ICT for Physically Challenged Persons
S Jagannathan, P Govind Raj, Poonam Rani Gupta
Abstract
ICT can support people with physical disabilities by
enabling them to access the information along with
others. Physical challenge either temporary or of
permanent nature put limitations in learning process of
an individual as it can limit accessibility, can hamper
understanding thus making it difficult for such persons to
be at par with others. Learning activity such as following
a lecture, reading a book, accessing resources, websites,
appearing in the exams (written or oral) becomes an
uphill task for physically challenged persons. A wide
range of software and peripherals are now available as
alternatives to using the traditional keyboard and mouse,
which can suit learners with varying physical disabilities.
A person can choose a technology based on his or her
ability and ease in using a technology This paper analysis
how ICT can meet requirements of education and
employment of physically challenged people. We also
present efforts of CDAC, Noida for supporting physically
challenged people using ICT.
1. Introduction
Technology has made human life comfortable by
providing services, information on a click, at the same
time has it has made life simpler for people with
disability. Technology product ranging from motorized
wheel chair to cell phone for deaf people to communicate
has been making life of PWD (People with Disability)
simpler and convenient. As per 2001 census, 21.9 million
or 21,906,769 people are disabled[5] in India and out of
the 21,906,769 people with disabilities, 12,605,635 are
males and 9,301,134 are females. As per WHO , on an
average around 10 per cent of the world population is
disabled and this number is likely to increase due to
different factors, such as increasing population,
advancement in the field of medicine and rising number
of the aging population. There are an estimated 650
million people living with disabilities in the world today.
If one includes the members of their families to it, there
are approximately 2 billion persons who are directly
affected by disability, representing almost a third of the
world’s population.
Thus, persons with disabilities
(PWD) represent a significant percentage of population.
Hence ensuring their equality of rights and access to
information and technology. Hence ensuring their equality
of rights and access to information and technology will
have an enormous impact on their social and economic
development in the countries around the world.
Barille was a great empowerment in the direction of
accessibility, but advancement in technology can go a
long way in futher empowering the PWD. Although ,India
is an IT super power ,PWD are loosing out as localized
and low cost technology are in scarcity . The divide
between visually disabled and able population is on the
rise as 99% of the plethora of websites are not accessible
for the Blind.
People with neurological disorder are more worried lot as
they need more support from technology to lead a normal
life. A working group of architects, product designers,
engineers and environmental design researchers, has
collaborated to establish the Principles of Universal
Design[16] to guide a wide range of design disciplines
including environments, products, and communications
from perspective of accessibility issues is tabulated in
Table I.
The design is useful and marketable
Equitable Use
to people with diverse abilities.
The design accommodates a wide
Flexibility in
range of individual preferences and
Use
abilities.
Use of the design is easy to
Simple &
understand, regardless of the user's
Intuitive Use
experience, knowledge, language
skills, or current concentration level.
The design communicates necessary
Perceptible
information effectively to the user,
Information
regardless of ambient conditions or
the user's sensory abilities.
The design minimizes hazards and
Tolerance of
the
adverse consequences
of
Error
accidental or unintended actions.
The design can be used efficiently
Low Physical
and comfortably and with a
Effort
minimum of fatigue.
Appropriate size and space are
Size and Space
provided for approach, reach,
for Approach
manipulation, and use regardless of
and Use
user's boy size, posture, or mobility.
Table 1. Principles of Universal Design
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Even with large number of guidelines being given and
people with disability looking forward for it , most of the
organizations are not even addressing this issue. For e.g.
though NCPDEP[10] , DNIS[6] sites are accessible but
Rehabilitation council for India [12] , Ministry of Social
Justice, newspapers , publishers are among the
organization catering to these groups but their websites
are not designed from accessibility view point. Disability
act 1995 is one GoI initiative, but more inputs are
required to offer an inclusive life for all. Massive
partnership do exist in various sectors, between
government, private, public and social organization same
has to be worked out in the disability sector, tokenism in
this direction wont serve the purpose. Although search on
Google returns millions of pages, only 3% websites are
actually accessible as per survey of UN in 2006. Indian
government passed its disability act in 1995 and has
signed UN Convention for disabled in 2007[15], along
with other countries. NGOs like National Job
Development Council, NCPDEP are working with spastic
society of India for creating jobs for persons with
disability as well as increasing awareness for potential
employers.
