Centre for Internet and Society

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

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.

Workshops organised in Bangalore

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

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

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.

Workshop organised in Hyderabad

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: Conference Report

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. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

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

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:

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

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

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:

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

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. Its latest endeavour has resulted into these:

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

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

praskrishna — 2011-08-24T05:42:13Z

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MSJE) released a revised draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act which is up for comments on the MSJE website. The Centre for Law and Policy Research, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Internet and Society jointly submitted a note on the section on statutory authorities.

This Note is on the Working Draft of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011 (Hereinafter "The PWD Act, 2011") which was released on 9th February, 2011[1] to specifically review the authorities established under the PWD Act, 2011, the powers and functions assigned to the authorities and the effect of the establishment of these authorities.

The Disability Rights Authority
Vague provisions

The main functions of the DRA are to formulate rules, regulations, guidelines, schemes and other activities. Under section 29 (I), the DRA also has the power to monitor enforcment of the Act and to protect the rights of persons with disabilities and to suo moto address violations of rights of perosns with disabilities. In this regard, the provisions of the Act are vague. There are no provisions to indicate what penalties the DRA may impose in the event of any violation of the provisions of the PWD Act 2011. Wide powers are given to the DRA with regard to promotion, protection, monitoring and even enforcement of rights under the Act. However it is not clear as to how exactly these functions, especially the monitoring and enforcement of rights should be performed.

Powers of review and advice

Under Section 29J, the DRA has the power to review and advise the government to take measures with regard to laws that discriminate against persons with disability. This power will affect the functioning of the authorities under the other disability legislations such as the Mental Health Act,1987 and the National Trusts Act, 1999 as these legislations will be considered to be discriminatory on the issue of legal capacity. Therefore these other disability legislations need to be amended before the DRA can act on its review and advice powers.

Further, in many of the provisions of the Act, there is a mention of a 'designated authority' to perform certain functions without specifying what the designated authority is or who designates the authority. It is unclear as to whether the 'designated authority' refers to a new authority to be established under the Act or it refers to the DRA.
The Disability Courts

Multiplicity of Fora for grievance redressal

There is no clarity on the intended structure of the courts at different levels. The word “Court” is not defined anywhere under the Act, which is a great lacuna. There are several different for a provided for grievance redressal under the Act – the DRA, the Court of the National Disability Commissioner, the State Disability Courts and the Grievance Redressal Officer in each establishment. It is not clear as to whether these authorities under the Act have concurrent power or whether a person has to approach one authority and seek remedy before going to another. Over and above these courts and fora, the regular civil courts, family courts, High Courts would also have jurisdiction. It is not clear as to whether the jurisdiction of all other courts is ousted by the Act in setting up the special State Disability Courts and the Court of the National Disability Commissioner.

Section 6(7) and (8) empower “a court or the disability court” to make suitable orders on finding the occurrence of discrimination. These Sections merely mention a ‘court’ without specifying which court is referred to as there is no definition of ‘court’ under the Act. There is also no provision under the Act which allows a person to approach any other ordinary court for reliefs under the Act. Therefore it is not clear as to what this Section refers to when it uses the word ‘court’.
The Court of the National Disability Commissioner

Under Section 29S (2), the Act allows a person to directly approach the National Disability Commissioner only if the person is aggrieved of “discrimination” under the Act and not for other cases of violation. On the other hand, under section 29S (1) (c ) the Court of the National Disability Commissioner has the power to suo moto address all infringment of rights. There is a great contradiction therefore in the jurisdiction of the Court of the National Disability Commissioner.

Further, although there is an entire part of the Act which is dedicated to the imposition of penalties and sanctions, there are no provisions for the National Disability Commissioner to impose any penalties and sanctions.

The National Disability Commissioner acts as the appellate authority on the orders of the DRA. But there is no provision to appeal from the orders of the State Disability Court.
The State Disability Courts

The State Disability Courts have a wider jurisdiction that the National Disability Commissioner in that a person can approach the State Disability Courts complaining of violation of any rights under the Act.
Even in case of the State Disability Court there is no specific provision that allows the court to impose penalties and sanctions detailed under the Act.

Conclusion

The PWD Act, 2011 has made some changes from its earlier draft in December 2010. With regard to the authorities established under the Act, there are many inconsistencies which need to be resolved before the Act can come into force. The powers and the functions of all the authorities need to be clearly demarcated. Further, the empowering provisions should be linked to the provisions which prescribe the procedure through which the powers can be exercised. Provisions imposing penalties and sanctions should be linked to the authorities which have the power to impose the same. There are several authorities which all have power to look into violations of the Act, which can confuse a person seeking remedies under the Act. Unless these issues are addressed, the PWD, Act 2011 would cause major practical problems at the stage of implementing the rights recognised under the Act.

[1]See Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2011, available at http://socialjustice.nic.in/pdf/workdraftdd.pdf (Last visited on 21-02-2011)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/rights-of-persons-with-disabilities

Accessible Mobile Handsets in India: An Overview

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T10:29:30Z

Over a thousand mobile handsets are sold in India today and new models are launched almost every few weeks. However, the number of accessible handsets continues to be disproportionately low. The Centre for Internet and Society conducted a research on the mobile market to gauge how many handsets in India are accessible for persons with disabilities. Handsets were judged on the basis of a few common accessibility features and pricing.

