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Internet GovernanceISOC's blog on IGF 2008
Barvo HyderabadOne of the success story of this IGF in India was the IGF Remote Hubs created and maintained by Diplo community members. Marilia Maciel, Remote Hubs Coordinator and a Brazilian researcher in the fields of E-Democracy, was appauded by all main room during the IGF closing session after a very emotive speech on the importance of the remote participation specially for youth community. Posted: Saturday, December 6th, 2008 by khaled.koubaa@gmail.com Practical Considerations for Addressing Internet AccessibilityThe IGF session on Internet accessibility, “Including Accessibility and Human Factors in the Universalization of the Internet – How to reach persons with disabilities, the 10% of the next billion”, covered some of the same ground as the first. To begin with there was a bit of a debacle in that the lack of an Internet connection at the conference centre that stays up for longer than five minutes meant that the captioner online in Canada could not get the webcasts of the sessions in order to caption it for those attending with hearing impairments. It also meant that I have been unable to live blog or microblog the sessions as originally planned. This session opened up with background information on various organizations’ work in establishing accessibility standards, their importance, and their gradual global spread. What I did find particularly interesting is that Shadi Abou-Zahra from the W3C addressed a critique I have heard a few times about how they determined their accessibility goals. The W3C has a formal process that strives to seek user participation throughout the process from working group development, public working drafts, and implementation testing. They firmly believe in including users in standardization. Not only are their recommendations available for public review and comment, but they also push out their drafts to applicable disability organizations for their input. Shadi also outlined the three guidelines to website accessibility and how they work together. There is WCAG, website content accessibility guidelines, which includes recommendations for online text, imaged, audio, multimedia, and video. UAAG is the user agent accessibility guidelines for browsers, media player, and assistive technology. UAAG is crucial as they must provide the functionality to enable accessible content, for example captioning if they don’t support it, there’s no point for content producer to do captioning of their content. Finally, there is authoring tool accessibility for website editing software, CMS, wikis, etc. to not only facilitate online content being made accessible, but these software in themselves must be accessible so that people with disabilities are able to be active contributors to the Web not just be passive recipients Jorge Plano, from the Argentina chapter of ISOC, pointed out some of the implementation challenges of accessibility, particularly in developing nations where the issue is “invisible”. Jorge pointed out that more support for this issue globally is needed from governments IT agencies, ISP associations, and telcos. A good starting point in many countries is for government and related organizations, such as such as public administration, private public utilities, NGOs funded by gov, companies/NGOs funded by gov, companies offering services to general public (banks, health insurance, hospitals, etc. – in Europe this is mandatory for these types of company), and government providers/suppliers. A dimension of the accessibility issue that I had not heard before was raised by speaker, Fernando Botelho. Fernando pointed out that what is needed is an accessibility solution that will scale up sufficiently for large scale deployments, both in developed and developing nations. The need for a scalable solution is seen by looking at blind children worldwide, 90% of whom receive no access to education. Even those who receive education, Fernando added, may not necessarily receive quality education. A further problem is that some disabled individuals are trained on commercial assistive technology that is expensive. This creates a path dependency to this technology that becomes difficult when they no longer get access to this technology from the training organization. They may not be able to afford it themselves or prospective employers are often unwilling to pay for it. Thus the importance for finding open source solutions that work with commonly-accepted standards, such as the W3C accessibility standards, is crucial. Posted: Saturday, December 6th, 2008 by glen.farrelly@yahoo.com The role and mandate of the IGFModerator : Lee McKnight – Syracuse University Posted: Saturday, December 6th, 2008 by khaled.koubaa@gmail.com Getting the Pacific Online – workshop 6 – Day 3The Secretariat of the Pacific Community has implemented the Pacific Skye Edge hub (VSAT) which connects the Pacific Island Countries to the worldwide internet via the satellite. Sixteen pre-selected pilot site have been established across the region to demonstrate the opportunity of providing low-cost high speed internet access to rural and remote communities. The first pilot site was launched in August, 2007 in the Solomon Islands during the Pacific Islands of the the Internet Society (PICISOC) annual meeting. The satellite technology is aimed at improving services in rural and remote communities to enable the majority of Pacific Islanders to access to global exchange and information sharing. The Internet offers immense potential for economic and social development in the Pacific but today not many Pacific Islanders have Internet access. Barriers to access include limiting regulatory frameworks, outdated infrastructure and high infrastructure costs (especially in rural areas), lack of training and capacity building. Pacific VSAT satellite technology is a solution to fixed-line Internet access and telephone service. Indeed, most of the Pacific Island countries are now covered by Pacific VSAT Technology and VSAT can bring remote access to remote areas quickly. But for Pacific VSAT’s full potential to be deployed in the Pacific, several conditions should be met. Policies and regulations need to be formulated in such a way to help rather than stop VSAT deployment. Regulators, policy makers, service providers and NGOs like SPC and Forum Secretariat are working to provide low-cost Internet access should have a standard policy of sharing information, strategies and successes. Posted: Friday, December 5th, 2008 by Anju Mangal Building a global capacity : Building Curriculum Framework and Primer for Internet GovernancePriyanthi Daluwatte, an ISOC Ambassador to IGF from Sri Lanka, was one of the panelist of this interesting workshop took at Room 4 from 11:00 to 12:00 at HICC. Posted: Friday, December 5th, 2008 by khaled.koubaa@gmail.com Bridging the Digital Divide – Pacific Perspective