BarrierBreak Technologies [2] has conducted an
accessibility survey to evaluate the websites of Indian
companies listed on NYSE and NASDAQ. The survey
was conducted during the month of December 2007. This
survey aims to ascertain the extent of web accessibility
awareness and compliance in India. Web site of
companies such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Infosys
Technologies, Patni Computer Systems, Wipro
Technologies, Satyam Computer Services, MTNL,
VSNL, Sify, WNS, Genpact, Dr Reddy's, Sterlite
Industries, Tata Motors and Rediff were tested for WCAG
compliance. Most of the websites were unable to meet
even the basic accessibility standards except Satyam and
WNS. Most of users faced different types of problems
such as missing text alternatives for images , Flickering
content on web pages , inappropriate page titles etc.
Awareness campaigns for the issues and necessity of
collective efforts in this direction is need of the day
The present paper describes the type of disability and their
requirements, assistive technology products. It also
presents W3C and Open Source community efforts for
People with disability. Further paper presents CDAC
efforts in this direction and future plans for assistive
technology.
2. Type of Disability and people’s
requirement
People do suffer with disabilities due to weak or no
capacity to utilize a sensory organ such as eye , ear or
control over their body parts , mental weakness etc . The
problem can be by birth , due to aging process , accident
etc . Disability has its effect on quality of human life
irrespective of its origin and reason. Different type of
disabilities requires support related to handle that problem
[5]. Problems of people with Multiple disorders becomes
more complicated as solution for a particular type of
disability may not work for them, therefore additional
efforts are needed to provide devices and technological
support to make their life simpler . Some of the disability
factors and their requirements are presented here:
Visual impairment
People with visual disabilities are individuals who are
blind, have low vision, or have color blindness. People
who are blind need text equivalents for the images used
on the Web page, because neither they nor the assistive
screen reader technology can obtain information from an
image. A person who has a visual disability will not find
the mouse useful because it requires hand and eye
coordination. People with color blindness or those with
low vision need good contrasting colors to be used in
design or an alternate attribute of information being
presented.
Mobility impairment
People with mobility disabilities have physical
impairments that substantially limit movement and fine
motor controls, such as lifting, walking, and typing.
Mobility impaired individuals experience difficulties in
using the computer's input devices and in handling storage
media. Such people need devices for mobility, control and
manipulation and alternate input devices on Computers.
Hearing impairment
People who are deaf or hard of hearing require visual
representations of auditory information that a Web can
site provides. Solutions for these disabilities include
closed captioning, blinking error messages, and
transcripts of the spoken audio. The primary concern is to
ensure that audio output information is provided in a
redundant equivalent visual form.
Learning disability
People with cognitive or learning disabilities, such as
dyslexia and short-term memory deficit, need more
general solutions, which include providing a consistent
design and using simplified language. For example, by
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using a template, a Web developer can reuse the same
layout and design for each page, so a person with a
cognitive disability can more easily navigate through a
Web site. People with cognitive or learning disabilities
can also benefit from redundant input, such as providing
both an audio file and a transcript of a video. By
simultaneously viewing the text and hearing it read aloud,
they can take advantage of both auditory and visual skills
to comprehend the material better.
3. Assistive technology
Assistive technology [18] is a piece of equipment or a
software product that is used to increase, maintain, or
assist the functional capabilities of individuals with
disabilities. International Standards Organization (ISO)
defines assistive technology as "Hardware or Software
products used by people with disabilities to accomplish
their tasks". It can be used for communication, education,
recreation, greater independence, fuller life. Most
commonly used assistive tech devices on computer
include speech to print software and vice-versa, video
chat Voice recognition software, keyboard and mouse
adaptations, digital hearing aids, antiglare magnifying
screen, screen magnifier software, screen readers, portable
amplifiers, in-line telephone amplifiers, head pointers,
predictive word-processors, touch pads, joysticks etc.
