Distinguished speakers, Ladies and Gentlemen, friends
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening
Namaskar
I am very pleased to join you again this year to celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day, and continue the excellent collaboration between ITU and Broadband India Forum, especially on this important issue which has always been a key priority for me and a subject in which I have taken a very personal interest in ever since I joined ITU in 2007.
I would like to thank my good friend T V Rama-chandran, President of BIF for the kind invitation to join you.
We all have our deepest sympathy with you in India for the terrible situation you are facing with the second wave of COVID. Our hearts are with you at this difficult time.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day was launched in 2012 inspired by a blog by web developer Joe Devon to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital accessibility for people with disabilities. It was an excellent example of Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra: “be the change that you wish to see in the world”.
We have now been living in a virtual world for over a year – to work, study, access health advice and keep in touch with friends and relatives. That is providing you have a connection and can make use of the services and applications.
With over one billion people living with some form of disability it is a major concern that they may not be able to benefit in this way. The number of persons affected by a form of disability in the next thirty years could reach half of the world’s population. What we do on this special day and beyond will decide what kind of world we will rebuild after the pandemic is over.
Last year I was pleased to join you for the launch of the BIF White paper on ICT Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities in India, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. I was very pleased to see the recommendations and I very much hope they have made a difference for persons with disabilities in India during this pandemic.
It was very good to hear from Dr Seth and Dr Kumar the very impressive initiatives that have been taken by the government of India, congratulations on all your efforts especially the Accessibility India Campaign and making all government ministries websites and platforms accessible.
ITU is currently working with the International Labour Organization, to identify best practices in the design and development of accessible and inclusive online job application and recruitment systems to allow all persons, including persons with disabilities, to benefit.
The Green Paper recommendations included the widespread adoption of Universal Design standards, something which ITU as the UN specialized agency for information and communication technologies, recognizes in all the work we do on standards, and since 2008 we have an accessibility check list to ensure that our standards provide for accessibility.
Of course the development of standards in ITU relies heavily on our industry members, including of course Microsoft and Facebook, so many thanks for their contribution to our work especially on accessibility.
International standards are important to ensure interoperability and bring down costs and make devices and services affordable through the economies of scale of a global market.
As we know almost half of the world’s population is still offline and most of these are living in remote and rural communities so bringing affordable connection to them is a major goal of ITU – which is why I was pleased to see the recommendation in the Green Paper to incorporate ICT accessibility and assistive technology requirements for persons with disabilities in the Universal Service Charter.
ITU was one of the first standards bodies to pioneer standards for persons with disabilities with the standard ITU-T V.18 in 1990, a major landmark allowing different, and previously incompatible, text phones in different countries to communicate.
And almost twenty years later, when I was Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, the ITU World Telecommunication Standard Assembly adopted the first resolution on accessibility in 2008. Resolution 70 mandated ITU to document best practice, review its services and facilities for accessibility, and to work on programmes to progress accessibility in developing countries. This Resolution recognised the need to include persons with disabilities in the development of accessibility standards which is something ITU strives to do – for example by providing sign language or captioning in our meetings. We also have an audio-based indoor and outdoor network navigation system in our premises for persons with vision impairment, a system meeting the ITU standard.
ITU has continued its work during the pandemic through virtual meetings, and accessibility remains a core focus, with ITU working on many collaborative projects and initiatives, including with the WHO.
During this year’s WSIS Forum, which is currently in its final week, a special track explored how ICTs can be optimized to help people live with disabilities, including in areas such as assisting people with blindness and vision impairment, universal design, and showcasing emerging assistive technologies. We have also started a new tract looking at how ICTs can help older persons, and we held a very successful hackathon of innovations to help older persons and introduced a new special prize for projects in this area.
A collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach, such as we have in the WSIS Forum, spanning governments, industry, academia, civil society and relevant organisations, is crucial to help people break cycles of exclusion and poverty while accelerating the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
So let us continue to collaborate together to build a combination of international technical standards and legal and regulatory frameworks for a world where no one is left behind and where opportunities have no boundaries.
Thank you for your attention.
Dhan-ya-wad