With the tremendous growth in telecommunications and ICTs such as wireless technologies, mobile telephony, web services - the gap between the urban and rural/remote areas of the Pacific is an issue (in terms of accessing relevant, appropriate information). There is a need to close these digital gaps, locally, nationally and regionally with policies that focus on national priorities and on areas that will have the maximum impact of ICT development.
The Pacific community is made up of many small islands and countries covering vast areaches of the ocean. There are close to 8 million people in the Pacific. The deployment of ICT in the Pacific is focused on bridging isolation, smaller markets, small population sizes and the huge distances that separate these countries from each other and from the rest of the world. ICTs are useful in assisting voice communications at low costs between communities of the Pacific. One technology that appears to work for the Pacific Community is radios. Community radio is much appreciated in some Pacific countries where it contributes to community empowerment. Radio could be used as a good communication technology for many users that have no capacity to use other ICT tools. Universal access to reach out to include everyone is a first step in bridging the digital divide. Funding to meet the cost of universal access should be negotiated by telecom regulator and government. Operators should contribute to the cost of rolling out access as part of their obligations under licensing agreements. In the Pacific, universal access policy can be achieved in part by rolling out community telecentres. This is in the case in Samoa where it is estimated that to meet universal access obligations, about 5- 10 telecentres will be deployed. Community-based access or telecentres are likely to be important in many ways in bridging the digital divide and in helping to ensure that all benefit from the access to ICTs but ofcourse the issue of sustainability is a major concern. Numerous studies have highlighted the potential of, and impediments to, universal access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the Pacific. In this context, Pacific Leaders requested the development of a regional digital strategy as an essential component of the Pacific Plan. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Pacific Islands Foum Secretariat are active participants in the development of the Digital Strategy through its membership of the Council of Regional Organisations of the Pacific (CROP) ICT Working Group. It is crucial that the diffusion of ICT and the ICT policy is regarded as a main priority and mainstreamed into national and regional development programs (strategies, policies and implementation). Perhaps this would help in bridging the digital divide?
Posted: Thursday, December 4th, 2008 by Anju Mangal Accessibility guidelines for persons with disabilityAccess to information is a human right but persons with disabilities are often excluded from internet access and usage. The matter of ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities has either been ignored or given less priority. Blind people should be able to use low cost assistive software to access or browse online information such as e-banking service, online shopping services and electronic materials in Braille. People who are visually impaired should have access to materials that are in audio. People who find it difficult to pick up a magazine or paper can use the computer to access online news or articles through the use of assistive keyboards. Not all websites or web pages enable access for people with special needs and this is simply because not all assistive technologies like text readers and screen reading software are able to translate information or links in graphics. Issues of affordability is also a concern. Similarly, convenient access to audio-related materials on websites may not be readily available for people who are hearing impaired or deaf. Regardless of disability, there is a clear need to address the issue of ‘user-friendly’ internet access (and use) for people with special needs. ‘Special needs’ Accessibility policy and guidelines should be incorporated within the Country National ICT policy specifically including persons with disabilities as their target beneficiary group with appropriate measures. Persons with disabilities and their organizations should be fully consulted and involved in the process of formulating and implementing the National ICT policy. Posted: Thursday, December 4th, 2008 by Anju Mangal Capturing the discussion at the workshop on “Building multifaceted partnerships to bridge the digital divide”by Commonwealth Secretariat. The workshop was held at Internet Governance Forum, Hyderabad 3rd December 2008. The first speaker discussed on the Genesis programme in Commonwealth, which helps Commonwealth countries to share good practices and ICT wealth. Areas of focus of Genesis are: Building policy and regulatory capacity, modernizing education and skills development, entrepreneurship for poverty reduction and wealth creation, promoting local access and connectivity, regional networking local content and knowledge.
