Biographies

Abdoulaye Dembele, Sotelma, Mali
“Presentation of the Accessible Cybercafé in Bamako, Mali”

Other activities:

Coordinator of the “Cyber Hand” project financed by ITU and the Government of Mali

Vice-Rapporteur for ITU-D Study Group 1 Question 12-3/1 (Tariffs)

Vice-Rapporteur for ITU-D Study Group 1 Question 20/1 (Access to ICTs by persons with disabilities)

Focal point for ITU activities for persons with disabilities

President of Honour of the Association “Collectif des Handicapés Diplômés sans Emploi” (COHD)

Member of the Association “Emploi Intégration des Handicapés pour le Développement ”(EIHD)

Member of the Association “Association Malienne des Handicapés Physiques” (AMHP)

Member of the Malian Federation of Associations of Persons with Disabilities in Mali (FAMPH)

Member of the Bamako Toastmasters Association

Gerry Ellis, Feel The BenefIT, Ireland
"Cloud Computing - silver lining or impending storm for people with disabilities?"

I am a consultant in the area of Accessibility and Usability under the name of Feel The BenefIT.

I have worked for 30 years as a Software Engineer with a bank in Dublin.

I am a Fellow of the Irish Computer Society, which is the primary Irish organisation “serving ICT professionals and specialists in Ireland”. www.ics.ie 

I have been involved both nationally and internationally in organisations concerned with the social inclusion of people with disabilities for over 25 years.

I am the former Chairperson of the Irish Council of People with Disabilities, which is the largest organisation in Ireland representing people with disabilities, their parents and carers. ICPD has been renamed to People with Disabilities in Ireland (PWDI). I was a National Board member of PWDI for over 5 years up to October 2006. I am currently Chairperson of the Dublin network.

I have been active on the National Boards and subcommittees of various mainstream organisations in Ireland which relate to ICT issues. This includes the Information Society Commission which was set up by Government to advance Ireland’s readiness to take advantage of the Information Age.

I hold a Degree in Economics from University College Dublin.

I am a former member of, and a current special adviser to, the Universal Access Committee of the European Disability Forum. EDF promotes the interests of around 80 million people with disabilities in Europe. www.edf-feph.org

I have spoken at conferences in 21 countries on 4 continents on various disability-related issues. These include.S.A., Tunisia, Egypt, Thailand and extensively in Europe. I spoke at both phases of the First World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva and Tunis.

I am part of the group which produced a CEN Agreement on a curriculum for training ICT Professionals in Universal Design. CEN is one of the 3 official European Standardisation organisations. http://www.cen.eu/cenorm/sectors/sectors/isss/workshops/ws-ud-prof-curriculum.asp 

Peter Major, DCAD, Switzerland
“Implementation of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability: the Role of the UN and other international organizations”

Peter has actively participated in various activities of the ITU,IGF, UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), Working Group on the improvements of the IGF, ECOSOC, World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) and other international forums for more than 25 years. As special advisor to the Permanent Mission of Hungary in Geneva, he is responsible for ICT related issues with special emphasis on WSIS and IGF. Peter recently chaired the drafting group of the CSTD on the draft resolution Assessment of the progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society. Peter is co-coordinator of DCAD and gave presentations during previous IGFs on accessibility topics.

Christophe Oulé, UN-ABPAM, Burkina Faso
“Cybercafés as a tool for Inclusion: a project in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso”

Christophe Oulé was born in 1960 in Zaba, Nayala Province, Burkina Faso.

He is a civil engineer, specializing in construction, with a diploma from the Higher National School of Public Works in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire.

From 1985 to 1998, he was the head of the operations department of an oil company established in Burkina Faso. He was responsible for the design and supervision of the construction of service stations. He also oversaw supplies and security management.

In 1998 he created a building construction company, which he managed until 2003.

Following an eye infection, he lost his sight in 2003. In 2004, he followed a rehabilitation course for adults who have recently become blind, at the Union Nationale des Associations Burkinabé pour la Promotion des Aveugles et Malvoyants (UN-ABPAM) [National Union of Burkina Faso Associations for the Promotion of the Blind and Visually Impaired] in Ouagadougou. During the academic year 2005/2006, he was a replacement teacher in a class for the rehabilitation of children who have recently become blind or visually impaired. In 2007, he followed a course for the training of trainers in Informatics Adapted to Visual Impairment at the headquarters of the Association Valentin HAUY (AVH) in Paris, France, with further training in 2008. Since March 2007, he has been in charge of training in informatics adapted to visual impairment at UN-ABPAM.

He has been Secretary-General of UN-ABPAM since October 2008.

Jorge Plano, ISOC, Argentina
“Update on Web Accessibility Regulations”

Jorge Plano was born in Argentina and lives there. He is graduated in Information Systems and consultant in ICT. He created and directs the "Centro de Tecnologias para la Accesibilidad y la Vida Independiente - CETAVI" (Center of Technologies for Accessibility and Independent Life) at the Universidad Tecnologica Nacional in Argentina where he teaches accessibility and assistive technology with credits for the information engineering degree since 2005. He serves in the Board of the Argentina Chapter of Internet Society (ISOC-AR) and he is adviser at CABASE (ISP Argentine Association). Jorge is involved in ICT policies since the 80s, in the early 90s he was Director of IT policies at the Secretariat for Science and Technology of Argentina. Participated in the elaboration of projects of Laws for the accessibility of government Web sites, the last one is now in the Committees of the Senate. He was involved in Internet governance policies in ICANN since start up and participated in the creation of LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry).