The findings reveal that 108 handset models came with screen readers and 100 were magnifier compatible. Thirty one of them were touch phones and only 15 models had QWERTY keypads.

The study found that the price of 60 of the available options was either high or very high (Rs. 10,000 and above) and only 48 handsets are available at a reasonable or low price.

For available handset options for persons with disabilities, click below:

PDF [612 kb]
Open Office [24 kb]
Word [42kb]

Some of the major cross platform and proprietary mobile operating systems were also examined for their accessibility features. These included Windows Mobile, iPhone for Apple, Blackberry, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7. All the operating systems offer features such as font customization, menu style, menu icons and voice recognition. However, only two offer built-in screen readers and only one OS offers a built in screen magnifier. Three operating systems support third party screen readers and two also support third party screen magnifiers.

The table [click on the links below] (also compiled by Mukesh Sharma) provides more details on the features offered by various operating systems:

Word [14 kb]
PDF [16 kb]
Open Office [15 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessible-mobile-handsets

February 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T11:16:29Z

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

Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities

Digital Natives

CIS has interest in developing Digital Identities as a core research area and looks at practices, policies and scholarships in the field to explore relationships between Internet, technology and identity. The Digital Natives project is funded by Hivos, Netherlands. CIS involvement has resulted into these:

Columns on Digital Natives

Pull the Plug [published in the Indian Express on February 20, 2011]
A FLASH of Change [published in the Indian Express on February 6, 2011]
Wiki changes the world [published in the Indian Express on January 23, 2011]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project took place in Santiago, Chile, from 8 to 10 February 2011. Samuel Tettner wrote a report about the workshop:

Digital Natives with a Cause? —Workshop in Santiago — an Afterthought

Blog Entries by Maesey Angelina

Maesy Angelina is doing Masters on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at 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 Entry by Samuel Tettner

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

Computer Science & Society – The Roles Defined

Accessibility

New Blog Entry

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?

Intellectual Property

New Blog Entries

Openness

New Blog Entries

Internet Governance

Announcement

Google Policy Fellowship Program: Asia Chapter

New Blog Entries

Privacy

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^th 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.

Blog Entries by Elonnai Hickok

Elonnai Hickok is a Programme Associate in the Privacy in Asia project. She has published a series of Open Letters to the Finance Committee regarding the UID:

Other 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.

Spectrum auctions - 'Jhatka' or 'Halal'? [published in the Business Standard on February 3, 2011]

Forthcoming Events

CIS is holding some conferences/workshops in the month of March in Delhi and Bangalore:

Role of the Internet in Fostering Freedom of Expression and Strengthening Activism in India - A Workshop in Delhi (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)
Global Challenges to Freedom of Expression (March 4, 2011, Constitutional Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi)
Electronication: Ragas and the Future (March 6, 2011 Jaaga, Bangalore)
Design!publiC (March 18, 2011, Taj Vivanta, New Delhi)

Staff Update

Deepti Bharthur

Deepti Bhartur is a Research Intern at CIS. She did her BA (Hons) in Journalism from Lady Sriram College, University of Delhi and completed her Masters in Communication from Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad. Deepti joined the Accessibility team of CIS and is working on accessibility in telecom policy in India.

News & Media Coverage

Growing cyberspace controls, Internet filtering (Hindu, February 20, 2011)
2(m) or not 2(m) (Business Standard, February 19, 2011)
Can the twitterati change the world? (The Times of India, February 12, 2011)
Can the mouse be a tool of revolution in India? (DNA, February 12, 2011)
Social Network Suicide (Bangalore Mirror, February 6, 2011)
New Kids on the Blog (Indian Express, February 6, 2011)
Procuring books in Indian libraries (Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, February 4, 2011)
What Are You Accused of? Find Out Online (Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2011)
One among the clan of Wikipedians (Hindu, January 27, 2011)
Digital Wrongs (Forbes India, January 24, 2011)

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2011-bulletin

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?

praskrishna — 2012-12-14T10:32:18Z

The Centre for Internet and Society, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Law and Policy Research in this legal note analyse how far the January draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act touches upon the provisions of the other disability legislations, namely the Mental Health Act and The National Trusts Act and thereby exceeds the mandate given by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to amend only the Persons with Disabilities Act.

Introduction

This is a brief Note on the Working Draft of the Persons with Disabilities Act dated 1.12.2010 (“Working Draft”) on the specific issue of how it relates to the three other disability legislations being the National Trusts Act 1999, the Mental Health Act 1987 and the Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992.

From the Working Draft it is seen that there are several provisions which are contradictory to some of the provisions in these three legislations in significant ways. This Note also raises concerns as to whether the Working Draft has exceeded its mandate given by the Committee to only amend the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 (“PWD Act”) by attempting to draft a comprehensive disability law which includes even the other disability legislations .

