ASEAN-ITU Seminar on ICT Accessibility and Assistive Technologies
for Equity in Society, 25-26 August 2014, Bangkok
The role of Accessible ICT for the
development of Disability-inclusive
Disaster Risk Reduction
Hiroshi Kawamura
Board (Past President), DAISY Consortium
and
Vice President, Assistive Technology Development Organization (ATDO)
hkawa@atdo.jp
th
January 17
1995, Kobe
Source: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%98%AA%E7%A5%9E%E3%83%BB%E6%B7%A1%E8%B7%AF%E5%A4%A7%E9%9C%87%E7%81%BD
Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA)
• Based on the lessons learned from 1995 Disaster in Japan, UNISDR set
out the “Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the
Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters” as United
Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction.
( http://www.unisdr.org/we/coordinate/hfa )
• The key message for Accessible ICT Development is “Rescue teams
from outside of your own community may not reach in time to save
lives of those who are buried under the wreckage. Only 1.7% of
survivors were pulled out of the wreckage by the rescue team.”
=> Self-help and mutual help at community level was identified as a key
survival factor. However, HFA was not sufficient to develop and share
“how to”.
On 11th March 2011, Tsunamis took 74 lives out of 108 students and 10 lives out
of 13 teachers at Ookawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki City, Japan.
However, students in Kamaishi City could evacuate successfully thanks to
training and timely self-decision making.
photo: http://photo.sankei.jp.msn.com/panorama/data/2011/0324ookawa01/
March 11th, 2011, Kamaishi, North East Japan
Source http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARv_4a_8FBA
March 11th, 2011, Kamaishi, North East Japan
Source http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARv_4a_8FBA
March 11th, 2011, Kamaishi, North East Japan
Source http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARv_4a_8FBA
Urakawa Bethel’s House
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Urakawa Bethel’s House is a self-advocacy group of persons with psycho-social
disability and other disabilities consisting of 150 members.
Most of the members are living in the community.
3000 visitors come and learn from them each year.
Members go around the country to give 100 lectures annually.
Annual Conference of Psycho-social Rehabilitation Professionals 2010 was hosted
by the Bethel’s House. The main-event was designated to “Disaster Risk Reduction
as an Opportunity to Link with the Community”.
Further info is available at http://bethel-net.jp/bethel-e.html
Members of the Bethel’s House are living in Urakawa Town, the most
frequent earthquake zone in Japan
Urakawa Town
On-site international study on Disaster
Preparedness in Urakawa, May 2005. Most
of them including George Kerscher and
Markus Gylling continue to work on
development of accessible EPUB3 still now.
WSIS November 2005 in Tunis
A Screenshot of one of Evacuation Manuals
Text, graphics and narrations are synchronized
Samples in English, Thai and Japanese are available:
A Screenshot of one of Evacuation Manuals
Evacuation Drills of Urakawa Bethel’s House
• Individuals with severe psycho-social disability and other disabilities has been
training themselves since 2005 to prepare for Tsunami.
•With 4 evacuation training sessions per year, they refresh scientific knowledge
on Tsunami and develop skills to evacuate to higher than 10 m within 4 minutes.
•They maintain evacuation manuals in DAISY multimedia format by themselves.
Bethel’s House representatives presented
their preparedness development project at
the 2nd International Conference on
Disaster Preparedness for Persons with
Disabilities, 12-13 May 2009, Phuket.
Bethel’s House members joined community
disaster risk reduction workshop in Urakawa
Town, September 2009, followed by one night
stay simulation at a evacuation shelter.
On March 11th 2011, 60 Bethels’ House members led the
evacuation of total 500 people before the Tsunami came
as they trained themselves to evacuate immediately after
the quake. There was no human casualties in Urakawa in
spite of a large property loss by 2.8m tsunami attack.
0.3
0.3
0.4
3.4=22/6.4
0.4
0.5
2.4=24/10
0.9
1.3=19/14
Fig.1 Proportion of death by age: Older than 60 years occupied 65% of
the victims of the North East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011.
Key lessons from the 3.11 2011 Disaster
• Informed and Timely Decision Making based on appropriate DRR plan and
evacuation drills at community level is the key to survival.
• Well trained School kids and members of Urakawa Bethel’s House are good
examples of timely decision making for evacuation.
• Regardless of disabilities or other risk factors, appropriate and accessible
scientific knowledge, training and accessible early warning save lives.
• As hundreds of community based rescue operators were killed in operation,
rescue teams are requested to secure their safety first. => Everybody in the
community including persons with disabilities and old aged people in Japan
are requested to prepare for survival.
• Disability-inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction requires accessible ICT.
Who were at risks?
Those who are not able to:
Understand the situation
Communicate
Locate the evacuation route
Evacuate
Participate in the community activities including evacuation drills
[persons with disabilities, old aged people, small children, travelers,
those who are pregnant, who require medical treatment, who are
living with minority languages, etc.]
What is the discrimination in Disaster Risk Reduction?
Less survival chance caused by denial of reasonable accommodations where
the basic design is not inclusive, such as lack of
• access to knowledge on risks and risk reduction measures
• access to preparedness development including evacuation drills
• timely early warning in an accessible and easy to understand format
• assistance for evacuation
• accessible evacuation route
• accessible shelters
• participatory process for “build back better”
• communications in accessible format
Librarian’s Initiatives for Recovery from Yolanda
Archiving Stories of Survivors
All textbooks and libraries including
Eastern Samar State University Guiuan
Campus Library in the photo are
completely lost by the typhoon Yolanda.
Key Players for Survivor’s Story Archiving in
DAISY Multimedia Format
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Story tellers (Authors)
Libraries (National, Regional and Local)
Schools and Universities
Local governments
Researchers
Disability Community
International Cooperation Agencies
Example of DAISY multimedia
Downloading of The Story of the Three Little Pigs is kindly offered by the Information
Center of the Japanese Society for Persons with Disabilities:
ftp://ftp.jsrpd.jp/pub/daisy/download/pigsE.zip
Near Future of DAISY
Open Standards for “Accessible Multimedia” (CRPD Article 2) development best meet the
diversity needs of persons with disabilities and the general public. Commitment of Libraries and
librarians to support participation of persons with disabilities who address their own needs
from grass roots level to policy decision making level through provision of accessible and easy to
understand reading experiences will revitalize the library services in the near future.
This HLMDD Outcome Document in accessible multimedia format is available at:
http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/hlmdd/daisy/Sign_Language/index.html
Access to knowledge, information and communication on disaster
risk reduction in accessible and understandable format saves lives
of persons with disabilities and the rest of the community.
References
• United Nations CRPD Portal Web
http://www.un.org/disabilities/
• Disability Information Resources (DINF) at Japanese Society for Persons
with Disabilities
http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/index_e.html
• DAISY Consortium
http://www.daisy.org/
• International Digital Publishing Forum
http://idpf.org/
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World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/