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Successful Disability Advocacy at the World Summit on the Information Society (January 2004)

Compiled by the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Geneva hosted by the Swiss Government from 10 to 12 December 2003. The JSRPD interviewed Mr. Hiroshi Kawamura, Director, Department of Social Rehabilitation, Research Institute, National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities, who was a focal point for the disability family group of the Civil Society Bureau of WSIS. Hiroshi was instrumental in leading the initiative to put disability awareness in the official WSIS statement. Following is his report on the evolution of the principle documents of the WSIS, its final outcome and the "Global Forum on Disability" held during the Summit.

Accessibility of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT)

Picture of Mr. Kawamura at the WSISDuring a December 2001 Campaign Meeting of the Asian and Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities held in Viet Nam, Hiroshi called a meeting of ICT task force in his capacity as the leader, appointed by the region's Thematic Working Group on Disability-related Concerns (TWGDC), and proposed to hold an international ICT accessibility conference in Thailand. The goal was to attract the attention of the general public and Government to ICT accessibility at an early stage, as such awareness is essential as the ICT infrastructure is created in developing countries. The ICT Accessibility Seminar proved highly successful in raising this awareness through the sharing of accessibility guidelines in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

Getting involved in the process of WSIS

In May 2002 Hiroshi was invited to a seminar held by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Asian and Pacific Branch to address the need of people with disabilities. During a presentation by the ITU Secretariat, he learned of WSIS and decided to invite a representative from ITU to the proposed accessibility seminar, held in June 2002. The TWGDC, the Daisy Consortium, the W3C, the Thai Government and the Thai DAISY Consortium hosted the seminar, during which participants learned about the WSIS and developed a clear strategy to move beyond the Asian and Pacific region to a global arena. A declaration developed and adopted by the participants, and endorsed by TWGDC, was included into the action plan of the Biwako Millennium Framework of UNESCAP and this was brought to the Asian and Pacific Regional Preparatory Meeting for the WSIS held in Japan in January 2003. Hiroshi invited Mr. Monthian Buntan, Vice president of Thai Association for the Blind to take part in the regional preparatory meeting, who was the only blind person in attendance. Only one other participant was observed to have a disability, which leads to the conclusion that the WSIS preparatory process generally neglected the participation of people with disabilities.

Disability focal point within the WSIS

The first preparatory conference of the WSIS, PrepCom-1, was held in 2002, followed by PrepCom-2 in February 2003. PrepCom-2 required that participants be accredited, and fortunately the DAISY Consortium could become a sector B member of ITU. As a result, the DAISY Consortium was automatically accredited and was the only disability related organization at the PrepCom-2. The United Nations decided that the Civil Society should be recognized within the framework of WSIS, and a move was taken to bring in so-called family groups. These included the Gender caucus, regional and other groups, yet there was no proposal to set up a disability related family group. Hiroshi proposed to set up a family group on disability, which was endorsed by another participant and adopted. During the first group meeting during PrepCom-2, there were only three participants, one from Italy, one from Switzerland, and Hiroshi; no persons with a disability were present at PrepCom-2. From this small meeting, decisions were made to form guidelines for creating a disability focus group within the WSIS Civil Society Bureau, and Hiroshi, and the DAISY Consortium were selected as the focal point person and organization. This key development led to the first inclusion of people with disabilities in WSIS.

Achievement Intersessional

In July 2002, the intersessional meeting of the WSIS was held in Paris and hosted by UNESCO. By then it was very important for representatives from the World Blind Union (WBU) or the International Disability Alliance (IDA) to address disability issues and Hiroshi invited Ms. Kiki Nordstrom, President of WBU as well as Chairperson of IDA. Encouraged by Kiki's presentation, and followed by negotiation and lobbying, the Government of Thailand agreed to raise the issue of accessibility in an appropriate context in the Declaration of Principles. That was the first major achievement of the disability family in raising awareness during the preparatory process.

