Centre for Internet and Society

Apps can give personal information to strangers

praskrishna — 2016-08-08T01:22:20Z

We love our apps. A study done last year, found that app usage in India has grown 131 per cent. But apps are notorious for accessing personal data and we’re obligingly careless with our privacy. Inadvertently, users give away third-parties access to their phone calls and right to operate cameras on their mobiles.

The article by Mebin John was published in the New Indian Express on August 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Therefore, they can listen in to conversations and click photos as and when it pleases them.

“The detailed privacy policy of most of these apps run into pages and people rarely read through them,” says Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society. “The policy is also loaded with tech jargon, which is lost on the general public.”

A study, done in June this year by Norton, reveals that one in two Indians have permitted access to their contacts and mobile data in exchange for free applications. Forty per cent have allowed access to their camera and browsing history, and 50 per cent given permission to send promotional text/emails.

A mobile application developer in Bengaluru, who wishes to remain anonymous, says, “App developers collect personal information of individuals and make a massive database. They then sell this data base to marketing agencies.” A database of 5 crore people pays `5,000 and this is sold over and over again.

Many application developers claim that they make large databases with the help of applications. “I have a database with email IDs of 2.5 lakh people,” says another app developer of the data he mined from one app.

Chief Technology Officer at T.I.G.E.R Innovations and Publicize Bengaluru, Geo Joy, says: “It is true that we can track an individual’s personal conversations and activities using mobile applications. I’ve heard that many applications scoop details from phone conversations for marketing purposes.”

“If you are not paying for anything, then you are the product,” Abraham puts it succinctly.

According to him, with access to your conversations or GPS, a third party could monitor your activities. It can get more specifid: with data from GPS, accelerometer and gyroscope, a developer can read your driving pattern.

Laws here are easy on developers too. Elonnai Hickok, a researcher from CIS, says, “Apart from Section 43A of the Information Technology Act, we don't have any strict laws or enforcement agencies to monitor these applications that breach the privacy of an individual.”

In India, since we don’t have a statutory body to monitor applications and their privacy violations, experts suggest individuals exercise caution.

CTO Joy suggests upgrading your operating systems. “Latest versions of all operating systems will warn you when an external medium tries to track your information,” he says. “So people who use the older versions should switch to the latest one or upgrade the software.

CE picks five permissions and how they could be misused.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/apps-can-give-personal-information-to-strangers

After eight years, Tulu Wikipedia goes live

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T10:34:21Z

Around eight years after its launch and in incubation, the Tulu Wikipedia has gone live with over 1,000 articles. It can be accessed at http://tcy.wikipedia.org

The article by Raviprasad Kamila was published in the Hindu on August 7, 2016

Katherine Maher, executive director, Wikimedia Foundation, USA, made the announcement at the three-day Wikiconference India 2016, which began at Chandigarh on Friday.

U.B. Pavanaja, program manager, Indian Languages, The Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru, one of the mentors of the Tulu Wikipedia told The Hindu that the page has about 1,100 articles.

“There are about 200 registered users (editors), out of which around 100 have more than 10 edits. On an average, there are about 8 to 10 active editors,” he said, adding that Vishwanatha Badikana, a Kannada professor, followed by Bharatesha Alasandemajalu, an engineer, are the highest contributors.

Mr. Pavanaja said that a series of workshops and editathons in Mangaluru and Udupi helped its growth. “A live Tulu Wikipedia will help bring pressure on the government to include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of Indian Constitution,” he said. If the page is to be active, between five and 10 articles would have to be uploaded and at least 15 editors will have to edit it on a monthly basis, he added.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindu-raviprasad-kamila-august-7-2016-after-eight-years-tulu-wikipedia-goes-live

India's 23rd regional Wikipedia, in Tulu, goes live

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T10:31:21Z

The Tulu Wikipedia has just gone live, giving another boost to yet another ancient Indian language otherwise struggling to keep up with the times and speedily changing technology.

Originally published by IANS, it was mirrored by Business Standard on August 6, 2016.

The news was announced by two key community organisers on Saturday who helped to make an eight-year-dream come true. Dr Vishwanatha Badikana, a PhD in Kannada literature in Mangalore (Karnataka) and Bharathesha, a mechanical engineer based in Muscat, announced this while attending Wikiconference India 2016, India's second national Wikipedia meet in half a decade being held here this weekend.