He is organizing events on Web Accessibility in Argentina since more than ten years and has been making presentations on ICT policies and on accessibility in many forums (domestic and international).

Arun Mehta, Bidirectional Access Promotion Society, India
“ICTs for those with multiple or cognitive disabilities”

I am 58, an electrical engineer from IIT Delhi, with a Masters in Computer Sciences from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Dr.-Ing from Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany. From 1987 to 2011, I was Managing Director of Indata Com Private Limited, a small software development, training and consulting company in the areas of industrial automation, process control, quality control and networking. I was the President of the Indian section of Amnesty International from 1989 to 1991. My introduction to technology for persons with severe disabilities was at the hands of Professor Stephen Hawking, for whose use, in case the decades-old access technology he uses becomes irreperable, I wrote eLocutor, software that allows a severely motor and speech impaired person to type and speak by pressing a single button. Since then, I volunteered for two years at the National Association for the Blind in New Delhi, teaching visually impaired students computer programming. For over 5 years now, I have conducted free technology and communication workshops with persons with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers.in Dehradun, Bangalore and Kerala. During this time, I was a professor and computer engineering department chairperson at the Jai Prakash Mukand Lal Institute of Technology (JMIT), in rural Haryana. For the last two years, I have been President of the Bidirectional Access Promotion Society (bapsi.org). Here, we provide training in cloud programming to computer students, with whose help I developed Skid (skid.org.in) a free platform on which you can customize solutions to learning problems of children with cognitive disabilities. Together with Anmol Anand, I co-developed PocketSMS, the first in Bapsi's Vibration series of communication solutions for persons who are both deaf and blind.

Cynthia Waddell, International Centre for Disability Resources on the Internet, USA

Cynthia Waddell is the Executive Director and Law, Policy and Technology Subject Matter Expert for the International Center for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI). She also leads ICDRI’s Accessibility Oversight Consulting Services for clients in government, academia and the business community to further ICDRI’s mission to remove electronic and information technology barriers and promote equal opportunity for all. She is a senior accessibility consultant with UNESCO, Knowledge Societies Division in the Communication and Information Sector, and an internationally recognized expert on the issue of accessible ICT. She served as the built environment and accessible technology expert for the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee during the drafting of the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Most recently she co-authored the Monograph on the Accessibility Provisions of the UNCRPD for the UN Secretariat and a number of her ITU papers were cited in the landmark 2011 WHO and World Bank joint publication, World Report on Disability.

Cynthia is also Co-Editor and Co-Author of the ITU/G3ict e-Accessibility Toolkit for Policy Makers Implementing the UNCRPD. Today she serves as the ICT Accessibility and Government Services Expert for the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs (a flagship initiative of UN GAID) and assists governments worldwide in the implementation of the UNCRPD. In 2004 she received the first U.S. Government Technology Magazine award for “Leadership in Accessibility Technology and for Pioneering Advocacy and Education.”

Cynthia Waddell holds a Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University School of Law where she was designated a Public Interest Disability Rights Scholar. She received her B.A. cum laude, from the University of Southern California where she received Honors at Entrance.

Arnoud van Wijk, Real-Time Text Taskforce, The Netherlands
“The role of the Real-Time Text Taskforce Foundation”

Arnoud was born deaf in a hearing family and learned to communicate in the hearing word by lip-reading. His high communications skills helped him achieve an advanced degree in biochemistry in the Netherlands.

In 2000, Arnoud left the Biomedical field to move into the ICT field, where he has been involved in the development of a mobile text telephone platform. He also worked with AnnieS, a Dutch company that sells mobile text telephone and ICT services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Arnoud is a technical adviser for several organizations: the European Federation for Hard of Hearing People (EFHOH), the European Commission on ICT for e-Inclusion, the Dutch Deaf Organization (Dovenschap) and the European Disability Forum (EDF). Since 2001, he has also worked with the Trace Research and Development Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison which has a partnership with the Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University in Washington DC.

In 2007, Arnoud started his own consulting company GreenGiraffe, which is specialized in ICT inclusion issues and technology. Making the Internet accessible for people with disabilities.

Via GreenGiraffe, Arnoud worked together with the Internet Society (ISOC) for two years to coordinate and advance activities related to the Internet and persons with disabilities. Which led to the creation of the non-profit foundation Real-Time Text TaskForce (R3TF, http://www.realtimetext.org). The goal of the R3TF is to ensure that Real-Time Text is as readily available for all users as voice is today. Which makes Internet based (Tele) communications accessible for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing or who cannot (fully) use voice communication.

Arnoud is an expert in related Internet Protocol based technologies and e-inclusion issues.