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Accessible Multimedia for Empowerment of Persons with Print Disabilities

Hiroshi Kawamura
United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development Strategy Council
DAISY Consortium representative for WSIS hkawa@attglobal.net

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.
Please allow me to begin with the greatest natural disaster in the Century, Indian Ocean Tsunami 2004.

We lost at least 230,000 people in Asia and African countries that included 2,448 foreign tourists in Thailand from other countries.Note 1

There are Tsunami Early Warning System development initiatives that deploy cutting edge ICT. However, warning need to be accepted by individuals at risk.

In Tunis 2005, a session on disaster preparedness of persons with disabilities was organized as one of the WSIS Summit Events. Note 2

While MDG does not have specific language on disability concerned issues, the most significant achievement of WSIS from disability perspectives is the fact that WSIS has clearly identified disability concerned digital divide as one of the key issues, and that development of universal design concept in combination with assistive technologies for digital opportunities is clearly stipulated in the plan of actions. Note 3

This spirit of WSIS was successfully reflected in the process of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,Note 4CRPD in short, the first human rights convention adopted by the UN in this Century, which refers natural disasters in its article 11.

Article 11. Situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies
States Parties shall take, in accordance with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.

On 11-12 January 2007 in Phuket, Thailand, the DAISY Consortium and Thai organizers held an international conference on Tsunami Preparedness of Persons with DisabilitiesNote 5to follow-up the WSIS.

The conference adopted the following declaration. Note 6

Phuket declaration on Tsunami Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities
We, participants of the International Conference on Tsunami Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities, assembled on the eleventh and twelfth of January 2007, at Royal Phuket City Hotel, Phuket, Thailand, declare that:
Tsunami disasters can be prevented through:
  1. sharing of knowledge and best practices on Tsunami and other disasters,
  2. strong commitment and active participation for contribution of all stakeholders including in particular persons with disabilities to eliminate the loss of lives,
  3. local community-based initiatives for disaster preparedness and
  4. infrastructure building including Tsunami early warning system at all levels to disseminate timely disaster warning to all people concerned,
  5. Building of disability friendly infrastructure addressing accessibility issues in all phases of disaster management.

In a knowledge-based society, ICT development, which includes assistive technologies and universal design concept, will contribute to the success of disaster preparedness development that will meet the diverse needs of all people including those of persons with disabilities and other vulnerable people including women, children, old people, cultural minorities, tourists, etc. in the community.

Such ICT development should be based on internationally-recognized standards that are open, non-proprietary, and have proven track record of accessibility.

In commemoration of the Asian Tsunami 2004 and in support of WSIS action plan, Hyogo Frame Work of Action and Tampere Convention, we recommend that:

  1. An educational/training center on Tsunami and other disaster preparedness should be established. All aspects of such center, including physical infrastructure and training materials, should be inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities.
  2. All stake holders should follow the principles of WSIS and UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to implement effective preparedness for Tsunami and other disasters.

The Phuket declaration shows the state-of-the-art of the role of ICT to tackle the Digital Divide.

In Urakawa, Hokkaido, Japan, encouraged by the Phuket Declaration and the CRPD and threatened by actual Tsunami warning, a group of persons with psychiatric disabilities conducted a successful Tsunami evacuation training in a winter evening in collaboration with the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities Research Institute.

The core of training methods was the use of manual in the format of Digital Accessible Information System,Note 7,DAISY in short, which has been developed by the DAISY Consortium based around the W3C open standards. DAISY is an open, non-proprietary, inter-operable standard for presentation of synchronized text, audio and graphics developed by the DAISY Consortium. In the United States, DAISY is known as ANSI/NISO Z39.86-200X.

I would like to present a short demonstration of DAISY sample contents on Tsunami. (A brief demonstration of DAISY multimedia contents was conducted.)

Since DAISY is well established free of charge international open standards of accessible multimedia, variety of authoring tools and playback systems including open source resources are available. In particular for languages and cultures without writing scripts, DAISY is excellent tool to record and publish in their own language with excellent navigation methods including table of contents.

In addition to Tsunami Disaster prevention for those who have print disabilities, the DAISY for All ProjectNote 8is seeking collaborators to develop HIV/AIDS concerned resources for those who require accessible and easy to understand materials so that they may prevent HIV/AIDS and that, for HIV/AIDS victims, they may successfully participate in the social life.

On behalf of the DAISY Consortium, I am looking forward to further collaboration with all stake holders concerned in particular in developing areas of the world.

Thank you very much for your attention.