Tulu is a language spoken by around two million native speakers mainly in southwest Karnataka and in Kasaragod district, Kerala. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. Some scholars suggest Tulu is among the earliest Dravidian languages with its roots going back some 2000 years.

Wikipedia itself is available in 22 Indian languages, with Tulu becoming the 23rd. There are another one-and-half dozen Indian language Wikipedias in the incubator stage at present. Not all languages have an active wiki community.

Located at tcy.wikipdia.org, the Tulu Wikipedia has been in "incubation" since 2008. This term is used to describe such online collaborately-crafted encyclopedias which are still waiting to to go "live" or active and come online.

Around 2014, it was reactivated. Following some meetings and workshops, the concept was also showcased that year at a "World Tulu Conference" stall in December of that year.

After much work, some 1,100 articles (or 1,050 if one could ignore those which are not redirects) went live. There are currently about 100 editors who have made over 10 edits each.

"Dr Vishwanatha and Bharathesha are the number one and number two contributors," said Dr UB Panavaja, a former scientist and techie and long-term supporter of Kannada computing. Pavanaja currently looks after the CMR (Creating Movement Resources) of the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society which works with some language groups to promote their Wikipedia presence.

"After we became live, we will import articles from the 'incubator' site, build the 'village pump', set up policies, administration structure, info boxes and templates," said Pavanaja, describing the tools that any new Wikipedia needs to set up.

Scholars like the nineteenth missionary-linguist Bishop Robert Caldwell have called this language "peculiar and very interesting". According to him, "Tulu is one of the most highly developed languages of the Dravidian family. It looks as if it had been cultivated for its own sake."

The language has a lot of written literature and a rich oral literature such as the Epic of Siri, according to the Wikipedia itself.

In coastal Karnataka, both the Mangalore and Udupi areas today allow the language as an optional third-language in local schools.

This role in schooling makes it all the more mandatory to create encyclopaedic texts in the language, say its Wikipedia promoters. Mangalore University also has a Tulu language chair while St Aloysius's Radio Sarang community radio station broadcasts daily in this tiny language and the local All India Radio also broadcasts in the language.

Some five Kannada language representatives and one from Tulu are presently in Mohali-Chandigarh attending Wikiconference India 2016.

Indian Wikipedias include Assamese, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Newari, Odia, Pali, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, besides, now, Tulu.

(Frederick Noronha can be contacted at fredericknoronha1@gmail.com)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/business-standard-august-6-2016-india-23-regional-wikipedia-in-tulu-goes-live

Why experts are worried about Aadhaar-based authentication

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T02:16:29Z

As private companies are increasingly using Aadhaar data, is the privacy and security of personal data really at risk? What do those defending Aadhaar have to say?

The post was published in Citizen Matters on August 2, 2016. Amber Sinha was quoted.

The Unique Identification numbers of Aadhaar card holders are being extensively used by government and private agencies for authentication purposes, as we have already seen in an earlier article.

There are 246 registered Authentication User Agencies in India, both government and private, which are helping organisations and individuals in executing the authentication process. In simple terms, they help the organisation that has placed the authentication request, to confirm the identity of a person during hiring, lending loans or while implementing welfare schemes.

But all does not seem well with the Aadhaar authentication process. Concerns have been raised about the privacy and security aspects and, loopholes in the law.

The amended Aadhaar Bill (now, Aadhaar Act) has a clause that allows the UIDAI to respond to any authentication query “with a positive, negative or any other appropriate response.” This move has drawn a lot of criticism from the activist fraternity. They have questioned the government on framing an Act that places the security and privacy of individual citizens at risk.

Even before the Bill was passed, legal scholar Usha Ramanathan had, in an article published in Scroll.in, expressed concern over private agencies using the Aadhaar database for authenticating the identity of an individual.

“Very little was heard about the interest private companies would have in this information data base. It is not until the 2016 Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha that we were told, expressly, that just about any person or company may draw on the Aadhaar system for its purposes. There are no qualifications or limits on who may use it and why. It depends on the willingness of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which is undertaking the project, to let them become a part of the Aadhaar system,” she wrote.

What’s crucial in the entire process is how the government is allowing private players to use Aadhaar-based information, putting the privacy of Aadhaar-holders at stake. The government is technically allowed to share the Aadhaar information with other agencies, only if the holder has given consent to sharing his information, during enrollment.

The guidelines for recording Aadhaar demographic data states: “Ask resident’s consent to whether it is alright with the resident if the information captured is shared with other organisations for the purpose of welfare services including financial services. Select appropriate circle to capture residents response as - Yes/No.”

