan Chronicle, May 24, 2011]
A Network of Chains [Outlook, Issue of May 30, 2011]
Bangalore-based NGO files RTI query asking list of websites blocked by Indian govt [Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2011]
IT Act if enforced will leave internet use in India no freer than in China [Daily News & Analysis, May 15, 2011]
Your Privacy is Public Property [Mail Today, May 15, 2011]
Point By Point Rebuttal Of Indian Government’s Statement On Internet Control Rules [Medianama, May 13, 2011]
New rules to ensure due diligence: IT dept [Times of India, May 11, 2011]
Indian civil liberties groups are now geared to fight the draconian IT Rules [Weekend Leader.com, Vol 2 Issue 18, 6 - 12 May, 2011]
New Internet rule: 'Objectionable' content can be removed without notifying users [dailybhaskar.com, May 11, 2011]
India Chills Online Speech [digitalcommunities, May 3, 2011]
Consumers International World Congress - Day 3 roundup [Consumer's International Blog, May 5, 2011]
Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules [Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2011]
Free expression [Watertown Daily Times, May 2, 2011]
India curbs on Bloggers and Internet [TruthDrive, April 29, 2011]
Bright lights, geek city [Hindu, April 28, 2011]
India Cracks Down on Internet Free Speech [April 28, 2011]
India's cyber cafes going porn-free [msnbc.com, April 28, 2011]
Thousands queue for iPad 2 across Asia [AFP, April 28, 2011] [News hosted by Google]
New internet rules open to arbitrary interpretation [Times of India, April 27, 2011]
India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech [New York Times, April 27, 2011]
India Can Restrict 'Objectionable' Web Content under New Rules [TMCnet Legal, April 27, 2011]
Iraqi Minister meets Secretary, Indian Ministry of Panchayat Raj [Karnataka News Network, April 27, 2011]
The world is your oyster, by invitation only [Livemint, April 26, 2011]
No access to pornography in cyber cafes, declare new rules [Times of India, April 26, 2011]
India Proposes Restrictions on Tapping Telephone Calls [PC World, TechWorld and CIO, April 26, 2011]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/may-2011-bulletin

Universal Service — An Instrument for Accessibility

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:53:58Z

Every year, billions of dollars are earmarked for fulfilling universal service obligations across the globe. These funds represent a prime opportunity for governments to initiate telecommunication policies and programmes for persons with disabilities, writes Deepti Bharthur.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/universal-service

April 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:45:01Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

Workshops organised in Bangalore

Shadow Search Project (SSP) [CIS, April 18, 2011]
Facebook Resistance [CIS, April 2, 2011]

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Columns on Digital Natives

A fortnightly column on ‘Digital Natives’ authored by Nishant Shah is featured in the Sunday Eye, the national edition of Indian Express, Delhi, from 19 September 2010 onwards. The following were published in the month of April:

Who the Hack? [Indian Express, April 24, 2011]
One for the avatar [Indian Express, April 3, 2011]

Digital Natives Newsletter

Links in the Chain is a bi-monthly publication which highlights the projects, ideas and news of the Digital Natives with a Cause? The first issue of volume IV is here:

links in the chain volume 4 Best Practices

New Blog Entry by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entry:

Cyber Fears: What scares Digital Natives and those around them

Accessibility

Workshop organised in Hyderabad

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: Conference Report

Openness

Submission

Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education

New Blog Entry

Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development [PLoS, March 29, 2011]

Internet Governance

Featured

DIT's Response to RTI on Website Blocking

New Blog Entries

What are the legal provisions for blocking websites in India?
We are anonymous, we are legion [published in the Hindu, April 18, 2011]
You Have the Right to Remain Silent [published in the Sunday Guardian, April 17, 2011]

Study Tour

Iraq Delegation to Visit India for Study of E-Governance in Indian Cities ― Meetings in Bangalore and Delhi

