KEYNOTE SPEECH

ACCESSIBILITY TO THE INFORMATION SOCIETY - OUR RIGHT TO TAKE UP OUR FULL RESPONSIBILITY WITHIN SOCIETY

Andre Van Deventer

Distinguished guests, colleagues, participants and friends

When starting to plan this keynote address, I took some time to consider in what way I could share with you some of the practical problems and frustrations I as a deafblind person face regarding lack of access to information society while also delivering a message that will speak for all disabled persons no matter what type of disability they have.

As a deafblind person, I realise that I have a right to accessing the environment. However, I have always believed that rights also bring about responsibilities towards broader society.
As a person with a dual sensory disability, I have very often experienced some frustration because the fact that I found it difficult to access the environment made it very difficult if not impossible to make my contribution to broader society.

Information Technology is starting to play an increasingly important role in the way in which society functions. If a person cannot access such an important component of the world around him/her, it becomes more and more difficult to contribute to the broader community.
Some non-disabled persons seem to perceive disabled persons as only wanting rights and not being prepared to accept their responsibility within broader society. This is simply not true. As disabled persons, we feel that we can make just as an important contribution to the world around us. We have the same need to belong to a larger group that all other people have.

However, the inaccessibility of many aspects within society makes it more and more difficult to do this. As the complexity of the world around us grows, so disabled persons find themselves more and more excluded from the dynamics of a developing world, of which the Information Society is perhaps the most important part.

You may ask what is it that we as disabled persons expect from the Information Society when it comes to Accessibility. We as disabled persons have a right to accessibility, but we also have a right to contribute to the world around us. No one wants to be a burden to the community. We all want to contribute to a healthy society.

If disabled persons are excluded from such a fundamental part of society as information technology, it creates problems for the broader community as a whole. People are e.g. unable to make a living as they are not equipped with the necessary skills to enter the labour market. This means that they may become dependent on the larger community to care for them, thereby placing an unnecessary burden on this community whereas if accessibility to information technology was provided from the beginning, these particular individuals would have been able to contribute in a positive way to the broader society. Denying persons with disabilities proper access to information society therefore seems to be simply short-sighted in the long run.

In conclusion, the question can now be asked what we as disabled persons expect from this second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society?

I believe that we have the right to expect full accessibility to information technologies and other communication media, ensuring that we can all become full participants of broader society.

I thank you.