In 2011, Citizen Matters had published a report on how people wanting to register for Aadhaar were not asked if they would agree to share their personal information. Citizens seemingly were unaware of the provision for sharing information with a third party and data operators had reportedly not asked them for their consent before marking ‘yes’ for the consent option.

There remains a regulatory vacuum

In less than four months of the enactment of the Aadhaar Act, the number of private agencies using Aadhaar database for identity authentication too has grown long. Amber Sinha, Programme Officer at the Center for Internet and Society expresses concern over the privacy implications that a project of this magnitude would lead to.

“The original idea of Aadhaar was to use it for providing services under welfare schemes. But the Aadhaar Act lets private agencies avail the Aadhaar authentication service. The scope of the Act itself doesn’t envisage sharing the data with private parties, but if any third party wants to authenticate the identity of an individual, they can use the UIDAI repository for the purpose,” he points out.

In the process, Amber says, the CIDR has to send a reply in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ format, for any request seeking to confirm the identity of an individual. The new legislation gives scope for the authorities to respond to a query with a positive, negative or any other appropriate response.

“The Aadhaar enrollment information includes demographic and biometric details. So at this stage, we do not know what that “other appropriate response” stands for. Further, while there are requirements to take the data subject’s consent under the Act, there is lack of clarity on the oversight mechanisms and control mechanisms in place when a private party collects information for authentication. The UIDAI is yet to frame the rules and the rules will probably determine this. Until the rules are framed, some of the issues will exist in regulatory vacuum,” Amber observes.

Under the current circumstances, Amber says, the responsible thing to do for UIDAI is not to make such services available until the rules are framed.

But why has the Authority then started the authentication process even before the rules have been framed? Assistant Director General of the Authentication and Application Division of UIDAI, Ajai Chandra says the rules when framed will have retrospective effect, from the date the Act was enacted.

Activists have also questioned the UIDAI for allowing private agencies to use and authenticate Aadhaar data, when the Supreme Court has restricted the use of Aadhaar. In its last order dated 15 October 2015, the Apex Court allowed the government to use Aadhaar in implementing selective welfare schemes such as PDS, LPG distribution, MGNREGS, pension schemes, PMJDY and EPFO. It makes no mention about the UIDAI using the Aadhaar data repository to provide services to private agencies.

“When the Supreme Court has restricted the use of Aadhaar number to a few specific government programmes only, how can UIDAI allow the data to be used for any other programmes, let alone by private agencies?” Amber asks.

In a very brief conversation, Reena Saha, Additional DG, UIDAI told Citizen Matters that UIDAI was acting as per the Supreme Court’s order dated October 15th. “We aren’t sharing the data with private agencies,” she said.

‘Authentication happening only with consent’

Srikanth Nadhamuni, CEO of Khosla Labs - a registered Authentication User Agency, who was also the Head of Technologies at UIDAI, rejects the accusations on the security aspect, saying that the authentication system is completely secure and foolproof.

“We have made a secure system so that there is no man in the middle taking the biometric information. The biometric information shared on the application is encrypted and neither the AUA nor the Authentication Service Agency (an intermediary between the AUA and the CIDR) can open it. Both the AUA and ASA will sign on the packet and forward it to the data repository as it is. There is no way that we can figure out what is inside the packet. Once the request reaches the data repository, they will unlock the signatures, run the authentication and reply in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or with an error code,” Srikanth explains.

ADG Chandra says that at present the CIDR is replying to authentication requests in an “yes/no” format. “We aren’t sharing the data with any agencies. Upon receiving the request for authentication, be it demographic, biometric or one time pin (OTP), a notification is sent to the registered mobile / email address of the Aadhaar holder,” he says. So if the Aadhaar holder has changed the address, phone number, email ID etc after Aadhaar enrollment, he/she should update the data with UIDAI by placing a request online or through post. This will avoid any confusion that may occur during the authentication.

Ajai Chandra further clarifies, “the private agencies seeking authentication (the Authentication User Agency) are not given direct access to the database. On receiving the request, the intermediary Authentication Service Agencies first examine the format of the authentication request. The request is forwarded to the CIDR only if it complies with the format.”

Apart from authentication, the eKYC (Know Your Customer) option also allows companies to retrieve eKYC data of the Aadhaar holder. This data includes photo, name, address, gender and date of birth (excludes mobile number and email ID). But in this case too, “eKYC data can be retrieved only with the consent of the Aadhaar card holder, the person has to be adequately informed about the retrieval and the data cannot be shared with a third party,” says Chandra.

Though Aadhaar Act allows the UIDAI to perform authentication of Aadhaar number, subject to the requesting entity paying the fee, UIDAI at present is providing the service free of cost. “We will provide free service till December 2016 and may levy the fee thereafter,” the ADG says.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bangalore-citizen-matters-august-2-2016-akshatha-why-experts-are-worried-about-aadhaar-based-authentication

Tulu Wikipedia Goes 'Live'

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T01:41:56Z

Tulu Wikipedia became live on August 5, 2016. CIS-A2K took making of Tulu Wikipedia live as one of its activity in 2014. The efforts bore fruit and Tulu Wikipedia is live now.

CIS-A2K team is thankful to all the volunteers who contributed to Tulu Wikipedia and helping it see the light of the day. We would specifically thank Dr. Vishwanatha Badikana and Bharathesha Alasandemajalu who have contributed with the most edit counts and at present are participating in the WIkiconference India.

Tulu Wikipedia page here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/tulu-wikipedia-goes-live

WikiConference India 2016

praskrishna — 2016-08-07T01:35:50Z

WikiConference India 2016 is an event to provide a common platform for all Wikimedians in India to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange useful tips, best practices and other information. The Conference is open for participation of Wikimedians from all nations, and will be taking place on the 5th, 6th, and 7th of August 2016 at Chandigarh.

The Conference has a very distinct Indian flavor and deals primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The main objective is to reduce the gap between different communities and get help from other community members on technical issues and other things like best practices in decision making and how we resolve the disputes in the community.

Guests

Katherine Maher, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Nataliia Tymkiv, Board Member, Wikimedia Foundation
Asaf Bartov, Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities, Wikimedia Foundation
Runa Bhattacharjee, Manager, Language Engineering Team (International), Wikimedia Foundation
Dr. Surjit Patar, Punjabi poet and writer
Tighe Flanagan, Senior Manager, Wikipedia Education Program, Wikimedia Foundation
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society
Yohann Varun Thomas, President, Wikimedia India
María Kreuz, Communications and Outreach Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation

Social Media Campaign

Facebook event page - https://www.facebook.com/events/146258892472025/ (More suited for conference participants only)
Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/WikiConferenceIndia2016
Facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikiConferenceIndia2016/
Official Twitter Handler - https://twitter.com/WikiConIndia
IRC Channel - #wikiconferenceindia

More Info, click here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/wikiconference-india-2016

An India Where the Disabled have a Choice

praskrishna — 2016-08-06T17:06:38Z

The Roundtable on Digital Access to the Disabled held in Bangalore brought forward many issues related to the topic. Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society speaks to Dr. Archana Verma about the problems faced by the disabled while using technology. Being herself partially visually impaired, this is an interview from an expert as well as the personal experiences of a person from the disabled group.

This interview was published in Dataquest on August 5, 2016.

Q-Please throw some light on the issue of the inaccessibility of mobile apps to the disabled, since these have become essential for independent living today.

While mobile apps are fast becoming the preferred and often the only way to access services, these remain unavailable to a large section of the Indian population living with disabilities. This is because they are not designed in a way which conforms to standards of accessibility and cannot be used by persons using assistive technologies such as screen readers. Apps such as Ola, Uber, Big Basket, Make my trip, Flipkart, Myntra and most others are not completely accessible. The inaccessibility varies from total inaccessibility, where the screen reader remains absolutely silent and is unable to give any information to the user opening the app, to partially inaccessible, disallowing persons using screen readers from accessing complete information or from completing transactions. For instance, if one opens Flipkart, one hears a button labelled home page banner and then the screen reader just keeps saying button for whatever is pressed, without being able to give any information on what the buttons are for or what is written there. Similarly, if one opens Myntra, one doesn’t hear any information at all, just a series of clicks, at one point one hears buttons labelled for man, for women, for kids and then when one presses any of those, one is again greeted by complete silence. The Big Basket app also has problems such as unlabelled buttons and fields and makes it difficult to carry out transactions such as changing the quantity, changing the address etc.

