FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR
ENHANCED MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
04 SEPTEMBER 2014
16:30
WS 99
DIGITAL INCLUSION POLICIES FOR THE FORGOTTEN BILLION
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Please take place around the table.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Hi. Jerry, is that you? Did somebody just call in?
>> JERRY: Yes. Just letting you know I'm here.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Great. Thanks, Jerry.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Let's start. Good afternoon, everybody. Recording is on? Yeah. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Olivier, our local moderator on WS 99 ‑ Digital Inclusion Policies for the Forgotten One Billion Internet Users or Potential Users.
Gunela was supposed to be running this workshop; unfortunately, she is not here in person, but she will be co‑moderating with me from Australia and is available on the WebEx, so we will be hearing from her in a second. We have our guests who have joined us, and Gunela would be introducing them. And I guess the only thing to add before turning the floor to Gunela is to speak about a few of the house rules.
When you take the floor, could you please say your name before you speak, because obviously the transcript needs to be able to attribute what you are saying, and then also the other thing is, I think when Gunela will be introducing the panel members, I asked them kindly to put their hand up to be able to identify them. So thanks very much.
Gunela, I believe you are able to now make the introductions.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you very much, Olivier, and hello from Australia. I would have loved to have been there in person, but unfortunately something wouldn't allow me to do that. So we're going to have an interesting session with me remote from moderator, and Olivier. And I'm delighted Olivier has taken on the local rule of co‑moderator.
Without any further ado, I just wanted to talk about the aim of this workshop, and that's to discuss the role of disability and Internet Governance, remembering that one billion people globally have a disability.
We heard on Tuesday for some people who might have attended dynamic college and accessibility and disability in the G3 ICT workshop, and we had Andrea Saks who can elaborate on that. At that workshop, there were many important points about people with disability and accessibility that arrived from that quality, and we're going to treat that perspective.
So this workshop can use for evidence base to put a stake in the ground for the inclusion of disability in the multistakeholder debate on Internet Governance. It's a very small voice right now, and we need to see what we can do to increase the voice.
So we want to hear the best mechanisms to ensure that society and technical community processes. The disability voice is heard, and if we just remind ourselves about the United Nation convention on the rights of persons with disability under the general obligation point for 4.3, it actually states that state's parties shall closely consult with an active involved persons with disabilities through their representative organisation. With this Plus 10, there is also very clear wording about the overall vulnerability people have, including people with disability in being part of the shaping of the Information Society.
So we have here a panel, and I would like to introduce the panel members. And, let's see. I see you as very small figures in the cyber form, but I think I can recognize you. So, this is just in a random order, and not in the order you're seated. Let me just go through and introduce you.
Markus Krummer, Senior Vice President of the Internet Society. Thank you. Now I know you actually are there.
And Andrea Saks, Coordinator of Disability.
Olivier is the Frequency of ICANN and Chair. Thank you.
And Satish, who is the Director of the Internet, Director of Presource Software.
We also have the remote panelist for the Web Initiative in the W3C office.
Andy Peake was unable to be with us at the last statement and suggested a statement with the order which, unfortunately, I don't think it is a good idea, but I wanted to mention his name.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: FantastiCREPIN‑LEBLOND Okay.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: All right. Great. And I also want to note we have Deirdre Williams as the remote moderator. All of us remotely participating from a various parts of the world.
I think, then, it is time to hear from each panelist, and just for a few minutes, about their perspective on disability inclusive policies from their own organisation or their own perspective, and I'll start in the order that I started introductions.
So, Markus, over to you, please.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that, Gunela. It is nice connecting with you, even though you're far away.
Yes, I am not an expert on these issues, but I have recognized early on how important they are, and how important it is to make the technology and to make use of all the standard stuff that exists to enable people with disabilities to access the Internet.
We have always worked very closely with the dynamic college when I was at the IGF secretariat time for accessibility for people with disabilities and I'm very happy to be sitting next to AndreASTBRINK She always chase me up to make sure we live up to her expectations and we are not always able to do so, I know that. But I think it is important that you keep pushing.
Now basically my point is that we really try to our upmost bring this to the attention of the broader community and yes, we have a nice people here in the room but it's a relatively big room and it is not very full. It is a shame that more people aren't here. But, so, my basic question would be how do we take it back to the centre stage?
We have very successful in Sharmen el Shiek, when we had this main session on this issue, it was very well prepared, excellent presentations and I think we ought to be thinking again bringing this issue to centre stage. Not everybody is aware of the importance and also not every organisation that deals in the Internet sphere is actually living up to high standards.
I have tried very hard to push my organisation to Internet Society to revamp their website to make it compatible with the highest possible standards. There are such standards. It is not rocket science ‑‑ sorry. Sorry. My apologies. Okay.
Is that better? Yes. It is not rocket science, but it needs a will and it needs a constant will to really make sure that the website is always living up to high standards to make it possible for people with disabilities to access the website.
One thought that occurred to me, and this is essentially I thought something that applies to all of the dynamic coalitions. We have started the IGF, there were those that wanted working groups that were having a continuous process, but that didn't fly. There were many opposed to that kind of initiative because they didn't want to have anything that looked like an organisation. I saw the IGF as a platform for one annual meeting, so we allowed dynamic coalitions to immerge and they did immerge and some of them did actually very good work and I think your dynamic college is an example of a dynamic college that did excellent work but it was always outside the main structure of the meeting and we could never discuss in the broad sense of the IGF how to bring the dynamic coalitions in the fold and how to find the process that finds the endorsements of the entire community.