Applications like text chat, video technology, emails or
simple things like closed captions have become so
pervasive in our life that we do not notice their
availability but the same can make great difference for a
person with disability. Many of these needs are being
offered by assistive technology products both hardware
and software. Technology can make a difference in
peoples life therefore professionals need to ensure that
they design products which are accessible. Training
program for sensitizing people for the needs of disabled
are equally important and can be conducted with the help
of technology such as simulations, developing variety of
training modules etc. Designing accessible websites,
software, training modules can create an all inclusive
society. Technology can be used for designing and testing
products specially meant for disabled Table II presents a
list of products available for various disabilities.
Software
for
accessing
computer without conventional
keyboard and mouse.
Qualikey, Lookkeys , Virtual keyboard, Intellkeys ,
Adaptive keyboard
head/mouth stick keys
Keyboard for persons wth one
Frog-pad
hand , 15 keys , with three
different level overlays
Foot pedal KB
Programmable 3 key Keyboard
Quali-click software
Programmable mouse click
On screen cursor is controlled
by simple body movement. A
standard USB Webcam captures
Eye-tracking software
user movement and software
translate
it
into
mouse
movement
Allows operation of any
Speech recognition
application and full control over
Computer/device
1.1x to 36x , bulls eye for
aiming , screen split , large print
key-board
,
change
in
Magnification S/W
background colors , inversion of
color for persons with –ve
vision , network based system
are available
for persons with dyslexia ,
WYNN/Kurzweil300
provide audio and visual
0
support for learning
Hardware device used for
Braille Embossers
printing computer generated
text in Braille format.
The most popular screen reader
worldwide,
JAWS®
for
Windows® works with your PC
JAWS
to provide access to today’s
software applications and the
Internet. Supports
17
Languages
Table 2. A List of Hardware and Software Products
for Disabled persons
Quali-world
4. W3C initiative for accessibility
The unprecedented growth of web over the time offers
large opportunities for people with disabilities to get
involve in information society. A number of barriers such
as education, day-to-day activities, access to workplace
can be removed with the help of web. Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are part of a series of
Web accessibility guidelines published by the W3C's Web
Accessibility Initiative [17]. They consist of a set of
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guidelines on making content accessible, primarily for
disabled users, but also for all user agents, including
highly limited devices, such as mobile phones. "Section
508" of US Disability Act refers specifically to Section
508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended by the
Workforce Investment Act of 1998. The law states that
Federal agencies shall purchase electronic and IT enabled
products that shall cater to both the able and disabled
people. The table III shows the priority level assigned in
WCAG 1.0 for each checkpoint identified for web design
issues including example checkpoints. Some of the web
technologies and recent initiatives are described here:
Voice XML
VoiceXML (VXML) is the W3C's standard XML format
for specifying interactive voice dialogues between a
human and a computer. VoiceXML has tags that instruct
the voice browser to provide speech synthesis, automatic
speech recognition, dialog management, and audio
playback. It allows voice applications to be developed and
deployed in an analogous way to HTML for visual
applications. Just as HTML documents are interpreted by
a visual web browser, VoiceXML documents are
interpreted by a voice browser. Many commercial
VoiceXML applications such as order inquiry, package
tracking, driving directions, emergency notification,
wake-up, flight tracking, voice access to email,
prescription refilling, audio newsmagazines, voice
dialing, real-estate information and national directory
assistance applications are in use.
