Centre for Internet and Society

West Bengal Notifications (OCR)

praskrishna — 2013-03-15T05:19:45Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/wb-ocr-documents.zp

West Bengal Chapter

praskrishna — 2013-03-05T00:41:25Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/west-bengal-chapter.pdf

West Bengal (Govt) Notifications

praskrishna — 2013-03-14T08:42:42Z

The following folder contains a series of notifications received by CIS from the Government of West Bengal recently.

Click to download the files (PDFs) received from the various state departments from the Government of West Bengal.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/resources/west-bengal-govt-notifications

West Bengal (Govt) Notifications

praskrishna — 2013-03-14T08:26:23Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/wb-notifications.zip

Websites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: Conference Report

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T10:45:32Z

G3ict, W3C and CIS co-organised a panel on 30 March 2011 from 4.30p.m to 6.00 p.m., in the W3C track at the Twentieth International World Wide Web Conference in Hyderabad. The panel discussed web accessibility evaluation methodologies and their challenges and practical technical survey methodologies alternatives. The panel was moderated by Nirmita Narasimhan and featured four speakers — Shadi Abou Zahra (W3C/WAI), Neeta Verma (Senior Technical Director, NIC), Srinivasu Chakravartula (Accessibility Manager, Yahoo India) and Glenda Sims (Senior Accessibility Consultant, DeQue Systems).

The panel began with an introduction and background by Nirmita Narasimhan on the digital dispositions of the UNCRPD, obligations of states parties and the need to have clearly defined and credible evaluation methodologies for effective policy formulation and implementation.

Shadi Abou Zahra gave a brief overview of the WCAG 2.0 guidelines and discussed some of the important points which need to be borne in mind while doing large scale evaluation of websites. He talked about the selection of tools, limitations of automated tools, importance of selection of pages for manual testing, sampling techniques, qualitative versus quantitative analysis, different types of testing such as expert and user testing and evaluation goal and scalability issues.

Neeta Verma discussed the guidelines for Indian websites brought out by the NIC in February 2010 and said that as per the checkpoints in the guidelines, there were a small percentage of checkpoints which could be tested using automated tools, some percentage for which expert and user testing was required. She presented one approach to evaluation adopted by the NIC, which was to certify the CMS rather than individual pages since the latter would be extremely difficult in cases of websites having thousands of pages, as was the case with several government websites. She stressed the need for positive thinking, user involvement and on the need to have an organized community of trained accessibility experts in India to whom the government could outsource testing work.

Srinivasu made a distinction in Yahoo’s approach with regard to accessible websites between existing and upcoming websites. He said that for existing websites, the approach was to do an evaluation, prepare a report and prioritize the issues to be addressed. And as far as new websites are concerned, the attempt should be to keep accessibility in the loop right from the development stage itself. In terms of doing evaluation, he said that his methodology was to first quickly run an automated tool to check for errors. Then depending upon the number and kinds of errors, he would decide whether or not to follow up with a manual test. If the errors thrown up were few or nil, then he would do a manual test of some pages. However, if there were many errors and many of the errors were very basic ones like no alt text attributes, no headings, etc., then he may decide not to go ahead with the manual test at all.

Shadi also pointed out that sometimes it was possible that a website could be error free, except for one error, but if this one error was that the pay button on a shopping site was inaccessible, then the website would have to be evaluated as inaccessible since this was the most important button in the website rendering it usable or unusable. Shadi pointed that automated testing was critical to do large scale evaluations, but that this would only help in getting a quantitative analysis while aggregating results, whereas for a qualitative analysis, one would still have to do a manual test with users and experts and pay special attention to the kinds of pages which are selected for this type of test.

While highlighting the importance of manual testing, Srinivasu pointed out that although an automated tool could tell you whether or not an alt attribute was present, it could not determine whether that attribute was the appropriate one. When asked to share his impression on the common inaccessible features on government websites which he has been testing in large numbers over the past few weeks, he said that he found a lot of errors which were very basic, like no headings, no alt attributes, table based layouts, missing keyboard functionality for drop down menus, dynamic websites which used Java script and Ajax instead of Aria and so on.

Glenda walked the audience through the methodology which she used for evaluating a single client’s website, how she used manual testing to do a baseline accessibility survey of the Texas University website and then used different tools to test different things, for example, desktop tools like Fire Eyes and accessibility tools for testing page by page. Glenda also talked about the importance of testing authoring tools, producing enterprise accessibility report, code validation, and accessibility validators to test with assistive technology. Glenda concurred with the other speakers that accessibility evaluation and monitoring should be at all stages of the website’s development life cycle — accessibility at the design stage, testing and mediating during development to ensure that it continues to remain accessible, because a lot of websites start out by being accessible, but lose accessibility somewhere along the way and finally test for monitoring accessibility of the website.