We tried in Sharmen el Shiek but it worked to a point at most due to chairman ship who could have sort of pushed more for a community buy in and I think this is something which we ought to be doing for the other dynamic college. Some of them have been working for years and produced guidelines, papers, whatever, but then they have never brought them back to the broader community and this is something I think we ought to consider that we really, that these are not just your guidelines and papers but they are really accepted by the broad IGF inner main setting and I don't think there is any controversy about that. I think most participants would agree that this is important, but we have to go through the motion and go through the process.
I think I'll leave it at that and I will listen to the other presentations and there will be more to the point and come back as needed. Thank you for your attention.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Markus.
Over to you, Gunela.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Markus, I think you're right. A number of important points that we will probably discuss a little bit later in the platform.
So we've move on to our next candidate and that will be Andrea Saks. Thank you. I think that is appropriate to ask the work from Markus.
>> ANDREA SAKS: Am I loud enough? Markus has put it on top of my laptop.
I want to thank you, Markus Krummer, of my recognition of my group and also myself personally.
It has been a very difficult long, hard fight to get certain things done and then to see them go backwards is very heartbreaking. It is funny you mentioned S‑h‑a‑r‑m‑e‑n e‑l, separate word, S‑h‑i‑e‑KUMMER I help captioners when I can, because it is impossible to know how to spell everything, but being a dyslexic I can't spell anything.
What I want to say is that we have been trying for since we were allowed to be created to advice the IGF and mark cuss listened and a lot of times I think the secretariat does listen but extenuating circumstances interferon making things accessible for persons with disabilities to actually participate.
There are several issues. By the way, I did see Nirmina from Egypt. I just told her she and her Country did the best accessibility IGF that ever was. And Shada Burza was there. They covered up a ramp with a cloth to make that decorative but people make funny mistakes because they are not trained.
Staff that the work and volunteers and interns have to be trained and since they change every year and you don't have a continuity, we have to do something about institutionalize go different techniques and different plans of action for making it, this I'm talking about physically accessible, web accessibility, alternate format accessibility, testing of rooms so that persons who cannot use WebEx, and I'm really not trying to name and shame them. Adobe has the same problem. Go to meeting has the same problem of not being able to have blind people independently access remote participation, and also registration problems. We forgot to mention todd capta is a technique that verifies that you are not a robot. Well, I can't hear very well sometimes, and I can't ‑‑ I'm dyslexic and I'm stuffed when I try and use capta sometimes, and my problem isn't that bad, but we have to find alternate ways of communication between persons with disabilities who wish to attend IGF and participate and the response back from IGF.
And we have to get the MAG on board. The MAG doesn't really, in my opinion, understand. And at the time when we did that wonderful panel when Markus was the secretariat one of the bigger subjects of that day was multilingualism and getting Arabic on the weBABU So everybody has different priorities and the problem also is that the young people here don't realize that the work we're doing in the dynamic coalition is probably going to help them when they get to be as old as I am. I mean, I'm here, if you can see me, I have pretty gray hair and I've gotten it by doing this job and I'm finding I have what we call age related disabilities. A lot of the people here today in Turkey and the Turkish people and everybody here has been absolutely wonderful, but the building doesn't have to be kissed. The building is a nightmare. Because of the fact that I can't do stairs and neither can Judy Oketi who is sitting here who has been in many, many IGFs with me and ‑‑ well, she is a part of DICAT. We have become very familiar with the kitchen staff as we wander through after taking the elevator and a lot of people didn't know that existed. But it's so hard to get that elevator that we didn't tell the able body people that that was there. That shouldn't be. We need to have mapping. We need to have a situation where people who have a disability can find the elevators, where everybody can find the elevators. Where everybody can have signage where they know where to go, where this there are people who are well marked personally as guides. There are so many things that need to be institutionalized and that's why we wrote the guidelines in D I cad and we have been promised that they is can be presented now that they've been closing on in closing plenary. I am telling you in front of you Markus. I have sent it to Shen and he knows I can probably do that and I'm hoping it is not probably, because I'm going to stamp my feet if I can't have that, but he said I could, and I want host countries to open up their wallets and understand that they have to provide for persons with disabilities and IGF has to have more money given to it by countries for accessibility to train staff.
Am I going over my five minutes, because I can do that? Okay. I get the feeling. I can sort of feel a chairman's vibration. I want to close and say everybody that I have worked with in IGF has always had a good heart in wanting to do things external problems or as I say holding IGF to ran so many over finance is always has been a problem. So, we need to educate the MAG, we need to educate everyone and make every time we have a plenary have a speaker that knows about accessibility to keep it in the forefront.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, AndreASTBRINK
Back to you, Gunela.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thanks very much Andrea, and you have a lot of important practical issues that we hope can be addressed in future.
I also remember the idea in Sharmen el Shiek and it was a number of different disability workshops and the inclusion was very good.
I would like to now move on to OlivierCrepin‑Leblon and give us a perspective from ICANN and look at some of those issues. Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Gunela. It is Olivier speaking.
At the very moment, it is not that these rosy or wonderful that in a lot of work that has been done in redoing websites and the accessibility of all of the material which is presented by ICANN, capacity building material, et cetera was not done from day one from its core inception as being one that could be accessible for anyone that has disabilities. So there certainly is an enormous amount of work to be done in there.
If you don't quite know how ICANN works, it has a staff component that there to support the community but any policy or any programme development is actually done by the community.
The ICANN organisation is divided into this set of supporting organisations that have very focused mind and therefore work only as far as Country code domains, generic domains, all of the workings of the naming and the addressing space.