The Committee and its Mandate

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, through an Office Memorandum1, constituted a Committee to “draft a new legislation to replace the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995” (“Committee”). 2 The main aim of setting up the Committee was to ensure that the PWD Act was in consonance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and not to amend any of the other disability legislations. 3

After the Committee was set up, the minutes of the meeting of the Committee dated 22-07-2010 4 show that the Chairperson reminded the Committee members of the specific purpose for which it was set up and was therefore “not going to debate on formulating one comprehensive law that would repeal all other current disability legislations such as The National Trust Act, Mental Health Act and Rehabilitation Council of India Act, etc.”5

Subsequently, the Consultant appointed by the Committee released several drafts and the latest Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010 is dated 01.12.2010(“Working Draft”). 6 The Working Draft surprisingly states that “the mandate of the Committee to the Consultant was to put together a comprehensive legislation which covers all rights of all persons with disabilities.” 7

Further, the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Working Draft proposes to “replace the current disability legislations with a comprehensive law which recognizes all rights of all persons with disabilities.” 8

These statements in the Working Draft raise some confusion as to whether the mandate given by the Committee has been clearly understood before the drafting process commenced. If the mandate was indeed to only amend the PWD Act and not to amend any of the other legislations such as the National Trusts Act, the Mental Health Act and the Rehabilitation Council of India Act, then the drafting should have been restricted to amending the PWD Act to the extent possible, and not to affect the provisions of the other legislations.

The Working Draft on Other Disability Legislations

The Working Draft does not suggest any amendments to the other disability legislations such as the National Trust Act, 1999, Mental Health Act, 1987 and Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992. However, as to the effect that the Working Draft should have on these other legislations, it leaves a “Pending Question” which states9:

“The issue of the induction of the National Trust and the Rehabilitation Council as separate chapters could not be attempted primarily because there was no time left to undertake a coherent and systematic exercise. It may also be noted that as the length of the statute expanded we felt a constraint of space in even incorporating all the provisions of power and accountability in the chapter on the Disability Rights Authority. It may also be noted that all significant authorities in the country have dedicated legislations around them. In this view of the matter the Committee would need to consider whether it would wish to suggest the creation of One Disability Law Code and within which have legislations on : Disability Rights; the Disability Authority; the National Trust; and the Rehabilitation Council. Or whether it would also wish to induct the National Trust and the Rehabilitation Council into this legislation?”

Added to this, the Memorandum on Disability Code (“Memorandum”) prepared along with the Working Draft explains that the reasons mentioned in the Pending Question along with the lack of time prevented the working out of the linkages between the DRA, the National Trust and the Rehabilitation Council of India.10

About the other dedicated legislations, the Memorandum states as follows11:

“Since we reached the opinion that the newly established DRA should have its own legislation we also concluded that the National Trust and the RCI should have their own legislations which should spell out the specific tasks each of those authorities should carry out to implement the rights recognized in the New Rights for Persons with Disabilities Act. The National Trust should be the authority which addresses the issue of multiple discrimination and be mandated to proactively formulate policies and programs by which to ensure the equality and non discrimination of persons with disabilities who are so disadvantaged and the RCI could work on HRD. The composition and powers and functions of the three bodies should be so created that it ensures convergence of operation.”

With regard to the Mental Health Act, the Memorandum makes the following recommendation12

“The proposed new law recognizes the paradigm of legal capacity with support. It also recognizes the right to life, liberty and integrity of all persons with disabilities. The recognition of these rights requires a re-examination of the Mental Health Act. Even if it is accepted that community living and no force are what is required for all; it is necessary to ask what should be done with the existing institutions and the inmates housed in them. The process of dismantling cannot be done without creating alternative services and there is a need to make a transit legislation which addresses this interim situation. The reason for making the transit legislation comes from the main law but to allow coherent operation and efficient implementation of these transitory measures it is better that they are contained in a separate legislation.”

These statements in the Explanatory Notes to the Working Draft shows that it not restricted itself to only amending the PWD Act as envisaged by the Mandate given by the Committee. An examination of the Working Draft shows that it has neither completely substituted the provisions of the three other disability legislations into the Working Draft, nor has it restricted itself to amending only the PWD Act - it is somewhere in the middle, where some many provisions which are covered by the three other disability legislations are significantly altered and at the same time these legislations are not sought to be amended simultaneously.

If the intention of the Working Draft is to replace all the other disability legislations, then it clearly exceeds the mandate of the Committee.

Section 7A(2) of the Working Draft

Section 7A (2) and 7B (2) in the Working Draft are included only within the chapter relating to Legal Capacity. They are phrased unusually to render any legislation, rule, notification, order, bye-law, regulation, custom and practice that deprive a person with disability from exercising his legal capacity as void.

Such a provision in one statute which declares a provision in another statute as void may not even be constitutionally permissible. The function of the legislature is to enact, re-enact, amend and repeal laws. The judiciary under Article 13 of the Constitution can exercise its powers of judicial review to render a provision which infringes on the fundamental rights as void. The legislature however, has no such power.