Some other issues which were discussed were the importance of user level for determining accessibility and choice of users, evaluation methodology to include reporting of minor changes in order to allow for monitoring of progress even if it is on a small scale, need for testers to think from every person and every device perspective, doing component and template testing for new websites as a good way to check for accessibility and the importance of aggregation and report writing. Overall there was a consensus amongst speakers that any effective and credible evaluation methodology, especially for large scale evaluation, would involve a mix of automated and manual testing with users and experts and would have to be done at every stage of development and maintenance of a website.

See the event on W3C website here

Presentations

See Glenda Sims presentation in Youtube
See Srinivasu's presentation here
Download Glenda Sims presentation here [ppt file, 5.85 MB]
Neeta Verma presentation here [ppt file, 11.4 MB]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/websites-accessibility-evaluation-methodologies

WEBINAR: Closed for Business

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T10:18:07Z

A Global Panel Discusses International Copyright Laws and Their Impact on the Open Internet

The digital revolution has forged new ways to create knowledge, educate people and disseminate information. It has also restructured the way the world perceives and conducts economic practices, runs governments and engages politically. Recognizing this new dynamic requires global discussion and a common desire & commitment to build a people-centred and development-oriented Information Society. Coming off the heels of the latest Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA) discussions in Washington, D.C. and on the eve of the upcoming Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Vilinius, we invite you to join in a discussion about the future of Internet.

This online-only event features an array of panelists from regions around the world. We invite you to watch the New America LiveStream channel and to participate in an online chat room during the event. If you plan to participate, please register using the form at right.

In addition, if you have specific questions you'd like the panel to address, we encourage you to post them prior to the event here.

Participants

Featured Speakers

Joe McNamee
Advocacy Coordinator, European Digital Rights

Sherwin Siy
Deputy Legal Director, Kahle/Austin Promise Fellow, Public Knowledge

Renata Avila
Creative Commons Guatemala and Global Voices Guatemala

Sunil Abraham

Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

Clare Curren

New Zealand Labour Party Spokesperson for Communications and IT

Moderator

Rebecca MacKinnon
Schwartz Fellow, New America Foundation

Event Time and Location
Thursday, September 9, 2010 - 10.00 a.m. to 11.00 a.m.

For details of the event on the New America Foundation website, click here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/webinar-closed-for-business

Webcam Anti-Corruption in India (NY Times)

praskrishna — 2011-07-20T09:59:46Z

In India, Oomen Chandy (67), governor of the state of Kerala, who wants to fight against corruption, has installed a webcam filming his office 24 hours on 24 and another who is filming one of his assistants, reports The New York Times. This news by Gilles Klein was published in @rret Sur Images on 18 July 2011.

"Plutôt que de prendre des mesures contre la corruption, je pense qu'il faut créer une atmosphère de transparence", indique Chandy.

"Environ 100 000 Internautes se sont connectés au flux vidéo depuis son ouverture depuis le 1er juillet, et vendredi dernier, il avait été visionné par 293 586 utilisateurs." Mais il n'y a pas de son : "Le gouverneur souhaite que ses visiteurs puissent s'exprimer librement quand ils rencontrent".

"Sunil Abraham, directeur du Center for Internet and Society de Bengalore salue les webcams de Chandy même si c'est symbolique. (...) Bien sûr, remarque-t-il, si les gens veulent verser un pot de vin, ils le feront en dehors du bureau. Mr Abraham ajoute que les caméras seraient bien plus efficaces si elles étaient installées dans les postes de police, dans les services du permis de conduire, dans les bureaux de l'aide sociale où les fonctionnaires demandent des pourboires pour effectuer des démarches banales. Quelques services officiels le font dans le pays, mais pas la majorité."

Le New York Times rappelle que le geste de Chandy est significatif, dans un pays qui connaît des scandales de corruption à répétition: "L'ancien ministre des télécommunications est en prison pour avoir fait perdre 40 milliards de dollars au gourernement lors de l'attribution des licenses de téléphonie mobile."

A Bengalore, le patron d'un fournisseur d'électricité, propriété de l'Etat, avait une webcam dans son bureau mais il ne diffuse plus le flux vidéo sur le site de l'entreprise, il faudra demander à le visionner : "Mes collègues me demandaient si j'essayais de prouver que j'étais le seul à être honnête", témoigne-t-il. Il aimerait bien que le gouvernement indien rende les caméras obligatoires.

Read the story published in @rret Sur Images here

Read the story published in New York Times here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/webcam-anti-corruption-in-india

Web Sites Accessibility Evaluation Methodologies: A New Imperative for State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

praskrishna — 2011-08-31T10:40:17Z

W3C-WAI, G3ict and CIS are joining hands to organise the 20th International World Wide Web Conference in Hyderabad, India on March 30, 2011 at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Room H-01.

While web accessibility principles and guidelines have already become well known and been adopted by many countries, measuring the accessibility of web sites for users living with different types of disabilities remains a complex endeavor subject to a number of possible methodological challenges. Yet, with web accessibility policies and programs increasingly implemented around the world as a result of the ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (98 countries representing over 75 per cent of the world population), policy makers, organizations of persons with disabilities, web site owners and courts when legal action is taken will inevitably need to rely on well-defined evaluation methodologies and benchmarks.