It is rather sad that the IT industry fails to realise that persons with disabilities, a group which is the world’s largest minority and account for a very large percentage of our population can potentially be amongst the biggest consumers of these ICT products and services. Consider before the advent of technology, a blind person could not read mainstream books and newspapers, work in routine office environments, shop alone or pay bills, file returns etc. on his/her own. Now, when everything can be done on line and there is technology which can read out and assist blind persons to use computers/ phones themselves, they offer the opportunity to negate the limitations of disability. However, this is not happening because products and services are not designed and developed in compliance with standards of accessibility and universal design, resulting in them being ineffectual or useless for persons using assistive technology. If the apps and websites conform to accessibility standards, Developers need not test their software against each and every disability, which can get understandably complicated, they are automatically accessible to persons with different disabilities in one way or another.

While accessing necessary services and information itself is challenging and often impossible for the disabled, the ability to access and enjoy games like other people is completely beyond imagination, not even something one could dream of said a friend of mine. I asked my friend Dinesh Kaushal, an accessibility expert who heads development of NVDA, an open source screen reader for the blind in India what his experience with the new gaming app Pokemon Go was, which is all the rage nowadays and he said that it was completely inaccessible. There is absolutely no information on the game screen and the Android screen reader Talk Back is absolutely silent. And this according to him this is not uncommon in many gaming apps.

Q- Highlight some of the problems related to the inaccessibility of websites and content to the disabled.

Web site inaccessibility very often hinders a person using assistive technology from accessing information on the internet. A web site can be inaccessible for different persons because of different reasons, depending upon the disability. However, this can be solved by compliance with standards. Inaccessibility of websites also hinders accessing content on mobile phones or affects persons with limited bandwidth or elderly persons.

While progress is being made to make government web sites accessible, this has not yet been completely achieved. In addition, web sites of important services and organisations such as banks, health care, education etc. are often inaccessible. Often a person using a screen reader may come across an important document which is an image file and cannot be read by the screen reader or a deaf person cannot enjoy an audio visual clip because there are no sub titles. Web sites with frequent flashing and flickering, constantly changing pages, images without descriptions and unlabelled form fields and headings, audio visual media content without subtitles, image files of documents without alternate accessible format options continue to populate the Internet. Unless web site accessibility is taken seriously and is treated as a non-negotiable ingredient of a contract for web site development and maintenance, the Internet will continue to be inaccessible.

Q- Can you enumerate the policy and guidelines requiring web site accessibility and the large spread of non-compliance with them?

Although most transactions happen online today, the fact that websites do not conform to universal standards of accessibility render them unusable by persons with disabilities.
The World Wide Web consortium has had accessibility standards for web site accessibility for over a decade now and these have been adopted by many countries around the world. This standard is known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. India also notified the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) which borrows from the WCAG 2.0 to ensure that government websites are accessible. The National policy on universal electronic accessibility was notified in October 2013 and requires conformance to standards of accessibility. It mentions W3C standards such as WCAG 2.0, ARIA and ATAG and identifies procurement as a route to make electronic infrastructure accessible. It also identifies strategies such as awareness raising, training, research and development of assistive technology as vital to implementation of the policy and allocates different roles to different stake holders, including to ministries, departments, private organisations, etc. Other commitments are to be found in the accessible India and digital India campaigns, commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which requires government to make all ICT and Internet available and accessible to persons with disabilities and encourage private service providers to make their services accessible, Access to ICTs are also covered under the goals of the Incheon Strategy to make the rights real for persons with disabilities.

Q- Give us some information about the work of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in the realm of the digital and technological accessibility for the disabled.

We are an eight year old organisation. Our accessibility programme works in multiple ways, which include the following –

(A) Policy research and advocacy (initiating and contributing to new and existing policy discussions to bring digital accessibility on the agenda: We started our work on 3 issues:

(a)Website and electronic accessibility – We produced research on what different countries have in terms of policies, guidelines and measures to promote website and electronic accessibility and worked with the Department of Electronics and information technology (DEITy) to formulate the National Policy on Universal Electronics accessibility which was notified in 2013. We also serve on the Implementation committee.

(b) Getting an exception into the Indian Copyright Act to allow conversion of books and other copyrighted works into accessible formats without the need to get permission from copyright holders. We provided research to MHRD on what other countries have in terms of copyright exceptions to promote access to published works for persons who are blind, have low vision or other print disabilities, we carried out a right to read campaign around India, provided submissions to the standing committee and finally were able to positively influence, along with other NGOs, the amendment to the Copyright Act in 2012.

(c) Aiding the negotiation of a Treaty at the World Intellectual Property Organisation which would facilitate international sharing of books for persons with print disabilities. We attended the negotiations at Geneva from 2010 and are a permanent observer there now, intervening and providing research advice on various issues. The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled was concluded in 2014 and India was the first country to ratify it. The 20 ratifications required to bring the treaty into force just got concluded on June 30th 2016 and the treaty will come into force from 1st September 2016.