And then it has serve advisory committees and one of those committees is the at large advisory committee that brings fort the interests of the Internet users. The difference about at large is it is able to comment on everything and anything at ICANN and a group of people and at large have recently formed a special specific ad hoc work group on disability issues and accessibility issues, which is something that we felt was very important to put together because of the very discussion we're having here.
And this group has met a number of occasions has had conference calls. The way we work is really face to face during the three ICANN meetings that take place throughout the year, but mostly through conference calls, through using virtual tools, virtual desktops, and of course the conference calls take place using either the phone or using the online desktop.
There is definitely an enormous amount of work needed to bring those conferencing facilities and make them compliant I think is the first thing.
There is certainly work done by the providers of these facilities but in many cases this just seems to be an add‑on and not something that, again, is in the DNA of the programme itself, the software, et ceterASTBRINK And therefore, anyone with disability might have not the same experience as someone who would fully participate.
So there is some work to be done in that. We've spoken earlier about the accessibility in meetings, another very, very difficult topic because not only are ICANN meetings very large, but they also have to rotate throughout the world. We have five regions, so not all regions take these issues as seriously as other regions and often you are really looking down to local laws regarding these issues, accessibility. We have seen the multiplication of staircases in this building in some countries there would need to be easier access made possible.
With regards to the working groups work, it is an open working group. At large is an open community so we don't actually ask for people to buy membership or do anything like that. I'm sure I know that the chairs of the working group are currently or the chair of the working is group is currently online and might wish to at some point ask or add to what I've just been saying. The working group is very active and currently focusing on many of the different issues that we're faced with in a worldwide sense.
So that is a quick summary of what we're doing. At the beginning, this is again at an large initiative. It is an ad hoc working group. We are looking forward to transform this into a standing working group and to actually extend this to across communicate tight working group so that other parts of ICANN, perhaps the government advisory committee, perhaps the standing organisations, the ones that do the work also start subscribing to, well focus on work that would bring more people with disabilities to take direct part in the work of ICANN.
I know that there are, and I was mentioning this a little bit earlier. There are I would say a handful of individuals that are able to take part, physically, in the ICANN meetings that have some kind of problem to can able to access the meetings, et ceterASTBRINK Generally this has been not a huge barrier but it certainly has not been easy and this is something that we really need to put into the ICANN search for facilities when they run meetings but also when they actually have to contract with software manufacturers when they decide on what type of conference facilities and remote facilities they make use of.
We are very diverse in the at large community. We span, as I said the five regions. We have also the language barrier and so, so the conference calls are also for the most of them interpreted in Spanish and French. We also have Russian interpretation on that. So we're not just looking at a purely Anglo‑Saxon perspective and we generally accept people from all around the world. That's all I can say for the time being, and I might be corrected or more added on as I said by the chairs of the working group. Thank you.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you, Olivier. Certainly you have covered off a lot of areas where there can be further work and it is exciting to hear that some of that may happen. The key to maybe hear from Cheryl Langdoon, the chair of disability software a little bit later on when we have our discussion.
At this age I would like to move along to Shadi Abou‑Zahra why web accessibility affects everything when it comes to accessibility and participation of disability representative it has a key role to play and one that people always think about first when they think about accessibility. So I'm looking forward to hearing from Shadi about the WC3 and the various accessibilities in this form.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Shadi is joining us remotely. Do we have Shadi on the line?
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: I think that Shadi has dropped out. He was initially on the line, so maybe he will be coming bacKUMMER
I will instead move on to Satish BABU, who is an expert in open software, and looking forward to hearing from Satish both about the role of open software and maybe some thoughts about the Indian perspective on accessibility.
Thank you.
>> SATISH BABU: Thank you, Gunela. Satish Babu, for the record.
I work in India and work in the domain of free and open software and in this case I will be touching upon some of the things that we do on the technology front, but before that, very quick round of up of the situation in India.
This last month we had the Asia‑Pacific regional IGF and we did have a session on accessibility and some of the points that I'm speaking are coming from there.
In India a percentage of the population we have about 120 million disabled. I was looking at Wikipedia there are only 11 countries larger than that. We have a very large population of disabled. Disability in India is compounded by several other factors, for example poverty and lack of livelihood, lack of education, lack of awareness about rights, the digital divide itself, and the fact that this is also a point that came through in the regional IGF, that when we talk about bringing in or including the next, in this case the forgotten billion, each of the next million is more tough because you're talking about people who have not been exposed who are probably poorer. So as we cover more and more millions in this billion, we're talking about more and more difficulties in covering them. And when you talk about the disabled in that context, it is even, perhaps, worse, and therefore, the need for inclusion.
Now, the way we've been, in fact, since so many people have been mentioning Sharmen el‑Sheikh, and I joined the dynamic coalition at that point, and we have been working with the disabled using software on certain aspect. Ordinarily the work was on screen readers so that the visually impaired could use systems and all the work that we done is an open source. It has been rolled out at the provence level as of anything ‑‑ it's a free software that people could download and use from their homes or from their offices, wherever. These days the work has gone on for tools for autistic children a bunch of tools that are working on the tablets and smart phones. One of our parts have been focused on vibration based outputs. This is for the deaf, blind people. In fact the phone starts vibrate anything Morris code when an SMS comes in.
But simple things are still outdate. For example the use of an ATM to withdraw money. In Indian context it is not easy for a visually challenged person to use an ATM because these interfaces are not really in place.
There is some work being done on those.
Another innovative area where software has been applied, I don't know whether this counts as disabilities. This is for palliative care. There is a mode being done on mapping, the people who are in the terminal stages of various illness so they can be covered, this is perhaps particularly not disability but we would like to talk about it as disabled.