The Hon’ble High Court of Delhi in P.L. Mehra and Ors v. D.R. Khanna and Ors (AIR 1971 Delhi 1) held as follows:
“…the decision in Mahendra Lal Jaini's case, as to the nature of a statute becoming void under Article 13 confirms the view that the statute itself continues to exist on the statute book but has become "ineffectual, nugatory and devoid of any legal force or binding effect". The thrust of these words is that such a law cannot be given effect to by the Courts in deciding upon the rights of the parties. These words are significant only for the purposes of the Courts vis-a-vis the rights of the parties. They would be meaningless if applied to the power of the Legislature to re-enact, repeal or amend a statute. For, one can hardly say that these powers of the Legislature cannot be exercised in respect of a statute which is ineffectual, nugatory and devoid of any legal force or binding effect. Indeed, it would be all the more necessary for the Legislature to amend or cure statutes which are suffering from such defects. The nature of the defects is such that only a judicial decision can point them out. It is not by an act of Legislature but only by a judicial decision that one would know whether a statute is ineffectual, nugatory and devoid of any legal force or binding effect.”

Therefore, the declaration of a statutory provision as ‘void’ can only be done by the judiciary as “voiding” of the law only comes into question at the time of the enforcement or implementation of the law. The legislature’s function is to repair the defect in legislation by amending it or repealing the whole legislation.

The Working Draft, in declaring other legislative provisions as void is being vague as to the specific provisions of specific legislations which are to fall under the Section. The Working Draft cannot make a blanket declaration of all laws inconsistent with legal capacity as void without taking steps to identify the provisions and make amendments or deletions.

Effect of the Working Draft without amendment of other disability legislations

The provisions of the Working Draft are introduced in such a way as to affect the provisions of the other disability legislations. In light of this, the need for amending the provisions of these disability legislations is a pressing one. The inconsistencies between the Working Draft and the other disability legislations range from the definition of ‘persons with disability’ to the recognition of the basic principle of legal capacity. As detailed in the table, the National Trust Act follows a completely different basis for determining who a ‘person with disability’ is. If the definition is not amended under the National Trust Act, it results in an inconsistency in the language under the various disability legislations.

Further, the Working Draft is not correct in declaring that other legislative provisions which deprive a person of legal capacity as void. Declaration that a provision of law is void is not the function of the legislature. Its function is to adequately amend it so as to be consistent with the principles it intends to introduce and enforce. This applies to the principle of legal capacity which the Working Draft aims to bring into all the disability legislations. In order to do so, it has to amend the Mental Health Act and the National Trust Act accordingly.

The authorities under the various disability legislations have their set functions. However, the Working Draft is uncertain as to how to divide the responsibilities of the various authorities. It does not incorporate the various authorities under the Working Draft provisions itself. However, it encroaches on the powers and functions of those authorities by making the Disability Rights Authority or some other ‘delegated authority’ in charge of them. While doing so, it does not even amend the provisions of the other legislations. This is a serious discrepancy as the enforcement of rights and performance of duties under the legislations. If there is a confusion as to which authority is responsible to perform a specific function, then a person might be deprived of the very rights that the Draft seeks to enforce.

Leaving the other disability provisions unamended leads to an especially difficult situation when the courts have to determine the intention of the legislature while drafting and have to apply that intention while interpreting it. Further, it is not clear as to what rights should be enforced against which authority in court. Therefore, the merging of the areas of function between the various authorities makes the enforcement of rights itself difficult and therefore uncertain.

Conclusion

Thus, as seen from the Working Draft, it is clear that it seeks to be one comprehensive law on disability, which would encompass issues addressed by several other disability laws. The explanatory notes state that it leaves the issue of the DRA and the authorities such as the Rehabilitation Council and the National Trust as a Pending Question.

It also refers to a Disability Code, which would encompass all disability legislation within its framework and raise this as an issue for the Committee to decide, when that has never been the mandate of the Committee. The explanatory notes state that it would bring within its fold all authorities such as the Rehabilitation Council and the National Trust and that the linkages between these authorities and the new Disability Rights Authority set up under the Working Draft would have to be worked out through transit legislation. The Working Draft leaves the discretion to the Committee to come to a conclusion as to whether all the authorities have to be incorporated under the same legislations or a separate Code with all the legislations has to be prepared. Thus, the roles which the authorities have to perform are left uncertain. The Mandate of the Committee was to replace the PWD Act, 1995. Therefore, the powers and functions of authorities which are established under the other disability legislations ought to have been left untouched. Instead, the Working Draft seeks to make a comprehensive legislation covering all the disabilities while it leaves the implementation aspect uncertain and undecided.

These statements along with some of the specific provisions mentioned in the table above show clearly that the Working Draft aims to be some kind of a comprehensive code to bring in all disability legislations within its fold and not only to amend the PWD Act, which was its specific mandate. For these reasons, the Working Draft has exceeded the mandate given to it. This has been suggested even by some members of the Committee. 13

Further, the Working Draft by only including Section 7A(2) in its chapter relating to Legal Capacity, which would render all other legislation in contravention to it as void, is not suitable and adequate. There would be adverse consequences if the other legislations are not suitably amended. For example, the entire Mental Health Act would need an overhaul if the right to legal capacity is introduced in the Working Draft. The local committees set up under the National Trusts Act would have to be completely abolished as their only role is to appoint guardians, which is completely done away with in the Working Draft. Thus, the mere inclusion of Section 7A (2) is not sufficient and workable, nor is it within the powers of the legislature to include.

The Working Draft has listed in Schedule 1 the amendments suggested to other legislations. This Schedule is incomplete and the specific provisions relating to the National Trusts Act 1999, the Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992 and the Mental Health Act 1987 are also legislations which need amendment and should be included in this Schedule.

It is crucial that there is clarity on these important issues as to what exactly is being proposed to be amended. Whether it is only the PWD that is sought to be replaced or all other disability legislations are to be replaced by a Disability Code need to be understood by the drafters. If the mandate is only to amend the PWD Act, then it is important that we restrict ourselves to this mandate so as to ensure that other disability legislations are not affected. The other legislations can be amended at their own time, after the present PWD Act has been revised as per the mandate of the Committee.

Download the working draft in the format you may prefer:

For word, click here
For pdf, click here

Notes

1GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. DEP’T OF SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EMPOWERMENT, OFFICE MEMORANDUM FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF A COMMITTEE TO DRAFT A NEW LEGISLATION TO REPLACE THE PWD ACT, 1995., F.No. 16-38/2006-DD.III, (30th April 2010).

2 id

3See id

4See MINUTES OF MEETING, 2ND MEETING OF THE COMMITTEE TO DRAFT NEW LEGISLATION FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES., ( 22nd July 2010).

5See id at Page 1.

6See Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010, available at http://www.disabilitystudiesnalsar.org/newlaw.php. (Last visited on 24-01-2011).

7See id at Explanatory Note.

8See id at Statement of Objects and Reasons.

9Explanatory Notes: Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act Working Draft, Part IV, available at http://www.disabilitystudiesnalsar.org/explanatory-notes.php. (Last visited on 24-01-2011)

10See Memorandum on Disability Code, Background, available at http://www.disabilitystudiesnalsar.org/bcp-disability-code.php. (Last visited on 24-01-2011)

11See id at Dedicated Legislations.

12See id at Transitory Measures

13“Crisis hits panel on new Disability law” Available at http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20101224/main5.htm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/working-draft

January 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T11:25:44Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! It gives us immense pleasure to present regular updates on the progress of our research on the mainstream Internet media. In this issue of we bring our latest project updates, news and media coverage:

Researchers@Work

Digital Natives

Column on Digital Natives

Is That a Friend on Your Wall? [published in the Indian Express on 9 January 2010]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project will take place in Santiago, Chile, from the 8 to 10 February. Open Call and FAQs for the workshop are online:

Blog Entry by Maesey Angelina

Maesy Angelina is a MA candidate on International Development, specializing in Children and Youth Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam. She is working on her research on the activism of digital natives under the Hivos-CIS Digital Natives Knowledge Programme. She spent a month at 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 latest is:

The Digital Tipping Point

Announcement

Rising Voices Seeks Micro-Grant Proposals for Citizen Media Outreach

Accessibility

New Blog Entry

Accessibility in Telecommunications

Intellectual Property

Copyright, patents and trademarks are the most important components on the Internet. 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. Our latest endeavour has resulted into these:

New Blog Entry

New Release of IPR Chapter of India-EU Free Trade Agreement

Internet Governance

Although there may not be one centralised 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 cybercrime 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.” Within the larger field of Internet governance, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue forum that was instituted by the WSIS processes and that is their only formal outcome, has fast emerged as one of the key institutions. As the definition quoted above indicates, a unique feature of the field of Internet governance is that, unlike many other governance spheres, it does not only involve governments. Historically, not only governments but also the technical community and private players have played a crucial role in the development of the Internet. In the context of the IGF, that role is not only explicitly acknowledged but also institutionalised as the IGF formally brings together governments, private players and civil society actors from all areas of and organisations involved in Internet governance. Moreover, now that the open and egalitarian potential of the Internet is increasingly under attack, this unique nature of the IGF, in addition to its WSIS roots, has made it a prime venue to remind stakeholders in all areas of Internet governance of the commitment they have made earlier to building a “people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society” (WSIS Geneva Principles, Para 1). CIS involvement in the field of Internet governance has the following shape:

New Blog Entry

Jurisdictional Issues in Cyberspace

Privacy

CIS has undertaken many new and exciting projects. One of these, "Privacy in Asia", is funded by Privacy International (PI), UK and is being completed in collaboration with Society and Action Group. "Privacy in Asia" is a two-year project that commenced on 24 March 2010 and will complete within two years from the commencement date, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties. The project was set up with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around privacy challenges and violations in India. In furtherance of these goals it aims to draft and promote an over-arching privacy legislation in India by drawing upon legal and academic resources and consultations with the public.

Apart from "Privacy in Asia" CIS is also participating in the " Privacy and Identity" project, which is funded by the Ford Foundation and managed by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society. The project is a research inquiry into the history of Privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhaar. The "Privacy and Identity" project started in August 2010.

New Blog Entries

Staff Update

Prashant Iyengar is a lawyer and legal scholar who has worked extensively on intellectual property issues particularly focusing on copyright reform and open access. He is a past recipient of an Open Society Institute fellowship for research into Open Information Policy, and has been affiliated with the Alternative Law Forum – a collective of lawyers in Bangalore engaged in human rights practice.

Prashant joined the Centre for Internet and Society as a lead researcher in the Privacy India project recently.

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.

The policy langurs [published on 6 January 2011]

News & Media Coverage

Civic hackers seek to find their feet in India (Livemint, 24 January 2011) and (IndiaInfoline, January 2011)
A Tweet and a poke from the CEO (Livemint, 24 January 2011)
Clicktivism & a brave new world order (Mail Today, 2 January 2011)
Would it be a unique identity crisis? (Bangalore Mirror, 2 January 2011)
Nel suk dei nativi digitali. Perché gli studenti 2.0 hanno bisogno di una bussola per orientarsi (Il Sore24 ORE, 2 January 2011)
A Refreshing Start! (Verveonline, Volume 19, Issue 1, January, 2011)
Getting Connected (Livemint, January 2011)
Knowledge Warriors (Il Sore24 ORE, January 2011)
Nishant Shah Quoted in Livemint 2011 Tweet-out (Livemint, January 2011)
Digital Natives with a Cause? - Workshop in Chile seeks participants (Bahama islands info, 30 December 2010)
Mothers discuss kids, music, fashions, on Net (The Hindu, 26 December 2010)

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

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

Accessibility in Telecommunications

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T08:08:49Z

CIS seeks to gather information about the accessibility of telecommunications products and services for persons with disabilities and elderly persons in India.

Given below are the links to two questionnaires:

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

December 2010 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-08-07T11:28:02Z

Researchers@Work

Pornography & the Law
This monograph attempts to unravel the relations between pornography, technology and the law in the shifting context of the contemporary. Deadline for review expires on 15 Jan 2011.
http://bit.ly/f1sQsi

Re:wiring Bodies
Dr. Asha Achutan historicises the attitudes, imaginations and policies that have shaped the Science-Technology debates in India, to particularly address the ways in which emergence of Internet Technologies have shaped notions of gender and body in India. Deadline for review expires on 15 Jan 2011.
http://bit.ly/gYCP1C

The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem — An Inquiry into Technology and Governance
The project has fed into many different activities in teaching, in examining processes of governance and in looking at user behaviour. The deadline for peer review expires on 15 Jan 2011.
http://bit.ly/iiYJp1

New Blog Entries

Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities

Queer Histories of the Internet

A Detour: The Internet and Forms of Narration: A Short Note

Digital Natives

Columns on Digital Natives

Make a Wish [published on 19 December 2010]
Play Station [published on 5 December 2010]

Workshop

The third and final workshop in the Digital Natives with a Cause? research project will take place in Santiago, Chile, from the 8 to 10 February. Open Call and FAQs for the workshop are online:

Publication

Position papers from the Thinkathon conference held at Hague from 6 to 8 December have been published:

Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers

Accessibility

National Award

Nirmita Narasimhan got a National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India on 3 December 2010. The award was presented by Smt. Pratibha Patil, President of India under the Role Model category. The event was telecast live on Doordarshan.

Nirmita Narasimhan wins National Award

Conference Report

An international conference on Enabling Access to Education through ICT was held in New Delhi from 27 to 29 October 2010. The full report of the conference is published online:

Enabling Access to Education through ICT - Conference Report

New Blog Entries

Intellectual Property

New Blog Entries

Openness

Reports

Event

Wikipedia Meetup in Bangalore, This time in TERI

Privacy

CIS is doing a couple of projects, one Privacy in Asia which is supported by Privacy International, UK and the other on Privacy and Identity which is funded by Ford Foundation and managed by the Centre for Study of Culture and Society. The project is a research inquiry into the history of privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhar.

New Blog Entries

Telecom

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.

Take 'Model T' for Telecom

News & Media Coverage

An online community platform for people with different needs (Sify News, 12 December 2010)

Self-regulation in media and society meet to gain legal perspectives (Indiantelevision.com, 13 December 2010)

This Is All India Radia (Outlook, 6 December 2010)

'Pakistan' hackers target India's top police agency (Google News, 4 December 2010)

Intellectual Property Rights as seen in a graphic novel (TimeOut Bengaluru, 1 December 2010)

The Niira Radia Tapes: Scrutinizing the Snoopers (The Wall Street Journal, 29 November 2010)

Mobile banking set to get a boost from IMPS (The Hindu, 28 November 2010)

UID elicits mixed response (Deccan Herald, 23 November 2010)

Time to bury e-mail? (DNA, 21 November 2010)

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/december-2010-bulletin

Accessibility at CIS – Looking back at 2010

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:53:08Z

From its inception, CIS has been working towards reform of copyright law both at the national and international levels and towards formulation of an electronic accessibility policy for India. The year 2010 has been quite eventful for developments in the area of accessibility for persons with disabilities at the national and international levels. In this blog post, Nirmita Narasimhan looks at some of the work done by CIS and other organisations to promote digital accessibility and inclusion for persons with disabilities during the calendar year 2010.

As the year 2010 comes to an end, it seems like a good time to pause and reflect on the various activities and movements which are vibrant in India and the world over for promoting digital access for persons with disabilities and the work which CIS has done in this area.

At CIS, we began the accessibility programme with a vision — a vision of a truly accessible Internet, where every person with a disability could have access to websites and digital content without technology, design or legal barriers. The Internet and ICT technologies should be promoted as desirable tools to empower persons with disabilities to enjoy their basic rights, of education, employment and enjoyment of life.