Set Backs and Awareness Raising

Hiroshi and Monthian attended PrepCom-3 in September, 2003, and both were surprised and outraged when they found that the most important disability-related paragraph in the conference document had been deleted completely. Disability specific content was completely eradicated from the text, replaced by words like "vulnerable" or "disadvantaged." Additionally, there was no understandable clarification why disabilities were deleted, while specific mentions of other groups of people such as young, children, women, and indigenous remained. They worked hard over the next two weeks to get disabilities back into the language of the document. In this context, there was general admission that disability is important, but no consensus on how to include disability specific language, and no conclusion was reached by the end of PrepCom-3.
From an overall perspective, WSIS was unable to reach consensus on two major issues, Internet governance and the North-South digital divide, specifically the so-called solidarity funding issue. These issues became fundamental deadlocks, and it became a real concern that Summit could not be held. If there is no major consensus, there is no value in holding a Summit, and as a result there were a lot of delicate diplomatic processes and negotiations. During this negotiation, Hiroshi created a printed appeal, raising awareness of disability issues and distributed it to almost all participants in the conference hall, raising the awareness of delegations on the importance of disability issues.

Real-time virtual international collaboration

A weeklong PrepCom-3-Additonal in November was held, during which they tried to get all disability specific language back. But something essential was missing and that was a basic principle of disability. After much thought and discussion, he talked with the government delegations and exchanged ideas with disability concerned people around the world through e-mails and mailing lists, made possible in real-time through the wireless networking in the conference room. As a result of this virtual, real-time group effort, a most important hint given by a comment from Professor Kate Seelman, Associate Dean of School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, who observed that the principle document did not touch upon universal design and assistive technology.

As a result, Hiroshi lobbied to include universal design and assistive technology in some appropriate context without specifically saying disability. He reasoned that by excluding specific mention of disability, those representing women, children, indigenous populations, and a long list of other groups, would not feel compelled to claim they should also be included. His strategy was to find the essence of the need in the context of ICT for people with disabilities and concluded that universal design and assistive technology would help people with disabilities. The government of Thailand took up this cause and put these phrases in the context of Declaration of Principles, with support by the Government of New Zealand. The Government of Mexico supported other amendments related to disability and the Mexican delegation clearly stated their support of such language on behalf of the disability caucus. Good relationships were built between governments and disability groups during this process. Finally, the final text of Declaration of Principles and Plan of Actions, including support for persons with disabilities, was approved by the WSIS in Geneva.

Global Forum on Disability

Hiroshi's effective role as focal point and efforts on the basic documents of WSIS were not his only achievements. He also was instrumental in organizing the Global Forum on Disability, an official event of WSIS held on December 12. It was well attended by 250 people from all over the world. Unlike the WSIS preparatory process, this forum solicited participation by people with disabilities and focused on ICT accessibility activities, best practice presentations, and ICT design for all. Working under severe time constraints, the Swiss organizer had just two months to raise funds to invite people with disabilities from developing countries and organize the Forum. Those attending were highly motivated to participate and give input to the Summit, and this led to a very successful event. A press conference was held and all individuals with disabilities who attended the forum were invited to participate in the half-hour event by the official organizer of the Summit. A video streaming archive of the press conference is available on the web..

The next phase of WSIS will be held in Tunis, in 2005 and the Declaration adopted by the forum, which specifies the right of people with disabilities, WSIS summit documents, and the Civil Society Declaration will give a very good foundation for ensuring persons with disabilities will be considered in the planning process. A key demonstration of information accessibility at WSIS was the initiative of Swiss Library for the Blind to produce 9000 CDROM copies of the summit documents in the DAISY format, in the six official UN languages. Included on the CDROM, was the AMIS playback, allowing the actual documents to be read through standard text on screen, human voice narration in each language, and large font on the screen or Braille. These combined efforts gave important input to WSIS and we look forward to seeing the positive results of influencing the government delegations across the world and other delegations to the Summit.