Accessibility standards development and UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Sylvia Caras
President, People Who
http://www.peoplewho.org/

My name is Sylvia Caras. I live near the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz, California, and spend a lot of my time connected to the internet. For perspective, there are 54 million pwd in Latin America, 25 million in Brazil (14.5%), 4 million in California.

And everywhere, access issues for most left out groups are similar - insufficient resources for participation on an equal basis. For People Who cope with mood swings, fear, voices and visions, electronic accessibility means inclusion in the knowledge society - access to information and communication tools - just like everyone else.

Communication rights are a set of positive rights that go beyond the right to free speech. They include a right to access to media, and education to be able to communicate to others and to the broader society. Communication rights provide knowledge, and knowledge fuels the capacity to act.

Shame has made it hard for people with psychosocial disabilities to find each other and many of us are as poor as others here, so the technology is important to us for connecting and for organizing.

Some users and survivors also benefit from accessibility accommodations required for others, some of us are overloaded by web pages that are too busy, some of us are more comfortable with technology mediating our exchanges with each other and with carers, some are relieved to have the chance to pause before speaking or typing, ...

Flattening knowledge hierarchies and free-flowing information helps us too. When psychosocial disability is diagnosed as a medical disease, information often stops with guidance about medication. Usually it takes finding each other, and now using the technologies, to learn there are broader understandings, and other causes, and other ways to self-manage.

Last week here in Rio I visited two projects of the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology - C D I. CDI promotes social inclusion by using ICT as a citizens' rights and development tool, mobilizing excluded segments of society and helping to transform their reality. CDI joins with strong local groups, identifies the local challenge and uses technology to meet it. There are 94 projects, seven in mental health, two at psychiatric hospitals. I went to Pinel Psychiatric Hospital. The goal is to motivate, to show that people with psychiatric disabilities can learn, that access to knowledge is important. The emphasis is to lower any barriers to community participation and seed molecular size revolutions.

In addition to this excellent example, and the work of the G3ict,

We can model for all of civil society in this information society process, the success of the International Disability Caucus in shaping the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

We can further the spread of justice and social equality through the
universali zation of access to knowledge. My goal is that all People Who ..., all people with disabilities, all people, shall be computer literate, and have access to hardware, connectivity, information, and each other.

I'm excited to be here and to be part of the information society.

People Who;
People Who is a U S 501 (c) (3) organization incorporated in California.
People Who is accredited to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and to the Ad Hoc Committee for the Comprehensive and Integral International Convention to Promote and Protect the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities