ITU Workshop at 3rd IGF Meeting
Including Accessibility and Human Factors in the Universalization of the
Internet - How to reach persons with disabilities, the 10% of the next
billion
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Hyderabad, India, 4 December 2008 |
Contact: DCADsecretariat@itu.int |
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“The UN Convention on Rights persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD): How does it Impact the Internet?”
Cynthia Waddell (ICDRI)
Presentation on government role in carrying out ICT obligations of the
Convention; Best practices for government in supporting accessibility
standards- examples include public procurement toolkits in Canada, Ireland,
and US; and practical Government Resources. Includes mainstreaming of the
disability perspective and stakeholder engagement. |
“International standards for Web accessibility”
Shadi Abou-Zahra (W3C Web
Accessibility Initiative)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) commitment to lead the Web to its full
potential includes promoting a high degree of usability for people with
disabilities. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops its work
through the W3C consensus-based process, involving different stakeholders in
Web accessibility. These include industry, disability organizations,
government, accessibility research organizations, and more. W3C/WAI
collaborates with organizations from around the world to develop guidelines
which are widely regarded as the international standard for Web
accessibility. This presentation explains how the adoption of international
standards for Web accessibility, the W3C/WAI guidelines for Web content,
authoring tools, browsers and media players, plays a key role in enabling
the accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities. |
“Achieving Web accessibility laws in developing
countries”
Jorge Plano (ISOC-AR)
The objectives of this presentation are to show the lack of web
accessibility laws in developing countries and provide guidelines to make
them a reality.
It will give a snapshot of web accessibility law situation in developing
countries, will show a sketch of main issues to consider in a web
accessibility law and will provide tips on lobbying strategies for promoting
it. |
“Low and No-Cost Assistive Technologies: Making Large Scale Deployments Feasible”
Fernando Botelho (Mais Diferenças and Literacy Bridge)
Many governments find it impossible to design and
implement policies that ensure the rights of persons
with disabilities, in particular if they are not
aware of low and no-cost assistive technologies.
This is particularly true in developing countries.
By raising awareness about low and no-cost
alternatives, we can show that often-used financial
justifications for non-compliance with requirements
such as those spelled out in the UNCRPD are no
longer valid, assuming they ever were. This brief
presentation will include:
- Examples of low and no-cost assistive
technologies (LNCTs). Including examples in both
Linux and Windows platforms.
- Common obstacles to wide-spread adoption of low
and no-cost assistive technologies. Including
intellectual property, education, and competition
policies.
- Short and long-term strategies for wide-spread
adoption of LNCTs. Including support for open
standards and R&D, procurement, and education
policies.
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“Real-time Text: An Essential Accessibility Feature”
Arnoudvan Wijk (ISOC)
- Information Society, the Internet in Daily Life
- Text Telephony, the past and present
- What is Real-Time text
- Explained
- The technology
- Part of Internet Telephony (move pstn to IP)
- Transcoding gateways for interworking
- Real-Time Text as mainstream allows freedom of communication and new
services (relay and remote interpreter and mobile text telephony)
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“Space Network Systems Online and Accessibility”
Peter Major (ITU-R)
Basic concepts:
Geostationary - geosynchronous satellites orbit at an altitude of 36,000km,
revolve at the same velocity as the earth's rotation, thus appearing to be
standing still from the earth's surface.
Non-geostationary satellites have different orbital velocities than the
earth.
Communication satellites have been around since early 1960-s. Two major
resources to be dealt with: frequencies (harmful interference) and orbital
position (for geostationary satellites).
The role of the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR)
Based on the Radio Regulations (100-year-old international treaty, regularly
revised and updated by regional and world radio conferences) administrations
inform the BR about their intentions to implement telecommunication
satellite systems. They describe the main features of the systems (frequency
bands, orbital position, services, etc.). The BR processes and publishes the
information in the advance publication information. An administration, which
has submitted advance publication information, should submit to the Bureau a
more detailed description of the telecommunication satellite system
(coordination request) with additional data (power characteristics, service
area, etc) not later than 2 years after the first publication. The Bureau
identifies the potentially affected satellites (administrations) and
publishes the coordination request. The administration starts coordination
with affected administrations.
After successful coordination the administration should inform the Bureau
within 6 month of the launching of the satellite about launch site, vehicle,
manufacturer and other contractual data (due diligence information) and
should notify about the real characteristics and bringing into use of the
satellite within 5 years after the publication of the coordination request.
The BR publishes both due diligence and notification information. All these
data are stored in the Space Network System database of the BR and are made
available to administrations, operators and other users through Space
Network Systems Online (SNS Online) over the internet since 1996.
Accessibility Pilot Project:
Modify SNS Online web pages to be accessible for visually impaired
Use available tools (Cynthiasays, Wave, Jaws, etc.) to identify
accessibility problems
Gain experience and formalize approach
Make approach available within ITU.
Inject findings into ITU Study groups to be incorporated in Recommendation |
“Information accessibility for disaster
preparedness”
Dipendra Manocha
(Daisy Consortium)
Large population in developing countries is vulnerable to natural and man
made disasters. Their vulnerability increases many folds due to illiteracy
and economical hardship (it leads to no accessibility to preferred means of
communication as remote areas have negligible or very scanty
infrastructures).
Those vulnerabilities are multiplied for persons with any kind of physical
or sensory impairment. The tsunami in South Asia and the recent floods in
Bihar, India, have many examples of those vulnerabilities.
Information plays an important role for all three aspects of disaster
management:
Disaster preparedness
Disaster Warning and
Relief operation
DAISY As a standard for accessibility of digital content accessibility
directly or as a source for analogue information has a very big role to play
in ensuring accessibility of the information related to all aspects of
Disaster management. DAISY is open standard. Thus, it can be used by any one
for creation and distribution of information.
DAISY ensures that all information reaches every one and in multiple formats
which takes care of any physical or sensory impairment.
DAISY Consortium is facilitating and creating open source solutions for
creating accessible information. The authoring of such information can be
illustrated with the open source Add-in called the Save As DAISY designed
for many mainstream authoring tools and their integration with DAISY
Pipeline. More over, the system is highly adaptable for any local language.
The open source playback solutions can customise the information for all
user groups which makes the DAISY the best way to access and produce
information for a critical issue like the Disaster Management. |
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