The first initiative which we were involved in was to formulate a national electronic accessibility policy with the Department of Information Technology to ensure that all government and public websites should conform to WCAG 2.0. Over the past year, the DIT has come out with a draft policy which is now being circulated amongst state governments and ministries for feedback.

The year 2010 has also witnessed several interesting public and private initiatives for digital accessibility in India. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) began its Indian chapter under the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. It has been extremely proactive in bringing together experts from around the country and chalking out a systematic work plan for engaging with the public and private sectors to promote awareness and raise skill on web accessibility. An interesting development in the private sector is the accessibility initiative of the NASSCOM Foundation, which is engaging with the IT industry to promote accessibility and employment of persons with disabilities.

The Copyright Challenge

The year 2010 has ended on a more positive note for copyright amendment for the benefit of persons with disabilities. After carrying on a focused six-month long national campaign for “The Right to Read”, disability organisations around the country came together to form the National Access Alliance to jointly lobby for copyright amendments with the Government of India. Several members of the Alliance deposed personally before the standing committee constituted by the Parliament of India to look into the matter and several others sent in written representations. A large part of the month of March was spent in trying to meet and brief the Members of Parliament to gather support for the amendment and to explain the dire necessity for the change. After a nail biting three-month period, the committee came out with its report, which recommended very strongly the pleas of the print disability community with regard to fair dealing for creating accessible versions of books. We are now awaiting the amended draft which should hopefully be presented to the Parliament by the HRD Ministry next year.

On the international scene also, there were positive developments with respect to agreement on the need for a legally binding instrument for exceptions for the print disabled. Early 2010 seemed to be very slow moving with the negotiations seeming to take a down turn when the June SCCR meeting ended without any concrete conclusions and no agreement amongst member states on the matter for the Treaty for the Blind. Several different proposals from USA, EU and Africa have been made in addition to the original BEPM proposal for solving the problem of cross-border sharing of accessible copyrighted materials. While two of these proposals, pertaining to EU and USA, were for non-binding instruments, the fact that they had made specific proposals on this issue showed that there was common consensus about the existence of a serious obstacle to accessing knowledge for print impaired persons, and that it needed an international solution. India was extremely supportive of the Treaty and did her best to help with mobilising developing countries support for the Treaty. The November SCCR ended on a good note with member states agreeing on a time based work plan for tackling three issues — exceptions for the print disabled, libraries and archives and for education, to be carried over 2011–2012.

Apart from WIPO, there have been good developments in other quarters as well. The United Nations Department of Social and Economic affairs started working towards accessibility within the UN system to make all documentation and communications, websites, buildings and human resources of UN and other international agencies accessible. For the first time, Disability was included in the MDG progress report and specifically mentioned in the Outcome Document of the High-Level Summit of the Millennium Development Goals. In addition, the General Assembly at its sixty-fifth session adopted the resolution on realization of MDGs for persons with disabilities for 2015 and beyond. Apart from efforts at the UN level, the year 2010 has also witnessed a lot of conferences and discussions taking place in countries around the world and a lot of organisations like G3ict, ITU and others have been extremely proactive in raising awareness in different countries and governments. February of this year saw the launch of the joint on line publication of G3ict-ITU “e-Accessibility Toolkit for Policy Makers”, a phenomenal work with contributions from over 65 experts around the world on implementation of the digital aspects of the Convention. Subsequently, a print version of this book was edited in-house at CIS and launched during an international conference at New Delhi in October. The book is gaining wide publicity and is being sent to regulators and ministries of IT around the world to assist them in their policy making.

At CIS, we have worked with a wide variety of persons and organisations from varying backgrounds on different issues, ranging from policy formulation to organising events, such as the Edict conference on enabling education through ICT for persons with disabilities. We had a lot of national and international partners, resource persons and participants at Edict 2010 and found the entire event a huge learning experience. We also came in touch with the officials at the Universal Service Obligation Fund in India and are exploring ways in which the fund can be used to benefit persons with disabilities.

This is also a year when the Persons with Disabilities Act is being amended. This process has been a turbulent one, with quite a bit of discord between the drafting committee, the disability sector and the government on the content and form of the new Act and the issues it needs to address. We have been actively involved in this process, giving feedback to the various drafts of the legislations which are circulated, attending consultations and so on. We see this activity taking up a lot of our time over the next year as well.

This year has been quite eventful for the accessibility team. We would like to acknowledge the support of all organisations, institutions and individuals who have supported our work and look forward to strengthening collaborations in the years to come.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/accessibility-cis-2010

Nirmita Narasimhan wins National Award

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:53:12Z

Nirmita Narasimhan was awarded the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India on 3 December 2010 on the occasion of the World Disability Day. The award was presented by Smt. Pratibha Patil, President of India under the Role Model category. The award function took place at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi from 11:00 to12:30 and was telecast live on Doordarshan.

