A Perspective on ICT Accessibility in Developing Countries

The first G3ict Global Forum on March 26, 2007 at UN Headquarters in New York

Dipendra Manocha
Asst. Project Manager
DAISY for All project
Director DFA Regional Resource Centre - India

All standards on ICT Accessibility such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Digital Accessible Information System are based on the presumption that persons with sensory impairments use access technology such as screen reading software to access the digital content. Many of the access technologies depend heavily on some basic technology tools such as text to speech engine or the OCR software. For example, Screen reading software or the text reading machines are not possible without both these technologies. Similarly the access to a PC for persons who cannot use their hands is not possible without speech recognition software. All these three technologies are not available for most of the languages of developing countries. Thus, even with adherence to WCAG Guidelines for language like Urdu, accessibility still remains a dream for Urdu Speaking persons.

Cost of the technology and ICT services is another very big problem in outreach of the ICT tools. The cost of living and earnings in developing countries are 1 tenth in comparison to the developed countries. How ever, the IT tools cost less in developed countries than what they cost in developing countries.

There also is lack of awareness on identification of real gaps to develop solutions locally for ICT accessibility and access technology.

The DAISY for All project is introducing the benefit of DAISY Standards in developing countries. The project is not only providing equipments and training to produce accessible contents, it is backed up by a software development team which helps in local language adaptation of tools used for production and playback of the digital content. The project has developed regional resource centers in developing countries and has trained local resource persons who have developed low cost and highly effective solutions locally. The software being developed under the project is in the open source domain and easily adaptable in any language. It has increased networking among organizations on the issue of ICT accessibility which is bringing the basic knowledge on critical development issues. For example, many organizations have been spending resources in developing screen reading systems for local languages. With DFA's intervention, it has been made clear that existing open source screen reading software are capable to adapt to any language without any configuration or customization if SAPI compliant speech engine is available. Thus now the concentration and focus of development in countries like Srilanka and Pakistan has been shifted to development of TTS engine rather than spending resources on development on complete systems.

The DFA Project concentrates in empowerment of local resource persons and human resources for implementation and development of ICT accessibility. To see more details on DAISY Consortium, visit: http://www.daisy.org/. To know more about DAISY For All Project, visit the web site http://www.daisy-for-all.org/.