Aural CSS
The aural rendering of a document, a common
requirement of blind and print-impaired communities,
combines speech synthesis and auditory icons. Often such
aural presentation occurs by converting the document to
plain text and feeding this to a screen reader -- software or
hardware that simply reads all the characters on the screen
resulting an ineffective presentation. Style sheet
properties for aural presentation may be used together
with visual properties (mixed media) or as an aural
alternative to visual presentation. Besides the obvious
accessibility advantages, there are other large markets for
listening to information, including in-car use, industrial
and medical documentation systems (intranets), home
entertainment, and to help users learning to read or who
have difficulty reading.
Example
Checkpoints
Must satisfy this Text equivalent for
checkpoint. Ensures every
non-text
1
web contents are element, information
accessible to people conveyed with color
with different
is
also
available
without color
Should satisfy this Fore-ground
and
checkpoint.
Does background
color
remove significant combinations provide
barriers to accessing sufficient
contrast
2
Web documents.
when viewed by
someone having color
deficit, Use style
sheets to control
layout
and
presentation.
May address this give access to the
checkpoint. Improve navigation
access
to
Web mechanism,
enable
3
documents.
different types of
searches for different
skill
levels
and
preferences in search
functions
Table 3. Priority Level and example checkpoints in
WCAG 1.0
Priority
Level
Explanation
Authoring tools
Authoring tools can enable, encourage, and assist users
("authors") in the creation of accessible Web content
through prompts, alerts, checking and repair functions,
help files and automated tools. As web content is
universally accessible it is also equally important to
facilitate both able and differently able people to not only
access content but also be authors of web-content. The
tools used to create this information must therefore be
accessible themselves. Adoption of WAI guidelines will
contribute to the proliferation of Web content that can be
read by a broader range of readers and authoring tools that
can be used by a broader range of authors.
Multimodal web
The Multimodal Interaction Working Group is one of the
largest W3C groups. The ability of variety of devices to
access the Web is changing the way people experience the
Web, as well as how browsers are designed and web
content is written. The challenge is to adapt web software,
as well as web content, for any screen , big small as well
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as for any input device such as voice or handwriting
recognition, visual input using integrated cameras,
keypads, scroll-wheels or haptic devices.
All these advancement can also help in making web
accessible to differently able people through multi-modal
input and output .A web site designed using a
combination of techniques developed with device
independence in mind (style sheets, WAI guidelines, etc.)
will readily work on a large range of devices. The new
browsers are written especially for small screens and do
add functionality and heuristics to display complex
content.
be done on a OSS as it foregoes the issue of vendor
locking and integration. Some of the OSS initiatives and
products are described here:
GNOME and KDE Accessibility project
Accessibility projects on GNOME [8] and KDE [9] are
two major initiative in this direction. Linux Screen Reader
is an open source effort to develop an extensible assistive
technology for the GNOME desktop environment to
facilitate people with visual impairments access to the
GNOME desktop and productivity applications (e.g.,
Firefox, Eclipse) using speech, Braille, and screen
magnification. Orca [11] is a another powerful assistive
technology for people with visual impairments. Orca is
designed to work with the GNOME desktop and its
applications, OpenOffice, Firefox, and the Java platform.
KDE has a number of mouse and keyboard related
settings that can help handicapped people. For example In
the KDE 3.1 branch, the accessibility module has been
split. Settings for the visual bell and for the keyboard can
be configured under "Regional & Accessibility >
Accessibility". Mouse related accessibility settings have
moved to "Peripherals > Mouse". We are working on a
better solution for KDE 3.2. KMouse , Kmagnifier
,Kmouth are a few of the other products designed to
enhance accessibility.
EMACSPEAK
Figure 1. Multimodal Interaction framework by W3C
5. Open Source Solutions for PWD
It is said Assistive Technology helps people to make
things easier but for persons with disability, it makes the
impossible possible!” However this option is not
affordable in most cases. In proprietary platforms
Assistive Technology software costs are high ,e.g. the
standard version of JAWS costs $895. Using open source
software this cost can be minimized enabling access to
technology to the differently able people thereby
promising an independent lifestyle.