Featured Research

Interview

An Interview with Activist Shubha Chacko: Privacy and Sex workers

Workshops organized in Ahmedabad and Bangalore

'Privacy Matters', Ahmedabad: Conference Report [Ahmedabad Management Association, Ahmedabad, March 26, 2011]
Privacy, By Design [CIS, April 16, 2011]

New Blog Entries

Telecom

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Learning from Fukushima [published in the Business Standard on April 7, 2011]

News & Media Coverage

The Gary Chapman International School on Digital Transformation[International School on Digital Transformation, July 17-22, 2011]
Iraqi delegation in Bangalore to study e-governance projects [Economic Times, April 20, 2011]
Dark waders [Time Out Bengaluru, Vol. 3, Issue 20, April 15 - 28, 2011]
Beyond Clicktivism [Outlook, April 18, 2011]
Gone in a flash [Times of India, April 16, 2011]
How Web 2.0 responded to Hazare [Hindu, April 11, 2011]
EU Commissioner Hedegaard to deliver keynote address at consumer world congress
Net cracker [Time Out Bengaluru Vol. 3 Issue 19, April 1 - 14, 2011]
On the Path to Global Open Access: A Few More Miles to Go [PLoS, March 2011, Volume 8, Issue 3]

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2011-bulletin

March 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T10:59:46Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage.

Researchers@Work

New Blog Entry by Zainab Bawa in Transparency and Politics

A History of Transparency, Politics and Information Technologies in India

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Column on Digital Natives

Watson knows the Question [Indian Express, March 6, 2011]

Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina

Maesey Angelina works as a programme officer at Hivos, Jakarta on gender, women and development while exploring research initiatives on Digital Natives in Indonesia. She spent one month in CIS, working on her dissertation, exploring the Blank Noise project under the Digital Natives with a Cause framework. She writes a series of blog entries. The new ones are:

Blog Entries by Samuel Tettner

Samuel Tettner is a Digital Natives Coordinator in CIS. He has written the following blog entries:

Accessibility

Featured Research

Accessible Mobile Handsets in India: An Overview

Blog Entry

Note on the Authorities under the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (9th February 2011)

Intellectual Property

Featured Research

Pirates, Plagiarisers, Publishers [ Written by Prashant Iyengar and originally published in the Economic & Political Weekly, February 26, 2011, Vol XLVI No 9]

Submission

Comments to the Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty (March 2011)

Openness

Workshops organised

Design!publiC [Taj Vivanta, New Delhi, March 18, 2011]
Open Access to Scientific Information Indian International Centre [New Delhi, March 16, 2011]

Internet Governance

Submissions

Submission

Privacy and Governmental Database

Workshops organized

Privacy Matters - A Public Conference in Ahmedabad [Ahmedabad, March 26, 2011]
Public Talk by Dr. Ian Brown on Privacy, Trust and Biometrics [Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore, March 21, 2011]
Electronication: Ragas and the Future [Jaaga, Bangalore, March 6, 2011]
Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi [Constitution Club, New Delhi, March 4, 2011]
Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression [Constitution Club, New Delhi, March 4, 2011]

Telecom

Featured Research

India's untapped potential: Are a billion people losing out because of spectrum?

Column

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website as well.

Big-Bang Budgets? [published in the Business Standard on March 3, 2011]

Forthcoming Events

CIS is organising some conferences/workshops in the month of March/April:

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: A New Imperative for State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities[Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad]
Shadow Search Project (SSP) in CIS [CIS, Bangalore]
Facebook Resistance Workshop [CIS, Bangalore]

News & Media Coverage

Networking its way to better governance (Hindu, March 28, 2011]
‘Learn from failed UK NIR project’ (Deccan Chronicle, March 22, 2011]
Design!publiC - News from Livemint (Livemint, March 18, 2011)
Muzzling the Internet (Outlook, March 17, 2011)
Battle for the Internet (Down to Earth, Issue: March 15, 2011)
Cause and effect Facebook-style (Hindustan Times, March 13, 2011)
Catch-all approach to Net freedom draws activist ire (Sunday Guardian, March 13, 2011)
Lives suspended in the Web (Indian Express, March 11, 2011)
Draft IT guidelines may gag internet freedom (Times of India, March 11, 2011)
Govt proposal to muzzle bloggers sparks outcry (Times of India, March 10, 2011)
New Indian Rules May Make Online Censorship Easier (Yahoo News, March 7, 2011)
Anti-Social Network (Mail Today, February 27, 2011)