Now coming to the inclusion aspect, there is one super power that is coming out as a great enabler for disabled people and this is programming, the skill of programming. In India there are increasing number of programmers who are blind. One of the people who are contributing to a bunch of programs in my own organisation is totally blind and he drives a team of about 20 people under him.
Now, he has, of course, learned the hard way, but he now is coming back and saying I can help train more and more people. Not only to give them employment in the kind of exploding IT industry in India, but also we have seen them this gives them a great deal of self worth. A feeling of self worth.
So this is something that we have to pursue and now we are entering an age where even school children are going to be taught programming. So we can't exclude the disabled from that.
Then we have talked about several other things. Sign language. Now, sign language there is no automated mechanism that a deaf person can use for sign language, so IGF, we can't bring everybody here. People have to use the existing remote participation methodologies, but these are quite limited. It is limited even for people, so you can imagine the situation for disabled. Things like closed captions and audio magazines and so on there are several things I don't want to pick time on this, I would like to highlight one aspect of immerging technology, which is the internationalized domain names, IDNs. IDNs a welcome step because people would like to compute in their own language.
Unfortunately ID ms use the tool for the blind especially because this software cannot understand all unicode scrips. When you open up IDMs they can intercrypt and then the screen is going to choke on that and that will enter the url basically unusable. So this is a point that needs more worKUMMER
I think I will stop here because I've taken too much time. Thank you very much.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Satish.
Over to you Gunela, just the remote participation flag is up at the moment. Should we take the questions at the end after our panelists have spoken?
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: I think there are quite a few questions, so we only have, well, a couple of more speakers and, so, if we can hear from them first and then we will answer all the questions and hopefully after that we'll have some time for general discussion.
So I would like to now introduce a great and ask her to speaKUMMER Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Great.
>> GRACE: My name is Grace, from the Kenya ICT Action Network.
As you were told in the beginning of this session, I was really not meant to be a speaker, but Adam Peake, who was actually supposed to speak, could not make it and just requested me to come in and fill for him. So you may find some of my comments probably too broad, but he also did give me one point that I need to highlight. I want to ‑‑ the promise of my comments is that we all need to know that we can become marginalized any day or we can become physically challenged any time of the day. I have had friends who at one point are okay, then they get into an accident and the next day they fall into that other category of people with disability. So for me I know it's really a fluid situation and anybody, particularly if you use a car or you travel on a plane, you can actually join that category very easily, and therefore, it's something that we need to always thinKUMMER
And having traveled a couple of times with Judy, I have thought a lot about it because we have been at airports that do not have wheelchair out of the plane and sometimes she has had to be lifted. Sometimes I ask myself if she as alone and I was not here, at least to keep the conversation going, you know it can be ‑‑ it can get very lonely.
But I've also had a discussion with one lawyer who is a friend of mine and he's also visually challenged and he tells me you people walk in policies but when you walk in policies you never remember us. So he says for example you keep inviting me to meetings. Sometimes I don't know where that place is and I have to get somebody to come and bring me along. And when that person comes t first thing you ask, who is going to ‑‑ and I think that is really a policy issue. When we knew Judy is coming to a meeting like this at least Judy is able to walk in a walking she can support but there are those in wheelchairs so who pushes them when they come to such meetings and I think that needs to be in a policy issue.
For me, there are challenges that need to be addressed if we are going to have a digital inclusive society and points that require efforts or a digital inclusion as strategy. And, of course, one of them is the whole issue of access. And I will not belabor on to that, because other people have spoken about access, so it is even access to infrastructure, access to resources, access to information. And not just any information, but information that is useful to these people.
For example, a game ‑‑ my friend who is visually impaired tells me he looks forward to a day when he will sit and listen to a radio programme that reads for him his favorite book or favorite author. And, you know, those are some of things that we have to consider.
Now, inclusiveness of also share groups, again, it is not people with just ‑‑ it is not just people with disabilities but we talk of gender. And even indigenous people also marginalized.
Someone's microphone is off. Someone's computer is on, and it is Shadi.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: So Shadi is on.
>> GRACE: I want to give a point that Adam would have spoken about. Most of you know that during the NETmundial process one of the things that was criticized was the whole fact that the drafting took too long. However, that drafting did come with an advantage because at that point on the conventions with the rights of persons with disabilities was included. It was not included in the earlier draft. And therefore, most of the NETmundial had been opened and people had responded well in publiCREPIN‑LEBLOND Interest to know only in this last minute and part of that process that many of you negatively that people with disabilities were recognized in the document. As such the opening statement on human rights and shared values was actually amended to read, and I will quote the way it is, rights that people have online must also be protected ‑‑ rights that people have off line must also be protected online in accordance with international human rights legal obligation, including the international covenants on civil and political rights and economic social and cultural rights.
So this really was an afterthought in the last minute inclusion and therefore if we are going to come up with a strategy digital inclusion strategy, this really must end.
Also, Adam notes that the word along the side of accuracy building tone sure opportunity for participation and the know‑how and effective participation. As such, finances must be thought about. What I say if inviting Judy to this meeting, she is alone and needs support think of also supporting the other person who will be pushing her around. People have been kind, they do that. If you're going to invite somebody who is visually impaired, think of who will show him around. If it is a building that has no rail or area they can use, let somebody be act to direct them that this is an escalator. Support mechanisms must be provided.
To just wind up I want to say that ICTs can have a very positive impact on people who are marginalized or people with disabilities. And they the ability to access services and opportunities. And therefore to participate fully in public life. A digital inclusion strategy must there for take into consideration that technology itself and the content and services made available by ICTs must also be accessible to those with disabilities and have a very clear provision and mechanism on how this should be achieved.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Grace.