Nirmita was given a certificate, cash prize and a citation which reads as follows:

Nirmita Narasimhan has excelled in different and diverse fields, despite having a severe disability. She is a gold medallist in MA (Music) from Delhi University and stood first in M.Phil. in Carnatic music from Delhi University. She is the recipient of the Sahitya Kala Parishad scholarship for advanced studies in Carnatic music from the Delhi Government. She is now working actively for digital inclusion and accessibility issues for persons with disabilities at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Also see the list of recipients in the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/national-award

G3ict-GW Global Policy Forum: "ICT Accessibility: A New Frontier for Disability Rights"

praskrishna — 2011-08-26T09:58:36Z

The Institute for Global and International Studies, Elliott School of Intenational Affairs at George Washington University, in cooperation with G3ict hosted this conference in Citiy View Room, Washington, D.C on 15 and 16 November 2010. Nirmita Narasimhan participated in this conference and spoke in the panel on Successful Treaty Implementation: Key Factors of Success and Obstacles.

Background

Just four years ago the UN General Assembly adopted the text of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Designed to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, this was the first international human rights treaty that was negotiated, developed, and written with the active participation of representatives of persons it is designed to protect. The remarkable engagement in and momentum behind this treaty, an international human rights instrument of the United Nations, has led to rapid accession to the treaty. As of September 2010, 146 signatories (including the United States) and 90 ratifying parties to the Convention pledged their commitment effectively extending the benefits of the Convention to more than 75% of the global population.

Despite the notably rapid adoption of the Convention, the global scale of the target population and the wide range of stakeholders, there is surprisingly little scholarship on the policy issues associated with the implementation of the Convention. The Institute for Global and International Studies (IGIS) at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs is entering into an ongoing research partnership with G3ict focusing on the global policy dimensions of ensuring accessibility of ICT and implementation of the Convention.

Shortly before the adoption of the Convention, the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict), a global grass-roots organization of subject matter experts covering the various technical and social dimensions of ICT accessibility, was made a flagship initiative of the UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (UN GAID). G3ict is a U.S.-based public-private partnership representing multiple stakeholders from all regions of the world and a variety of backgrounds. It works closely with ITU, UNESCO, UN DESA and the World Bank, among other multilateral institutions active in this policy space. G3ict collaborated over the course of 3.5 years to develop a global, multidisciplinary body of knowledge - expert practices and tools - on the wide range of issues relevant to accessible Information and Communication Technologies, including The Accessibility Imperative, G3ict-ITU Toolkit for Policymakers, and the G3ict Self-Assessment Framework.

Objectives of the Global Forum

In the context of this research program, the Institute for Global and International Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs hosted, in cooperation with G3ict, a high-profile, high-impact Global Policy Forum on ICT Accessibility to build upon the work of G3ict and to convene a prominent interdisciplinary group of GWU and non-GWU scholars along with an array of global leaders from Government, Industry, and Civil Society to:

review the unique set of processes which made it possible for the CRPD to enjoy one of the fastest rates of adoption among Human Rights treaties and how its digital accessibility dispositions are now promoted by a grassroots multi-stakeholders cooperative work across the globe;
identify specific areas of opportunities in supporting country-level policy making and international cooperative efforts in the field of digital accessibility policy making;
raise awareness among the current Federal Administration officials and industry leaders of the potential leadership role that the United States can play in promoting digital accessibility rights around the world
Proceedings of the workshop will be video recorded, edited and made available on both the IGIS and G3ict web sites and the presentations compiled to produce an update of G3ict’s initial compendium on ICT accessibility policy making, The Accessibility Imperative, with the GWU faculty delivering a “State of the Scholarship” report for publication as well as policy briefs for U.S. congressional leaders.

Program Committee

His Excellency Luis Gallegos, Ambassador of Ecuador to the United States; past Chair of the Ad Hoc Preparatory Committee of the United Nations General Assembly for the CRPD (G3ict Chairperson)
Daniel Aghion, Executive Director, W2i
Mohammed Al-Tarawneh, Inaugural Chairperson and Vice-President 2010, UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Francesca Cesa Bianchi, Director, External Relations, G3ict
A.R. Forcke, Public Sector Market Manager, IBM Research - Human Ability & Accessibility Center
Larry Goldberg, Director of Media Access, WGBH (or Trisha O’Connell)
Akiko Ito, Chief, Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities/UN Focal Point on Disability, UN DESA
John D. Kemp, Esq., Partner, Powers Pyles Sutter & Verville PC; Executive Director and General Counsel U.S. Business Leadership Network (USBLN®); (G3ict Research Committee Chair)
Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict
Susan Mazrui, Director, Federal Regulatory Affairs, AT&T
Debra Ruh, CEO and Founder, TecAccess
Paul Schafer, Information Technology (IT) Specialist & Assistant Section 508 Coordinator, U.S. Department of State
James Thurston, Senior Strategist, Global Policy and Standards, Microsoft
Dr. Susan Sell, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs; Director, Institute for Global and International Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University
Representative of GWU School of Education

Participants

GWU faculty and non-GWU Academics
International D.C.-based delegations
World Bank representatives
Representatives from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Representatives from UNESCO
International delegations of Disabled Persons Organizations
ICT Industry and ICT corporate and institutional users
State and local government broadband planners and policy makers
U.S. Federal government representatives
Non-Governmental Organizations
Elliott School Alumni who are significant actors in this policy space

Download the agenda
See the list of speakers
Also see G3ict for full details

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

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