National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility

Minutes of the meeting on draft National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility held on August 17, 2009 in E-Governance Hall, 1st Floor, Electronics Niketan, CGO Complex, New Delhi.

1. The following participated:

DIT

1. Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT
2. Dr. Govind, Sr. Director, DIT
3. Dr. S.K. Aggarwal, Director, DIT
4. Ms. Tulika Pandey, Addl. Director, DIT (Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment)
5. Shri T.D. Dhariyal, Dy. Chief Commisioner (M&C), Min. Of Social Justice & Empowerment

NGOs

1. Shri Javed Abidi, Director, NCPEDP
2. Ms. Muthamma B. Devaya, NCPEDP
3. Ms. Shilpa Sawant, NCPEDP
4. Ms. Dorodi Sharma, NCPEDP
5. Shri Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet & Society
6. Ms. Nirmita, Centre for Internet & Society
7. Shri Rahul Gonsalves, Web Accessibility Consultant

MNCs

1. Shri Deepak Maheshwari, Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt.Ltd.
2. Shri Ibrahim Ahmad, Cyber Media India Ltd.
3. Ms. Ritu Ghosh, Sun Microsystems
4. Ms. Vikas Goswami, Microsoft
5. Shri Vijay Kapur, Microsoft
6. Miss Gitanjali, UN Solution Exchange
7. Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Barrier Break Technologies

ERNET

1. Shri B.B. Tiwari, ERNET India
2. Ms. Tejal Tiwari, ERNET India

NIC

1. Shri D.P. Misra, NIC
2. Shri Lokesh Joshi, NIC

CDAC

1. Shri Amit Srivastava, CDAC

2.        Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT chaired the meeting and welcomed all the participants and requested Shri Javed Abidi, Honorary Director, National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) to give an insight on how the draft policy got prepared.  He also mentioned that the Department has nominated Dr. Govind, Sr. Director in a committee constituted by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for reviewing the work of development of Disabled Friendly websites. 

3.1        Shri Abidi thanked the Ministry officials for their co-operation. He elaborated on how India has seen a paradigm shift from charity and welfare to rights and development in the past one decade. This is reflected in the Disability Act, 1995, the United Nations Convention for the Rights of UNCRPD and the XIth Five Year Plan. In fact, India was the 7th and the first most prominent country, to have ratified UNCRPD.  It truly reflects the commitment that the present Government has towards disability.  The XIth Five Year Plan has a full chapter on disability which mandates accessibility to information and communication.  The Plan has the approval of the Prime Minister and Planning Commission.

3.2        Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Director, Barrier Break Technologies presented the draft policy.  She began by saying that the basic premise on which the policy was drafted were:

• The Constitution of India
• United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disability (UNCRPD)
• The Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 

She mentioned that the draft policy takes into consideration accessibility to hardware and accessibility to user interface (websites and software). As far as content is concerned, it considers only the delivery of the content and not the content itself. 

3.3        Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan of Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) elaborated on the available policies on web and electronic accessibility in other countries. Countries like UK and Italy have made it mandatory for providers of public information and services to be accessible to persons with disabilities.  Other countries such as US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan have made the policies mandatory for Government and advisory for the private sector.

3.4        Dr. S.K. Aggarwal, Director, DIT raised a query in respect of coverage of the following 3 issues:

• How could the policy be made mandatory for private sector?
• Whether the policy making function in this regard is under the jurisdiction of the IT Ministry alone?
• What is the kind of model envisaged for R&D funding under the proposed policy?

He also opined that the draft of the policy needs to be refined, properly worded, made more crisp and coherent, repetitions to be deleted and paragraphs to be numbered.  

3.5        Shri Abidi responded by saying that all services available in the public domain should follow the policy and India should not look at the West anymore and should be a pioneer in this effort and policy should cover all sectors.  As far as jurisdiction is concerned, the XIth Five Year Plan clearly mandates that all Departments / Ministries must formulate detailed rules and guidelines / policies in their respective domain areas and ensure that not less than 3% of their funds are reserved for disability issues which can take care of funds required for R&D  also.  

3.6        Shri Sunil Abraham of CIS said that maybe instead of saying ‘private companies’, we could say ‘essential service providers and utilities services’. He further suggested that in order to make the policy more acceptable to a broader set of stakeholders, the phrase ‘open source’ could be deleted since the accessibility policy endorsed specific open standards like WCAG which would level the playing ground for bother proprietary and Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) vendors. Alternatively, he suggested that both proprietary and Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) could be mentioned.

3.7        Members said that there is a need to define clearly the hardware, software and user interfaces covered under the policy. Ms. Shilpi Kapoor and Ms. Nirmita Narasimhan gave examples of ATMs, mobile phones and even Set Top Boxes which would fall under hardware. Ms. Shilpi Kapoor also emphasized on making the issue of Universal Electronic Accessibility mandatory in the procurement process by various Ministries. She stated that most of these service providers have products which are compliant to accessible norms which they sell in Europe or America.  

3.8        Shri T.D. Dhariyal, Dy. Chief Commissioner, Dept. Of Disability, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment expressed his concern about how to make the technology accessible to all, including the poor.

3.9        Shri Vijay Kapur of Microsoft said that in order to have a comprehensive policy covering entire range of hardware products, representation of the electronics industry would be appropriate. It was felf that representation from Industry Association such as MAIT, TEMA, NASSCOM etc. may be obtained. Further he mentioned about inviting industry associations such as CII, FICCI, Asocham etc.

4.        As a next step towards finalising the policy, following committee was constituted: 

1. Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT
2. Representative from Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment
3. Shri Javed Abidi, Director, NCPEDP
4. Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Barrier Break Technologies
5. Smt. Neeta Verma, Sr. Technical Director, NIC
6. Shri Deepak Maheshwari, Director, Microsoft
7. Shri Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society
8. Representative from MAIT / NASSCOM / CII / FICCI / Asocham
9. Officer from E-Infrastructure Division, DIT - Convenor

It was proposed that the draft policy be finalised at the earliest for its approval by Government of India.

The meeting ended with vote of thanks to the Chair.