(d) We also worked with the Universal Service Obligation Fund of India to launch a pilot scheme to fund projects for persons with disabilities in rural areas.

(e) Apart from the above, we have produced global reports with international partners like the International Telecommunication Union and G3ict on topics such as mobile accessibility and produced research which we sent to relevant government agencies on topics such as banking and financial inclusion, emergency and disaster management for persons with disabilities, accessible broadcasting and so on.

(f) We are implementing a project to develop text to speech for several Indian languages using an open source speak synthesiser called e-Speak and enhanced working of NVDA an open source screen reader which works with English and other Indian languages. We have also carried out several trainings on this software around the country.
We also provide advice to governments and organisations in other countries on ICT accessibility related issues. We have also organised trainings on web accessibility and other topics as may be required.

Q- What kinds of challenges are faced by the CIS in its work?

Limited resources – very few donors fund the kind of work we do although no one denies the criticality and usefulness of it. Neither do we fall within the bracket of a traditional organisation serving persons with disabilities, nor is accessibility as marketable a topic as say something like privacy and cyber security, hence to have a team which can actively carry on this work of research and advocacy, constantly responding to policy developments, attending meetings is very difficult and we are not able to do the kind of work we want.

Q- What kind of vision of empowerment would you propose for the disabled through digital accessibility? How can this vision be achieved?

My Vision- Every person with a disability in India is able to access the Internet, content and facilities through an ICT enabled device, be it computers or phones; where this access is unhindered by barriers and is instantaneous, not retrospective. Further, I speak for an India which is inclusive in the complete sense, i.e. accessibility standards are part of mainstream standards and Universal Design is the standard approach to creations and developments of all kind and not where separate considerations need to be made for the disabled on specific products and services. Where a person with a disability has a choice, as do the other citizens and not where they are given an option; they have access to the world at the same time on the same terms; where there is true equality and we live a life with dignity and pride.

How Can We Achieve It?

India has already taken certain steps to show her commitment to accessibility –

We have ratified the UNCRPD, are part of the Incheon Strategy to make the rights real for persons with disabilities and are in the process of passing a new Rights of Persons with disabilities legislation. We also have a National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility, Guidelines on Government Websites, the Accessible India and Digital India campaigns and the Smart Cities Mission. There is ample opportunity and scope for ensuring accessibility is implemented to give complete effect to these. Some of the areas where action can be taken include:

1. Web site accessibility should be taken up immediately since it affects access for all on using different platforms. The plan can identify number of web sites and different stakeholders and the time lines by which they are required to make their web sites compliant. Both self-certification as well as regular audits should be carried out to check for compliance.

2. Public Procurement is another critical tool in the hands of the government to ensure that all public infrastructure and all facilities/ resources/ products/ services procured out of public money or for the consumption/ use of the public should be made accessible. This is increasingly being adopted in countries around the world. India has a draft procurement bill, several organisations serving the disabled have given a request for the inclusion of accessibility considerations within the procurement bill, we hope they will be taken seriously. By including compliance with accessibility standards as part of performance criteria in all government contracts and calls for proposals and contracts for development and maintenance of products and services, we can ensure not only that web sites etc. become accessible, but that competence is generated in the market to create and market accessible products and increase choice in the market for persons with disabilities.

3. Government ensuring that accessibility requirements are integrated in all government schemes and programmes and accessibility should be considered no longer a matter of choice, but of necessity. There are budgets for different ministries and agencies, there should be a mechanism to evaluate that all the budget set aside for meeting the needs of persons with disabilities are expended meaningfully and not accumulated or go back to the main kitty unspent. There should be proactive disclosure on the part of all government agencies on their spending on accessibility/ disability and they should solicit advice from persons with disabilities and accessibility experts who are part of the committee to review budget spending.

4. Development of appropriate technologies- we need to ensure that enough resources are pumped towards creating our own research and development community to support development and maintenance of assistive technology that caters to needs of specific groups. Open source solutions are desirable for a country like India because of the opportunity they offer for deployment, customisation and improvements.

5. Accessible Smart Cities- The Smart Cities Mission should immediately ensure that their advisory panel includes accessibility experts and that the smart cities which emerge as part of this initiative are inclusive- this is the ideal opportunity to build an accessible city, universal design should be the basic principle on which these smart cities are developed; if this is not done, then there will always remain two worlds- one for the world at large and one for persons with disabilities, and the disparity between the two will always continue.