The panel, which will take place during the first day of the W3C Track with focus on web accessibility and discuss current accessibility evaluation methodologies and their challenges, policy makers requirements, current plans of the W3C-WAI, and practical technical survey methodologies alternatives.

Panelists will include: Glenda Sims(Deque Systems), ShadiAbouZahra (W3C-WAI), Neeta Verma (National Informatics Centre, Government of India), NirmitaNarasimhan (Center for Internet and Society), and SrinivasuChakravarthula (Yahoo! India).

Co-organizers: W3C-WAI, G3ict, CIS
Duration: 90 minutes
Moderator:NirmitaNarasimhan, Program Manager, CIS and Editor, G3ict – ITU Policy Toolkit Handbook

Panel Agenda:

Introduction:NirmitaNarasimhan, Program Manager, CIS and Editor, G3ict – ITU Policy Toolkit Handbookwill welcome participants on behalf of co-organizers CIS, G3ict and W3C, introduces speakers and topics:

NirmitaNarasimhan will share G3ict’s perspective on the CRPD and its global impact as well as the legislative, regulatory and judicial requirements for a reliable evaluation methodology of web accessibility.
ShadiAbou Zahra will describe the work of W3C-WAI in this domain, and discuss the multiple tools available, methodological challenges and future work currently planned.
Glenda Sims, Senior Accessibility Consultant willpresents Deque’s experience and the technical details of evaluating and testing enterprise level websites, comparing methodologies and suggesting solutions to establish guidelines.
SrinivasuChakravarthula, Accessibility Manager at Yahoo! India, member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) India’s National Advisory Board and of the NASSCOM’s Disability Working Committee, will present industry’s perspectives and the need to rely on clear accessibility benchmarks.
Neeta Verma, Senior Technical Director, Data Centre& Web Services Division, National Informatics Centre will discuss web accessibility assessment methodologies from an e-governance standpoint.
Q&As among panelists and the audience.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/w3c-conference-hyderabad

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T13:19:16Z

G3ict White Paper

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/publications/a-G3ict-white-paper

Web Accessibility Policy Making

praskrishna — 2012-02-28T11:58:13Z

Published by the Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with G3ict, and in cooperation with Hans Foundation.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/web-accessibility.pdf

Web Accessibility Policy Making

praskrishna — 2012-06-21T06:28:22Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/WebAccessibility.jpg

Web Accessibility as a Government Mandate?

praskrishna — 2011-08-17T08:46:13Z

Is Web accessibility just a Government Mandate? Should private sites be ignored? Wesolowski examines this in light of the steps taken by ictQATAR to make its website accessible to W3C standards, and hopes that Qatar and eventually all other Arab nations will follow suit and make Web accessibility much more of a mandate.

Most web developers know that they should make their websites accessible to persons with disabilities, such as including captions for videos to assist the hearing impaired, designing navigation so it can be done through a keypad as opposed to a mouse and including descriptive captions for the blind. But too often developers choose fancy design over accessibility. In some countries though, accessibility is no longer an option!

In a recent white paper published by my friends at G3ict (thank you again for taking me to see the Center for the Visually Impaired when I was in Atlanta last June – inspiring!), web accessibility is examined from a policy perspective. The white paper’s editor, Nimita Narasimhan from The Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, examines web accessibility policies in 15 countries and the EU in terms of scope of policies and the type of policy. Scope refers to how comprehensive a policy. Type refers to the level of enforcement in place for the policy, ranging from being only suggested guidelines to legislative mandates.

Not surprisingly, few countries currently have a high scope and high policy enforcement level (see chart below), but more and more countries are adopting guidelines and are trending towards real enforcement. The white paper notes that W3C has already developed comprehensive guidelines for countries to use, but that in countries that do not use a Latin-based language, such as here in the Gulf, the guidelines often need to be customized to fit specific online language needs.

I found it interesting how so many countries are adopting Web accessibility standards, but also how rarely they seem to have any legislative mandate behind them. In many of the countries that do have a legislative mandate, web accessibility is often tied to a broader piece of legislation dealing with persons with disabilities in general. May be this is the way for more countries to go. I also found it interesting how most legislation makes Web accessibility mandatory only for government sites, but ignores any private sites – this seems to me to very much limit the impact.

In Qatar, we are still at the early stages. ictQATAR has made its website accessible to W3C standards and has encouraged other government agencies and organizations to follow suit. This is clearly just a first step and hopefully Qatar and other Arab countries will start to make web accessibility much more of a mandate.

For original article on Digital Qatar

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/web-accessibility-government-mandate

Web Accessibility (Daisy) File

praskrishna — 2012-03-02T09:32:51Z

This is the Daisy file of the Web Accessibility report published jointly by CIS and G3ict.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/daisy-file

Weaver

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T08:58:00Z

Weaver

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/weaver.png

We, the Cyborgs

praskrishna — 2015-04-10T09:12:23Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/blogs/we-cyborgs