Over to you, Gunela.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you very much, Grace. You spoke some of important points. It is good to hear about the NETmundial process. I think the reminder for us all that we're not talking about people's disability as a group over there. We are talking about everyone. We're talking about everyone has the potential to have a disability. We are getting older so we're working on something that will benefit all of us in one way or another, so I think it has been an important point.
Now, Shadi Abou‑Zahra, he had a computer disaster, but he has managed to get back online and we look forward to hearing from him about the initiatives of the accessibility.
>> SHADI ABOU‑ZAHRA: My computer crashed, and it's a very good example how technology is great when it works.
So my name is Shadi Abou‑Zahra, with accessibility relationships of the world, so we're a technical standard value and we focus on the technical standard much more than on policies, but I hope I'm not ‑‑ but I think one of the main issues from my perspective is the participation and involvement of people of disabilities. Whether talking about the forgot ton billion. And this applies throughout. It applies through developing the standards and the technology and having involvement and participation in there. It also applies to the policy making and actually throughout society. I think it is very common in societies where people's disabilities are non visible and removed, actually, from participation in society tee that their needs are less well addressed society is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, as long as of course they're not ‑‑ we are all not as involved in par notice pit tore active it too that our needs are less addressed.
I would also like to pick up on what Gunela was just saying about how our needs can benefit everyone and I think we need to look at that especially when we think about cost and benefits. If you think about cost we also have to think about the benefits. I think the IGF has set another good example where I think, I recall that at the beginning the captioning was being provided for people with hearing disabilities, and we were really asking for it but I think it had change gained so much popularity for people speaking different languages or people participating remotely that it is great to see that all sessions are now being captioned and can be followed online using a control mobile device to follow the transcript online and if you can't listen to the audio because are you underground or whatever in an environment where you can't follow the audio.
So this is a great example of how accessibility of benefits of society as a whole. Making people aware of that, making organisations and we have to start with ourselves in the IGF industry. Our own organisation of how much involvement we have regardless if there is technical bodies or policy making bodies or NGOs or whatever it is, and how well are they represented overall at the IGF and beyond when we go back again to our national bodies and our local community.
That would be really my pitch for how to achieve more awareness and more integration of the forgotten billion.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Shadi.
Over to Gunela.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you very much, Shadi. I think you had so many points as the crux of this workshop when it comes to involvement of people with disability in the quality making processes.
I neglected to say at the start when I introduced the panelists that we are fortunate to have sitting in the audience Bashkar from Bangladesh, and we are keen to hear his thoughts. I know he has expertise and a number of policy bodies. So can a microphone be given to Bashkar.
>> BASHKAR: Thank you very much. I am Bashkar (Indiscernable) from Bangladesh.
The visibility of policy making is really bringing a change. We can give you an example of our Country. Because of a new disability rights which is completely designed and composed and drafted by the people with disability. Disabilities organisations and our involvement was there. There is a sections have included, that is the ICT accessibility in the disability rights Act 2000 13 and you will be very glad to know that because of our involvement the government have just for the first time in the history of Bangladesh all the textbooks new converted in the daisy standard. That means people can read it by text. Digital books, digital brain, unicode text, et ceterASTBRINK You can see because of the people with people with disabilities it is just improving.
Yes, we are getting Garmen to have a position to make documents, government documents, in unicode supported, as we have 11 open source reading soft air called NBDA.
Another point you can say, IGF. First time I am here, maybe last time, because I am see very less participants in IGF. If you count the persons it is less than 1.1 something, 00 something, we are not finding many people with disabilities. In this workshop we are not getting all the participants. It's a big room but I'm not sure how many people we are here. This is the biggest mainstream go agenda I see for development work people's disabilities is not that much. We are seeing very few and in this IGF is another example. We just today, I have attended two sessions on disabilities, and this is the only things I have found, but any other discussions panel list we didn't see the people of disabilities presence. So by these workshops we must have to have a commitment in advocacy the next IGF and organizers that there will be more participants and attendance and speakers from the disability community because we don't want to see all the conference of persons with disabilities will be held by their own accessibility will be ensuring the disability conference not like that. We want to be part of the society. We want to be mainstream and definitely we want our access in the IGF types activities which are mainstream go work and also we want to see us in the ICT development. The biggest challenge is the access. Access and Internet and access information, is biggest challenge and we have tools that is the convention of right with persons with disabilities and many of the companies already verify so we node to get this convention more work full for the people with disabilities. And we people with disabilities want to get involved in the policy level discussion. Thank you very much.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much.
Over to you, Gunela.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you very much. I think you hit the note on the head with a number of points there regarding participation. I anticipate that in the main session yesterday about access for development and I don't want this to end and it was purposes go the marginalizing group women. There was really very limited discussion about people with disability.
I raise a question. We had some good interrelations from UNESCO, but really do we want to see panelists as part of our main session? These are the sort of questions I think we need to address and we have some time, well I think we only have half an hour or so left. We've had some very, very good points made by our panelists, but I think for the last half an hour if we can tether work on improving participation by people with disability in Civil Society discussions and in technical community discussions.