6. Finally the most important advice I would reiterate is the inclusion of persons with disabilities across all work of the government – only then will the accessibility perspective be represented and taken into account everywhere. Otherwise we may have a situation where accessibility is either missing, or where projects are being implemented to aid the disabled, which are totally meaningless or inappropriate and only serve to waste precious resources, time and effort.

Q- What measures do you suggest for making digital accessibility available to the disabled people across the divides of class, gender and more developed and less developed regions?

Digital accessibility should be implemented at the levels of content, user interface and end user device. Hence accessibility of documents and information on the Internet should conform to standards of accessibility, such as EPUB 3.0, html etc.

User interface-WCAG 2.0 for websites is a must for any device to function effectively. Assistive software must be completely accessible. For instance, it is not uncommon to find that an ATm which is termed ‘accessible’ actually needs the input of a sighted person at some stages of the transaction while some other points are completely prompted through audio. In such a case, the blind still cannot use this.

Schemes under the USOF and others may be used to provide devices and connectivity to persons with disabilities in rural and far flung areas and also targeting specific user groups such as women. For instance a project under the USOF to promote women entrepreneurship in rural areas by providing them with a mobile phone can easily be replicated for disabled women. They could be funded for initiatives such as operating public internet kiosks or public phone booths etc. Schools in villages could be provided with computers fitted with assistive technology (hardware and software as may be required) s that disabled children and teachers have access and exposure to technology.

Providing mobile phones to all persons with disabilities will go a long way to open up the world of books, information, communication and access to emergency services to persons with disabilities.

Common Services Centres throughout the country are an excellent way of reaching persons with disabilities and providing them access to technology. By providing assistive technology on computers there, which is not at all inexpensive if one were to use free and open source software such as the NVDA screen reader and one trained person to impart training to the disabled, who can also be a person with a disability, we can make a lot of progress in terms of both building trained capacity and providing access to technology for persons with disabilities. Private employers and organisations also have a critical role to play in promoting accessibility for the disabled.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/dataquest-august-5-2016-an-india-where-the-disabled-have-a-choice

LIRNEAsia Presentation

praskrishna — 2016-08-06T15:28:47Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/lirneasia-presentation

WikiConference India 2016 Starts Friday in Chandigarh

praskrishna — 2016-08-05T01:48:32Z

India, a key growth area for Wikipedia, is gearing up for a national conference "for Wikimedians in India to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange useful tips, best practices and other information".

First published by Indo Asian News Service was mirrored on NDTV website on August 4, 2016. Sunil Abraham will be participating.

While the conference is open to "Wikipedians" from across the globe, organisers announced here that it would have a "very distinct Indian flavour and will deal primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia and its sister projects".

Wikipedia, founded in 2001, is the world's sixth-most popular website in terms of overall visitor traffic. Its worldwide monthly readership totals almost 500 million.

Since 2011, the Wikipedia has been working to expand its growth in India, and it held its first Indian conference in Mumbai in November that year, which was attended by 700 persons and addressed by website founder Jimmy Wales.

This year, the meet takes place from August 5-8 in Chandigarh, the city and a Union territory of a million population that serves as the capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana.

"The main objective is to reduce the gap between different communities and get help from other community members on technical issues and other things like best practices in decision making and how we resolve the disputes in the community," the organisers said.

Those attending including Wikimedia Foundation executive director Katherine Maher, board member Nataliia Tymkiv, senior programme officer for emerging Wikimedia communities Asaf Bartov, language engineering team international manager Runa Bhattacharjee, Punjabi poet Dr Surjit Patar, and Wikipedia education programme senior manager Tighe Flanagan.

From India, participants will include The Centre for Internet and Society executive director Sunil Abraham, and Wikimedia India president Yohann Varun Thomas.

This event includes "hackathons" and "edit-a-thons" - collective workings towards improving the content available online. It will also see sessions on the Wikimedia movement in India, examples of its use in education, innovative tech solutions from India, content translation, a "gentle introduction" to Wikidata, gender gaps, and case studies from various Indian languages.

Participants are coming from the Wikipedias in languages including Punjabi, Kannada, Odia, Tamil, English, Bengali, Telugu, Malayalam, Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi and Chinese.

Because of its widespread popularity - and contrary to fears that a website "anyone" can edit will not have quality - the Wikipedia notches often among the highest results when information is searched for on the world wide web.

