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Making the web accessible
The Internet, and the World Wide Web that it carries, should be accessible to everyone. But, as well as
different languages and cultures, users have widely
varying capacities in hearing, movement, eyesight,
and cognitive ability. To look into the issues more
closely, ITU organized two workshops at the meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Sharm el
Sheikh, Egypt, on 15–18 November 2009 (see article
on pages 36–39).
The first of them, entitled “Global Internet
Access for Persons with Disabilities”, was held jointly by ITU and the European Broadcasting Union.
“Accessibility is an important focus of ITU’s work,”
emphasized Malcolm Johnson, Director of ITU’s
Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, in
opening the workshop. He noted that the “lack of
industry participation in accessibility is a problem.
This is surprising when one considers that 10 per
cent of the world’s population is disabled, many
living in developing countries, and also there is a
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ITU News  10 | 2009  December 2009
growing elderly population…This represents a huge
and growing market.”
The work of ITU’s Telecommunication
Development Bureau (BDT) in this field was noted
by its Director Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid, in an
opening speech to the workshop on “Best practices
for an Accessible Web”. He stressed that “the mandate of BDT is to ensure that all people participate
fully in the information society”. BDT organizes forums to share best practice, and has teamed up with
the Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and
Communication Technologies (G3ict) to develop an
e-Accessibility toolkit to raise awareness among policy-makers, said Mr Al Basheer.
Both workshops were activities of the Dynamic
Coalition on Accessibility and Disability (DCAD), of
which ITU is a founder member. The second meeting of DCAD took place on 16 November in Sharm el
Sheikh, resulting in a policy statement that was later
presented to the Internet Governance Forum.
Accessibility for all
Making the web accessible
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Practical solutions
Achieving harmonized, interoperable solutions
is the goal of the Real-Time Taskforce Foundation
(R3TF), based in the Netherlands. Its Director Arnoud
van Wijk commented that “we all depend more and
more on the Internet in our daily life. Not just on a
personal computer, but on mobile devices too. This
dependency will only increase every year.” However,
he added, “on the web, text pictures and videos are
hidden from people with a visual disability. Navigation
and controlling hardware is a hurdle for some disabilities. Video and audio can be hard or impossible
to understand with a hearing disability.”
For people who are deaf or hard of hearing, real-time text is “a major leap forward,” said Mr van
Wijk. It has a conversational quality that is not provided with instant messaging, because characters are
transmitted online immediately when typed. Mr van
Wijk gave a demonstration of real-time text and suggested that it could create a new market for instant
conversational text messaging to be used by anyone
— starting with “the trendy young”.
Professor Arun Mehta, President of the
Bidirectional Access Promotion Society, spoke about
information and communication technologies (ICT)
for people with mental challenges. For them, “computers can be easier to work with than people: they
are more consistent and patient,” he said. “Usually,
we assume a person is literate before we teach her
about computers. A child with mental challenges
may need to learn how to use a computer in order
to become literate,” continued the professor. He outlined how his organization has created a software
platform with customizable modules that can be fitted to a specific range of needs, and a low-cost input
device designed for people with disabilities.
The digital accessible information system (DAISY)
is a format that allows any document on the web
to be readable by any user, explained Dipendra
Manocha, President of the DAISY Forum, India. He
gave examples of how it is used with various formats
for documents, and in a number of different countries. In India, for example, Bookshare.org is an online library with 9000 books in DAISY, and users pay a
subscription fee of less than USD 9 per year.
Usable websites
Websites should provide the appropriate interaction and accessibility for all users. Jorge Plano, of the
Internet Society (ISOC) Argentina, gave a presentation on how to avoid creating barriers when designing websites. Examples of many mistakes made in
the design of government websites were given by
Peter Major, of CyberSpace Consulting. He described
a survey carried out on the websites of 136 signatory
governments of the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in every world
region. Typical accessibility errors included missing
descriptions for images, or empty links. The results
showed that 12 per cent of websites were errorfree, and 23 per cent had no more than five errors.
However, 21 per cent of the websites had more than
40 errors. There is still a clear need to raise awareness of these issues as an important step towards
truly accessible e-government, concluded Mr Major.
Universal design
The impact upon the Internet of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities was explained by Cynthia Waddell of
the International Centre for Disability Resources
on the Internet. Nirmita Narasimhan, of the Center
for Internet and Society, outlined a study of how
ITU News  10 | 2009  December 2009
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ITU News  10 | 2009  December 2009
inclusion for people with disabilities, as did David
Wood, Deputy Director, Technical, at the European
Broadcasting Union. Access means more than simply
enabling everyone to use the Internet; it also means
“society making the best use of the Internet for people with disabilities,” said Mr Wood. As individuals we
seek out content on the Internet to discover our context and where we belong in society, he commented.
“It is about finding out that ‘I am not alone’,” said Mr
Wood, and people with disabilities need this as much
as — and perhaps more than — anyone else.
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the Convention is being applied in seven countries:
Australia, Germany, India, Japan, Republic of Korea,
the United Kingdom, and the United States. The
study looked at the scope of legislation or guidelines, and the procedures for monitoring compliance, among other factors. The results varied widely.
Ms Narasimhan concluded that “people with disabilities must be involved at every stage of the policy formation and implementation process.”
The need for appropriate regulatory frameworks
was also mentioned by Fernando Botelho, of consultants Botelho and Paula Consultaria. He presented
strategies that governments can adopt for promoting public-private partnerships “to ensure a thriving assistive technology marketplace and affordable
products.” Shadi Abou-Zahra of the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
explained how it is promoting international standards
to make it possible for everyone to use the Internet.
Universal design benefits society as a whole,
stated Gerard Ellis of consultants on ICT accessibility, Feel the BenefIT. He detailed how, for example,
burdens on administrative officials are reduced when
everyone can use e-government effectively, while accessible websites will be of increasing value as society ages. He also stressed the importance of social