So I will leave now to Olivier as if local co‑moderator to continue that discussion. I know there are lots of questions from the remote participants and we will have to see how many we can handle. I think will was one about a question about having a Turkish disability organisation. I can say that the panel with people with disabilities. The league head IGF workshop did have a representative from the Turkish blind organisation and he provided some very important information about activities. I think if we can concentrate on some of those main thoughts to improve participation of people with disability in Internet Governance Forum, I will leave it there and bring it over to Olivier. Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you. It's Olivier. Unbeknownst to you, just outside the field of vision of both cameras, we have been joined by Judy Oketi from Kenya who is a MAG member and would be able to share a few of her experiences as a Mag member in the organisation of the Internet Governance Forum. And then afterwards we'll move over to questions and I'll ask the remote participation moderator to start and of course people around the room could put their hand up in order to have either a flying mic or they can then come to the table and asks the questions on the table
Of course my colleagues at the table here are very welcome to jump in at any moment
Judy, over to you.
The microphone just unplugged itself. Okay. That happens. There we go. We're back on. Go ahead Judy.
>> JUDY OKETI: Thank you very much. I have been in the MAG now, this is my third year. My last year. It has been a wonderful experience. But in the three years I don't think there was a particular discussion concerning persons with disability within the MAG. I think whenever I do a request for funding it's always just looked at like the other participants the way they send in their application. I'm not sure why it has been given preference when I comes to disability or whether the person is disabled or not.
Whenever I attend the meetings, I remember Sharmen el‑Sheikh. Very good it has been good with the MAG meetings when it comes to the tans port from the hotel to the meetings that is out of their hands you have to hope when they are making their reservations if they say they have an accessible room that will be the case. And then probably it is something that we may need to look into as we renew the 2015 MAG whether we will have a special seat within the MAG for persons with disability or whether that is a proposal that can be placed across to make sure that in every MAG there is a person ‑‑ there is a person representing persons with disabilities.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much for this, Judy.
Andrea Saks wanted to comment on this.
Andrea.
>> ANDREA SAKS: Before I went back into accessibility I owned a travel agency four about four years. I took a break in a way. It is possible if IGF assigns someone to deal with, and it's normal in event planning, with accommodation and with an emphasis on accessibility and works with the host to be able to actually inspect if it done in advance. Now it should become a normal part. Now that is not exactly written that way in the guidelines and we can expand it when we revamp them over the next year, but that is not impossible.
And I think that one of the things, because you're the horror story which I won't go into that you told about this accommodation this time is appalling. I think that goes into the guidelines again that we have prepared, that we have a task force within IGF for just that sort of logistic as well as checking the venue and that it goes into the host agreement that the host agreement has to be sure that what they advice on hotels and stuff is actually authentic and has been checked. It is one of the aspects that was in the guidelines and so I wanted to say that to you.
And I will work on that one. Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Andrea.
We'll continue with Markus, and then the lady across.
Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Yes. Thanks to all the panelists. Thank you, Judy.
The one thing I think that is important is you need to have advocates. Sometimes things don't happen not because people don't mean well but because they just don't think about it. I can assure you when I was still secretariat and I am sure Jane has the same thing, do I know this time it I was not able to go to turkey often enough on planning issues but I do remember that we did receive hotels and checked are they accessible. But again it is not maybe ‑‑ we didn't have the checklist. We have that now. That is why this work is important and your suggestion for instance to make sure that there is always a person with disabilities on the MAG is actually a very good suggestion because we do need advocacy from within to know what is needed. And as I said, the guidelines I think will be very helpful in this regard.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thanks very much, Markus. We're on a flow.
Would the lady across the table, if you could, please, introduce yourself and then we go to remote participation questions. I know there are quite a few that are stacking up at the moment.
Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE. Hi everyone. My name is (Indiscernable). I am working with Sweden, the Swedish agency and yeah, we've been engaged these questions for many years, but obviously my specific section is I'm working with ICT for development and I wonder if you have any concrete examples or suggestions how a donor should engage in these questions?
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Okay. Thank you. That is a question. I will let our panel members mull on this and go over to remote participation, and then there are more questions and we will see if we can answer that.
Thank you.
>> REMOTE MODULATOR: We have two questions from Glenn McNight. The first is addressed to Andrea Saks.
Is there a conference sample guide to make sessions more accessible? We must have best practice.
And the second question is addressed to Satish BABU. What low cost for technologies have been developed that improve lives of the disabled?
Are those two enough to be going on with?
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Deirde.
Well, let's put Satish and work backwards from there.
>> SATISH BABU: Satish for the record. Several tools have been ‑‑ in India everything has to low cost to ensure optic. In the kind of work that I'm doing personally there has been the development of screen reader called ORCA which exist as on open product. It got to be kind of fine tuned and extended for the Indian conditions and that has been done to great extent it is being used currently. Further work is also going on in that.
Then we have developed software for training autistic children and either the off take has been quite surprising even for us because the parents of the children are now coming back to us and saying these are actually tools to re‑engage these children.
From another part of the Country, Aroon, who normally attends these meetings of dynamic coalition here, he is not able to make it this time. Aroon Steam has been developing a bunch of tools some he has exhibited in the daily IGF also. If you are interested in more details I can provide them by Email. Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Satish.
For the other question I'm going to turn over to Andrea Saks the question is there a guide to make sessions more accessible.
>> ANDREA SAKS: No, there are several. In the guidelines that we compiled over the last year and finished off in the last few days which will be submitted to the ‑‑ what is the group? It is the ‑‑ Markus, help me. I'm not going to do it in the plenary. I'm going to do it.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Main session.
>> ANDREA SAKS: Going over what happened, and it will be used an output document.
We put that guideline the lest of other websites that did document that did explain how they did this, but I have another expert here by the name of Franchesca who is vice president of GCIPCT with whom I work quite closely who organizes events in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the federal commissions commission and I just told her in sign language, which that she didn't understand, that she was going to say something about that, because she has checklists and she has worked very hard on helping me and also on making accessible events happen.