Open source systems(OSS) offers a large scope to cater to
the needs of training for PWD and enable them to lead a
normal life[14]. Open source products can be developed
and altered by the community as per requirement of users
and can be made available to them on no or very less cost
. Customizing products to the requirements of a user can
Emacspeak [7] is a speech interface that allows visually
impaired users to interact independently and efficiently
with the computer. Audio formatting --a technique
pioneered by AsTeR-- and full support for W3C's Aural
CSS (ACSS) allows Emacspeak to produce rich aural
presentations of electronic information. Available free of
cost on the Internet, Emacspeak has dramatically changed
how hundreds of blind and visually impaired users around
the world interact with the personal computer and the
Internet.
DASHER
Dasher [4] is an information-efficient text-entry interface,
driven by natural continuous pointing gestures, supporting
multiple languages, used wherever a full-size keyboard
cannot be used - for example, when operating a computer
one-handed, or no hand, or PDA. The eye-tracking
version of Dasher allows an experienced user to write text
as fast as normal handwriting - 29 words per minute;
using a mouse, experienced users can write at 39 words
per minute. Future plans of dasher includes controlling
dasher by breath, buttons, tilt sensors, eye-trackers
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SAFA
Screen access for all (SAFA) [13] running on a windows
platform , is an open source initiative to develop a screen
reading software for the vision impaired persons to read
and write in their language of choice. Its goal is to have a
multi-lingual support on multiple platforms.
6. CDAC’s Efforts for accessibility
CDAC, Noida [3] has been working on various language
technology and open source projects for Indian languages
and these projects are steps in direction of providing
accessibility to a large polpulation in using the computer
system. The project of machine translation, speech
synthesis, OCR for Indian language can be utilized for
supporting accessibility for disabled and for preparing
training materials for them. Few projects were taken up
after critically analysing the cost factor of the products
available in the market, and their un-familiarity, out-of
context situation wrt indian scenario. These projects are
described here:
Sign Language Tutorial
Deaf and Dumb people need training for sign language.
Most of the tutorial available commercially are costly and
do not suit for Indian population due to language factor.
The designed sign language tutorial can help in
effectively teaching sign languages at one's own pace
from anywhere in the world. It makes extensive use of
pictures and description to make one understand how the
sign can be made. User can learn from alphabets to digits
to words and finally sentences. Teachers can use it as a
tool to enhance their teaching capability. The detailed
description along with each sign helps user to learn the
action easily. Registered users can add new entries or
update existing ones in the database. The tutorial caters to
three different level of users namely Beginners ,
Intermediate, Upload/Update. The application is
developed using JSP with mySQL database and runs on
Apache Tomcat server. It supports client-server
architecture, web-enable application and also can run as
an application on an independent PC.
Audio Desktop on Windows using SAPI
MS-SAPI provides a high-level interface between an
application and speech engines. It implements all the lowlevel details needed to control and manage the real-time
operations of various speech engines. The two basic types
of SAPI engines are text-to-speech (TTS) systems and
speech recognizers (a) TTS systems synthesize text
strings and files into spoken audio using synthetic voices
(b) Speech recognizers convert human spoken audio into
readable text strings and files.
Page:
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A transparent window(audio desktop) encompassing the
desktop tracks the mouse pointer and gives an audio
output (or speaks out) w.r.t. the current icon or item under
the rectangular preview of the mouse device. The system
works by trapping the mouse events and sending request
to SAPI for speaking / giving the information about the
current position of mouse and corresponding icons.
Educational Distribution of Linux with Indian
Language Interface
Gyanshrot , Linux operating system based on Debian was
developed with features like creating documents ,internet,
graphics and multi-media support etc developed in view
of educational needs of today’s schools. Gyanstrot is
localized in Hindi, with the entire application interface
being in Hindi. It has KDE based desktop manager. The
distribution was developed from scratch using linux
source files and with customization for Hindi support. A
number of educational tools were provided for
explanation of concept and experimentation at school
level. Figure 2 shows a screen shot of Gyanshrot.