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march%20-2011-bulletin

Websites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: Conference Report

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T10:45:32Z

G3ict, W3C and CIS co-organised a panel on 30 March 2011 from 4.30p.m to 6.00 p.m., in the W3C track at the Twentieth International World Wide Web Conference in Hyderabad. The panel discussed web accessibility evaluation methodologies and their challenges and practical technical survey methodologies alternatives. The panel was moderated by Nirmita Narasimhan and featured four speakers — Shadi Abou Zahra (W3C/WAI), Neeta Verma (Senior Technical Director, NIC), Srinivasu Chakravartula (Accessibility Manager, Yahoo India) and Glenda Sims (Senior Accessibility Consultant, DeQue Systems).

The panel began with an introduction and background by Nirmita Narasimhan on the digital dispositions of the UNCRPD, obligations of states parties and the need to have clearly defined and credible evaluation methodologies for effective policy formulation and implementation.

Shadi Abou Zahra gave a brief overview of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines and discussed some of the important points which need to be borne in mind while doing large scale evaluation of websites. He talked about the selection of tools, limitations of automated tools, importance of selection of pages for manual testing, sampling techniques, qualitative versus quantitative analysis, different types of testing such as expert and user testing and evaluation goal and scalability issues.

Neeta Verma discussed the guidelines for Indian websites brought out by the NIC in February 2010 and said that as per the checkpoints in the guidelines, there were a small percentage of checkpoints which could be tested using automated tools, some percentage for which expert and user testing was required. She presented one approach to evaluation adopted by the NIC, which was to certify the CMS rather than individual pages since the latter would be extremely difficult in cases of websites having thousands of pages, as was the case with several government websites. She stressed the need for positive thinking, user involvement and on the need to have an organized community of trained accessibility experts in India to whom the government could outsource testing work.

Srinivasu made a distinction in Yahoo’s approach with regard to accessible websites between existing and upcoming websites. He said that for existing websites, the approach was to do an evaluation, prepare a report and prioritize the issues to be addressed. And as far as new websites are concerned, the attempt should be to keep accessibility in the loop right from the development stage itself. In terms of doing evaluation, he said that his methodology was to first quickly run an automated tool to check for errors. Then depending upon the number and kinds of errors, he would decide whether or not to follow up with a manual test. If the errors thrown up were few or nil, then he would do a manual test of some pages. However, if there were many errors and many of the errors were very basic ones like no alt text attributes, no headings, etc., then he may decide not to go ahead with the manual test at all.

Shadi also pointed out that sometimes it was possible that a website could be error free, except for one error, but if this one error was that the pay button on a shopping site was inaccessible, then the website would have to be evaluated as inaccessible since this was the most important button in the website rendering it usable or unusable. Shadi pointed that automated testing was critical to do large scale evaluations, but that this would only help in getting a quantitative analysis while aggregating results, whereas for a qualitative analysis, one would still have to do a manual test with users and experts and pay special attention to the kinds of pages which are selected for this type of test.

While highlighting the importance of manual testing, Srinivasu pointed out that although an automated tool could tell you whether or not an alt attribute was present, it could not determine whether that attribute was the appropriate one. When asked to share his impression on the common inaccessible features on government websites which he has been testing in large numbers over the past few weeks, he said that he found a lot of errors which were very basic, like no headings, no alt attributes, table based layouts, missing keyboard functionality for drop down menus, dynamic websites which used Java script and Ajax instead of Aria and so on.