May I turn that chairman over to Franchesca.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: You're very welcome to.
>> FRANCHESCA: Thank you for the opportunity to speak about these.
Yes, we have been organizing an annual meeting now it has become in Washington, D.C. called the enabling summit and it is a meeting on mobile technology for persons with disabilities and senior citizens and yes, we do have developed accessibility guidelines, if you will, for our meetings, and desire of the standard practices and best practices and good practices that we collected also looking at other accessibility meetings because there are a number of them.
I would say a different part of the world in the U.S. definitely there are some established meetings annual conferences like SISTAN at the University of California on accessible technologies or ITAA which is the assist tech technology administration annual meetings so all those meetings have in place best practices and we ‑‑ ourself, we have implemented some of those and we have been using also first of all we have been implementing accessibility services that include technology, because there are solutions available and sometimes they are low cost solutions. For example we have mapping of our conference venue which is done using GPS assistance or some other tools we use. For example, a hearing AIDS in each conference room. This is something that I haven't seen in this conference in particular. We have video remote interpretations as well available for the duration of the conference. And of course, we have implemented an accessibility services desk which provides volunteers, so we have cited the guides, for example that help during the meetings to facilitate movements between one room and the other for example. So all this kind of either low tech or high tech as you may want has been instituted nationalized in a way for our conference.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Franchesca.
Andrea, you wish to add?
>> ANDREA SAKS: Just want to say, without Franchesca's help and her experience in adding bits and pieces to the guidelines, we were working till 1:30 the other night because we got input from many people who wanted to see things put in there.
She even mentioned the fact that there has to be a watering area for guide dogs and accommodation to take care of their other needs
I hadn't thought of that. There are loads and loads of things that we have to think about, so I'm sorry, it is not simple.
This guideline that we have created is an ongoing work in progress, so it will change as we find out.
An international facilities are not all the same and the United States is fortunate that it has the American disabilities act which really does put a great emphasis on the law saying you have to do it and that's not true in other countries.
I hope that helps. Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thanks very much, Andrea, for this.
Now we're going back to the question from Sweden and the question, if I remind all of our panelists here, hopefully they will have an answer, is I'm working for ICT for ‑‑ with ICT for development and I wonder, do you have any concrete examples of suggestions? How a donor could engage in these questions.
So, Satish.
>> SATISH BABU: Some of the work I mentioned, which includes development of tools, including a full stack of the operating system, Linux and the tools that I mentioned earlier the screen tudors, these are been funded by Netherlands based funding agency. So these tools are something that requires funding support because they didn't have a model for development of these tools.
Another area you might want to consider funding support would be development of resources which are for example textbooks, training material, and some training software which would allow ‑‑ which are basically false multipliers that would allow these technologies to get a better outreach.
Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Satish. Next we have to answer that question.
Vaskar.
>> VASKAR: I would like to give some of the example about the technology how is it going. We are not talking about the local technology, we are talking about the free and open source technology which can be more helpful for the people with disabilities. We are working together in India and Bangladesh to free up the MBDA software which is we are developing for the one Country and same time it is useful for the South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India, and being added, et ceterASTBRINK
Also seeing some more example like whenever we are getting the technology, there is always changing. Like the technology is changing. So we need to always double up in activities for further improvement. That is the one challenge, new technology is coming and now like Andrea it is always a challenge.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you. Now we have Gunela who is joining us remotely.
Gunela, you have the floor.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you. I wanted to answer the question from Satish. It relates to activities in Australia, but I'm actually concrete an initiative so I know a little about how it operates.
In the Australian government there has been a programme called disability through development. At this is through the Australian organisation. This might is changed recently with funding, but the idea was that any general age package should include some impact on people with disability. So every project needed to say something when they say disability. I was able to work with disability if it has been disaster, education, whatever. If you slip what we want to achieve from this workshop is to involve people with disability in the mainstream and, so, that type of disability inclusive development agenda might be something that we can talk to Peter about. I hope that is helpful.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Gunela. I'm going to first check if there are any additional questions with remote participation and then otherwise I'll turn the floor over to the gentleman at the table.
Deirdre?
There seems to be a technical problem, then we can go over to the gentleman to the table first. Oh, goodness. Five people jump, and a mic is in your hand.
Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE: What I had the marker up for was an offer to share information about tour wrist Um and disability, but perhaps since ‑‑ do it now?
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: We can come back to this, then, afterwards just before closing the session.
The gentleman at the table please introduce yourself. So this corner seems to have not worked either. The flying mic will come flying to you.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I am Kazi. So I Have just two or three points that I wanted to reflect is any Country like India where also mentioned the number of disability people the challenge in terms of our digital inclusion has been of course because the whole ICT domain in Dinah has been emerging as of now. That policy is only ten years down the line that the policies have been framed. For the whole national focus, but of course when there is a national focus on ICT certainly disability is a priority certainly not on the priority list because the government looks into it in terms of infrastructure and excess connectivity and all. Start with those priorities of digital infrastructure connecting access for the millions of people. But certainly this domain, of course, falls within the ministry of social justice and empowerment that we have in India also.
Again, what of course I come from a not for profit organisation that we are also, this whole advocacy issues on digital inclusion. We have a programme on digital minorities that we have been setting up for the last two years. Which includes the disabled population focus on the property on those technology and based practices. We also highlighting those minorities and those tribal communities and all. Those are out of this whole digital mainstreaming, keeping the larger picture in mind.