Figure 2. A screen shot of GyanShrot
Enhancements proposed in BOSS Linux for
accessibility
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BOSS[1] is an operating system that has been developed
by CDAC with a major aim of supporting all Indian
Languages. CDAC Noida is acting as a primary resource
centre for BOSS project and is planning to work on
providing low cost Assistive Technology on BOSS. This
would provide low cost alternative to commercial
Assistive Technologies on proprietary platforms. BOSS
comes with screen reading tool, virtual keyboard and
magnification tool called Orca on the GNOME desktop.
These are primarily targeted to the visually impaired. The
Orca screen reader however is not context sensitive.
Attempts are being made to make it more context
sensitive and support more applications on the GNOME
desktop. Another attempt that would be made is for
accessing the entire GNOME desktop without the help of
mouse or keyboard. Applications would be added to
BOSS that could facilitate people with disability to access
other devices like TV and Radio and telephone through
BOSS OS. These augmentations would not be limited to
visual impairments alone but can also cover a large scope
of differently able people.
References:
[1] BOSS Linux website www.bosslinux.in [ Last accessed on
10.02.08]
[2] BarrierBreak Technologies www.barrierbreak.org [Last
accessed on 4.02.08]
[3] CDAC, Noida website www.cdacnoida.in [Last accessed
on 4.02.08]
[4] DASHER www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
accessed on 15.01.08]
[Last
[5] Disability India Resources http://www.disabilityindia.com/
[Last accessed on 15.01.08]
[6] Disability News and Information service www.dnis.org
[Last accessed on 4.02.08]
[7] Emacspeak project homepage emacspeak.sourceforge.net
[Last accessed on 15.01.08]
[8] GNOME project homepage
accessed on 10.01.08]
www.gnome.org
[Last
[9] KDE project homepage www.kde.org [Last accessed on
10.01.08]
[10] National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled
People www.ncpdep.org [Last accessed on 15.01.08]
[12] Rehabilitation Council of India www.rehabcouncil.nic.in
[Last accessed on 15.01.08]
[13] SAFA screen reader homepage safa.sourceforge.net/ [Last
accessed on 15.01.08]
[14] Sourceforge.net www.sourceforge.net[Last accessed on
04.01.08]
[15] UN Website www.un.org [Last accessed on 30.01.08]
[16] Universal
Design
Guidelines
www.tiresias.org/guidelines/cenisss/cenisss_7.htm
[Last
accessed on 15.01.08]
[17] WCAG 1.0 www.w3c.org [Last accessed on 6.02.08]
[18] Wikipedia
on
Assistive
technology
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology [Last accessed
on 06.02.08]
Mr P Govind Raj is currently
working as Project Engineer with
CDAC, Noida . His research
interest
includes
Ubiquitous
Computing, Information Security
and Open Source Systems. He has
been involved in development of
ABHIGYAN-a Live CD Version of
Linux with Indian language support.
He is coordinating the activities related to BOSS
GNU/Linux at CDAC, Noida.
E-mail: pgovindraj@cdacnoida.in
Mrs Sangeetha Jagannathan is B.E
(Computer
Science
and
engineering)
,Dip.Operations
Mgnt. . She has Seven and a half
years of working experience as
training
executive
in
Colt
computers Chennai, NIIT South
Campus Delhi which involved
training material development and
corporate delivery. Currently she is working as project
engineer at CDAC, Noida and pursuing my M.S in
Software Systems from BITS, pilani.
E-mail: sangeethajagannathan@cdacnoida.in
[11] ORCA Screen reader live.gnome.org/Orca [Last accessed
on 10.01.08]
125
Dr P R Gupta has more than 20 years
experience in academics and
research. She has M.Tech from IIT
Delhi and Ph.D. in Computer Sc &
Engg from KNIT, Sultanpur.
Presently, she is working as
Associate Professor at CDAC,
Noida. Her research interest include
Ubiquitous Computing, Artificial
Intelligence, Open Source Systems.
E-mail: poonamgupta@cdacnoida.in
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