Glenda walked the audience through the methodology which she used for evaluating a single client’s website, how she used manual testing to do a baseline accessibility survey of the Texas University website and then used different tools to test different things, for example, desktop tools like Fire Eyes and accessibility tools for testing page by page. Glenda also talked about the importance of testing authoring tools, producing enterprise accessibility report, code validation, and accessibility validators to test with assistive technology. Glenda concurred with the other speakers that accessibility evaluation and monitoring should be at all stages of the website’s development life cycle — accessibility at the design stage, testing and mediating during development to ensure that it continues to remain accessible, because a lot of websites start out by being accessible, but lose accessibility somewhere along the way and finally test for monitoring accessibility of the website.

Some other issues which were discussed were the importance of user level for determining accessibility and choice of users, evaluation methodology to include reporting of minor changes in order to allow for monitoring of progress even if it is on a small scale, need for testers to think from every person and every device perspective, doing component and template testing for new websites as a good way to check for accessibility and the importance of aggregation and report writing. Overall there was a consensus amongst speakers that any effective and credible evaluation methodology, especially for large scale evaluation, would involve a mix of automated and manual testing with users and experts and would have to be done at every stage of development and maintenance of a website.

See the event on W3C website here

Presentations

See Glenda Sims presentation in Youtube
See Srinivasu's presentation here
Download Glenda Sims presentation here [ppt file, 5.85 MB]
Neeta Verma presentation here [ppt file, 11.4 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/websites-accessibility-evaluation-methodologies

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: A New Imperative for State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

praskrishna — 2011-08-31T10:40:17Z

W3C-WAI, G3ict and CIS are joining hands to organise the 20th International World Wide Web Conference in Hyderabad, India on March 30, 2011 at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Room H-01.

While web accessibility principles and guidelines have already become well known and been adopted by many countries, measuring the accessibility of web sites for users living with different types of disabilities remains a complex endeavor subject to a number of possible methodological challenges. Yet, with web accessibility policies and programs increasingly implemented around the world as a result of the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (98 countries representing over 75 per cent of the world population), policy makers, organizations of persons with disabilities, web site owners and courts when legal action is taken will inevitably need to rely on well-defined evaluation methodologies and benchmarks.

The panel, which will take place during the first day of the W3C Track with focus on web accessibility and discuss current accessibility evaluation methodologies and their challenges, policy makers requirements, current plans of the W3C-WAI, and practical technical survey methodologies alternatives.

Panelists will include: Glenda Sims(Deque Systems), ShadiAbouZahra (W3C-WAI), Neeta Verma (National Informatics Centre, Government of India), NirmitaNarasimhan (Center for Internet and Society), and SrinivasuChakravarthula (Yahoo! India).

Co-organizers: W3C-WAI, G3ict, CIS
Duration: 90 minutes
Moderator:NirmitaNarasimhan, Program Manager, CIS and Editor, G3ict – ITU Policy Toolkit Handbook

Panel Agenda:

Introduction:NirmitaNarasimhan, Program Manager, CIS and Editor, G3ict – ITU Policy Toolkit Handbookwill welcome participants on behalf of co-organizers CIS, G3ict and W3C, introduces speakers and topics:

NirmitaNarasimhan will share G3ict’s perspective on the CRPD and its global impact as well as the legislative, regulatory and judicial requirements for a reliable evaluation methodology of web accessibility.
ShadiAbou Zahra will describe the work of W3C-WAI in this domain, and discuss the multiple tools available, methodological challenges and future work currently planned.
Glenda Sims, Senior Accessibility Consultant willpresents Deque’s experience and the technical details of evaluating and testing enterprise level websites, comparing methodologies and suggesting solutions to establish guidelines.
SrinivasuChakravarthula, Accessibility Manager at Yahoo! India, member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) India’s National Advisory Board and of the NASSCOM’s Disability Working Committee, will present industry’s perspectives and the need to rely on clear accessibility benchmarks.
Neeta Verma, Senior Technical Director, Data Centre& Web Services Division, National Informatics Centre will discuss web accessibility assessment methodologies from an e-governance standpoint.
Q&As among panelists and the audience.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/w3c-conference-hyderabad