Opening Remarks by Malcolm Johnson, ITU Deputy Secretary-GeneralWSIS TalkX - ICTs for Building Back Better: Toward a disability-inclusive, accessible and sustainable post-COVID-19 World
3 December 2020
Welcome everyone to this WSIS TalkX on International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Many thanks to our distinguished panelists for joining us. It is my pleasure to moderate this session on ICT accessibility, a topic that I have championed during my time in ITU.Many speakers have joined us for these WSIS TalkXs over the last few months to share their experiences and inspirational stories about the power of ICTs to advance development, and we have been fortunate to assemble a great lineup of speakers representing the WSIS community in all its diversity, as we have today.
But before I introduce them, I would like to share with you the story of a young girl called Mabel who at the age of five became deaf after contracting scarlet fever, a disease that inspired as much fear during Mabel's nineteenth-century childhood as COVID-19 does today. You may not be familiar with the name of Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, but you know Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone and the man who would become Mabel's husband. Few people realize that the telephone was developed because of Bell's experiments with ways to communicate with his beloved wife.
Today on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, like Mabel, one in seven people worldwide lives with some form of disability. Can you imagine the hurdles they have to overcome every single day to use the digital technologies and services that have proved so essential since the start of the pandemic? And that is, of course, when they can have access to these technologies in the first place!
The number of persons affected by a form of disability in the next thirty years could reach half of the world's population. ICTs and emerging technologies such as AI, 5G, the Internet of Things and others are a key part of building back better for a more disability-inclusive, accessible and sustainable post-COVID-19 world. This world must be built on a combination of international technical standards and legal and regulatory frameworks – the kind of standards for deaf people that ITU pioneered in the 1990s.
From the historic ITU Resolution on accessibility adopted in 2008 to ITU's Connect 2030 Agenda, I have seen first-hand how much of a difference we can make when we come together around the principles of universal design, affordability and equal opportunities to access ICTs. The WSIS Forum has embodied these values since its creation in 2009. Last year, a special track was developed at the request of WSIS stakeholders on ICTs and Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities and Specific Needs. And this year we launched a dedicated ICTs and Older Persons track.
I look forward to hearing from our panellists about how we can enhance our cooperation, not only to implement key treaties such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities but also to accelerate progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. With only ten years left to achieve the SDGs and break down the major remaining barriers to connectivity, it is more urgent than ever to work together to ensure everyone's right to participate in the information society – regardless of age, gender, location, financial means, or ability.
With that, I turn to our first panellist, Her Excellency Ms Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al-Thani, Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the United Nations. Madam Ambassador, what are some of the key legislations and measures that Qatar has put in place recently to enhance and protect the rights of persons with disabilities in relation to ICTs?