It is a project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of "openly editable content". As the site explains: "The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning quick) and encyclopedia."

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/indo-asian-news-service-ndtv-august-4-2016-wiki-conference-india-2016-starts-friday-in-chandigarh

Live Webinar on Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

praskrishna — 2016-08-04T15:07:25Z

Anubha Sinha participated in this event organized by RCEP on July 27, 2016 in New Delhi.

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN has existing FTAs (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand).

Live Webinar RCEP Invite

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/live-webinar-on-regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership

Live Webinar - RCEP

praskrishna — 2016-08-04T14:59:23Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/live-webinar-rcep

July 2016 Report

praskrishna — 2016-08-03T13:02:22Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/july-2016-report

TRAI Invitation Letter to discuss Net Neturality

praskrishna — 2016-08-02T15:54:37Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/trai-invitation-letter-to-discuss-net-neturality

Open Data Charter Lead Stewards In-Person Meeting

praskrishna — 2016-08-04T02:21:14Z

Sunil Abraham participated remotely in this meeting which was held in Mexico on July 4 and 5, 2016. The event was organized by Open Data Charter.

The Open Data Charter and Open Data for Development Network

The Open Data Charter (ODC) and the Open Data for Development Network (OD4D) are two highly complementary assets for the open data field. The Charter has developed a sound and widely acceptable set of principles, and is building on its momentum to scale adoption and support implementation. The OD4D Network has brought together a broad range of programming from across the field, providing funding and networking activities, and enabling research and on-the-ground work to take place.

The following were the list of attendees for the meeting in Mexico:

Ania
Enrique
Fabrizio
Fernando
Josema
Martin
Richard S.
Randall
Sanjeev
Canada, UK, Pavel, Sunil.
Pablo

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/open-data-charter-lead-stewards-in-person-meeting

Digital in South Asia

praskrishna — 2016-08-02T15:38:39Z

Sunil Abraham participated in this event organized by the World Economic Forum on July 19, 2016 at Taj Mahal Hotel in Bangalore.

The digital revolution is transforming all the aspects of business and society. The internet has been a principal contributor to evolution and growth in the global economy over the past decades. Modern technologies are dramatically altering today’s industries. It continues to have the potential to propel societies and economies by enabling government and business leaders to develop innovative solutions, platforms, and models.

This session will focus on how Governments are designing, implementing, governing, and monitoring their digital strategies particularly as it pertains to growing the digital economy. The focus of the workshop will be to learn and understand how the Government’s in South Asia have and are currently developing digital agendas to support innovation, entrepreneurship, commerce, and economic growth. Further, the hope is to examine the parameters, mechanisms, and governance structures in the region. This working session will explore the specific opportunities and digital development barriers presented to governments. As well as discuss potential approaches or solutions to these barriers.

Structure

(25 min) Opening, digital champions from the private sector and civil society will present on the key issues of policy and governance as it pertains to growing the digital economy. There will be four discussion leaders and each leader will be given 5-7 minutes to make their remarks

(15 min) The opening remarks will be followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A led by Alan Marcus from the World Economic Forum. Government leaders will have the opportunity to react to the discussion leader’s comments and answer any additional questions. Potential leaders to call on include:

(5min) The next portion of the session will involve breakouts directly related to the Digital Policy work at the WEF. Alan Marcus will describe the Digital Government/ Economy project that is being done at the WEF and how the outcomes from the breakouts will feed the ongoing work.

(45min) Following the moderated discussion, the group will split into four breakouts. Each breakout group will have a Table Leader and Firestarter. The role of the Table Leader is manage the flow of the discussion such that it addresses the three key questions below. The Firstarter will have prepared initial comments to commence the discussion.

1) What are the key policy issues that are critical to driving the digital economy? What hurdles, if any, are associated with governing these policies?

2) What mechanisms are currently being used to determine policy issues?

Many of the issues and needed digital policies straddle various government ministries/ agencies ?
What mechanisms determine policy at the national vs transnational level?

3) How can multistakeholder collaboration enhance and support respective government’s digital agendas?

(15 min) After the breakout groups have finished, each discussion leader will present the key and differentiating results of their table discussion to the plenary group. A moderator from the World Economic Forum will then lead invite comments on the outcomes, and discuss the next steps that could be taken to promote digital government in the region.

(15 min) Closing remarks will be made by Mr Ravi Shanker Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, India.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/digital-in-south-asia