But coming back to the civil population. Of course what we are doing is this month after we go back from IGF we have a national programme on sharing of best practices from the users point of view of disabled people, disabled organisations. We have two ways of programming reorganizing on the 9th and 10th of September this month.
So these are the best practices in the Country from the users point of view because most we talked about digital inclusion on disabled population it is more about technology and solutions when we talk, this is good, this is bad ask things like that. So we are also looking at it from the user's perspective what are the digital tools and what is required, what is already done in terms of accessibility what is an affordability point of view. Of course, I can share other things and the report and best practice from this programme that is coming up.
Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much. Indeed it would be very helpful to have those links. Perhaps you could send them over to the organizer, Gunela Astbrink, and would be able to include those in the report and any further comments or questions.
I think we have time tore one more comment. We have another eight or so minutes. Go ahead.
>> AUDIENCE: I'm Scesh from Internet Society.
While other countries, especially the government countries work on web accessibility, the same task in India might require a different approach or an expanded work while accessibility groups work on digital accessibility, which is one of the tasks, you could also work ‑‑ we could also work on using the Internet to create awareness about general accessibility which is very basic in IndiASTBRINK So like even the train stations don't have a disability engineering, so, so accessibility of the work and while you need government and other people to work on this, you could also emphasize the basic accessibility issues. This will be a peculiar day of working in IndiASTBRINK Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Scesh.
We have Gunela Astbrink remotely.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: I just want to ask a question. This is probably to Markus Kummer in regard to the newly formed IGF support organisation I gather that that organisation stands a bit covering a lot of different issues, but I did hear that it could be some funding support, there could be some capacity training of participants and I was just wondering if maybe this could be considered in regard to some of the issues that we have raised at this session in regard to involvement of people with disability and Internet Governance?
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you, Gunela.
Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: I have listened and taken note. We will have our first meeting of the executive committee tomorrow. As we said, we are not here to compete with the IGF trust fund, we will be complimentary and we will be here to step in and also form the activities of the secretariat might not be able to fund. So this is definitely an issue we can consider, and Sheing from the secretariat is a non‑voting member on the executive committee so we insure that we have is a seamless coordination. But thank you for the suggestion and I will bring up the question.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you for this, Markus.
So we only have five minutes remaining in this session. I know that Gunela was going to wrap up a quick summary of what we've been hearing today, but I was asking if a few of the panel members whether they wish to say a few words and so Andrea Saks will be wrapping up.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Andrea: Just with a couple of comments. I recently attended world telecommunications development conference in Dubai this year and dealing with India specifically because one of the bigger problems with persons with disabilities and getting online and being able to function since a lot of the governments do put a lot of their functions online is literacy. We've included that in question 20.
The ITU has ‑‑ the ITU de‑sector the development sector going into communicating on many aspects from rural to disability for broadband inclusion and one of the biggest problems of course is developing world should we call it that. Is that broadband is not available and with broadband people can get online when some of these other smaller or bigger problems, depending on your view have been solved. So I would like to encourage the gentleman who just spoke to perhaps get in touch with me to maybe participate also in the ITUD, and also to join me in the joint coordination activity on accessibility in human actors at the ITU which I also chair. So if it's technical, I would like to have your help.
Thank you.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Andrea.
Gunela, over to you for a summary, and then we will probably have to close after that.
>> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Thank you, Olivier. Thank you to everyone. I think this session has covered so many different topics on accessibility
We have heard from a representatives from international organisation, we have heard from NGOs, we have heard from people with disability and what is happening in different countries. Really there were so many issues, but not enough time to cover them. I'm not sure of the how many people in the room but we had remote indicating an interest in the topic and I also I think probably some point people weren't actually able to physically be at the IGF even though they wanted to.
So where do we go from here? We would like very much to see some progress and there is a number of things that can be done. Certainly we work on data is very important in the IGF the accessibility meeting guidelines. That is a very practical way forward and we process the suggestion about having a MAG member reflecting disability will be on growing.
We look forward to getting MAG complete back from the IGF support organisation. If there is some support for disability involvement, and the list goes on, there is a number of other things.
In sharing information, I think that can be very valuable and I think it makes best that we need to have more of these sessions in IGF, but we also need to remember that we have a number of different Internet Governance Forums and we need to ensure various disability involvement in them and it becomes natural. For example, if there are policies developed say within ISOC or ICANN just to look at the disability treatise. If no, fine, if yes how can we go towards that. And it might be we're looking at copyright and people say, well, why is copy writing important in the disability phase?
It is incredibly important when it comes to access to books. The Emeritus treaty last year, there was a big invitation for people handicap disability to be able to have access to books for the same for people who are doing the books, if they buy a book.
I want to finish off to say there is a lot more work to be done and hopefully with everything we have put together in this workshop we can move forward and we can continue this discussion in the various forums that we've been asked to attend.
Thank you so much to the panelists for all their effort input, to the remote moderator, and to the participants both in the room and the participants remotely. I think this has been a valuable workshop. Thank you very much everyone.
>> OLIVIER CREPIN‑LEBLOND: Thank you very much, Gunela, Satish, Andrea Saks, Satish Babu, Vascharge and Judy Oketi.
It has been a very interesting session for someone that stepped in at the last moment, and not knowing much about the whole topic, I think the only time when I've actually had been effected was on a time when I broke my leg once skiing, But it certainly is something that able‑body people don't really think about as much as they should, because we are dealing here with a forgotten one billion people. That's one billion people we should not forget about. So thanks, everybody, for coming here.
Thanks to the people around the world, including, I think, Armen, Portugal, for this we can't say good afternoon, we can only say good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.
This session is adjourned. Thank you.
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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