Based on the principles – share, learn and improve. The second speaker discussed on the Objectives of digital Britton strategy. It highlighted the following: Internet and digitization has challenged the local news paper sales. It was important to find new ways to survive digitization. Digital radio – in UK, role of digital radio – issues of standards. Public service content – public service broadcasting to be distributed by BBC across the world being looked at to bring it to digital age. Trying to maximize the radio spectrum - look at ways how best to distribute 3G spectrum. Internet by mobile phones. News ways on how people access information is being looked at.
The 3rd speaker discussed on Building Effective networking and partnering
Highlighted the best practices in partnership building in policy to bring about a clear picture regarding the issues discussed. The stakeholders would involve parliamentarians, government officials, IT personnel, academia, civil society etc. Internet Governance is similar to a building under construction which needs partnerships. The 4th speaker discussed on the topic The National ICT strategy (NICTS) in different commonwealth countries extracting case studies of research on e-readiness conducted by the Commonwealth.
The ICT maturity in the commonwealth countries study shows that there is no silver bullet to bridge the digital divide. Different coordinated levels to are observed which will finally reach expected utopian level. There are 4 steps in reaching the final stage. Formative, progressive movement, advance and fully mature stage. When a country move from Formative to progressive movement it must have a national IC strategy. The movement of Progressive to advance requires reengineering. Transition of advance to fully mature, a country need to build CIO capacity, egov initiative, PKI use for authentication etc.
NICTs development methodology was briefed during the session. During the e-readiness assessment of countries, countries were benchmarked with similar countries who have ICT sophistication.
The question and answer session at the end of the presentations also created fruitful discussion on the need for re-engineering of developing countries. It was noted that digital signatures are being implemented in some developing countries for administrative procedures to make the process efficient. During the implementation of e-gov projects it was noted that careful definition of a project scope is of prime importance.
In summary, the session noted the following:
Emphasis on partnerships, government policy makers cannot work alone, it needs the partnership of private sector, IT personnel and other stakeholders. Importance of communication with the regional and national initiatives to learn best practices/failures in managing change.
Posted: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 by Priyanthi Daluwatte Discussing Online Accessibility on International Day of the Disabled PersonToday is the international Day of the Disabled Person, so it’s fitting that the United Nations and Internet professionals and experts worldwide have gathered at the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad to address the issue of improving website accessibility for the disabled. The session, my first of the conference, was called “Information Accessibility: Equal Access & Equal Opportunity to People with Disabilities”. Overall, there was a lot of focus on the role of standards for website accessibility, but it was rather short on actual plans for its widespread adoption. For those new to the field of website accessibility there was good background information provided on the issue’s history, scope, and its importance. While my personal research has focused on website accessibility for the visually impaired, the issue also covers various disabilities such as hearing, cognitive, and physical. The presentations repeated the key messages that 1) the Internet is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life, e.g. education, government services, business, recreation so disabled people should not be shut out 2) All people should have equal access and equal opportunity to resources online or otherwise 3) Internet can be particularly able to help the disabled more actively participate in society. Representatives from China and India both stated their countries commitment to this issue and it was pointed out that 26 countries have enacted policy or law on the issue of Internet accessibility. The first speaker opened with some sobering statistics: 600 million people around the world have a disability (I suspect that number would be much higher if you count people with low to diminished vision, which is particularly relevant for online readers). 186 million children with disabilities haven’t completed primary school. There are clearly opportunities for an accessible Internet to improve people lives, as the first speaker said “these are not just figures they are real people – and we simply cannot afford to say it’s your problem go fend for yourself”. All the speakers were in agreement that while there has been progress in devising what needs to be done, significant barriers still remain and accessibility is still not widespread. An interesting point made by Cynthia Waddell that the notion of disability is evolving. We need to acknowledge that if there were not societal and physical barriers the concept of disability might not even exist. Bringing disabled people into the mainstream is a way to help end marginalization and in some cases poverty. As more and more of life moves online, the issue of website accessibility becomes important. Both Cynthia and an accessibility expert from the W3C, Shadi Abou-Zahra, pointed out the issue has various spheres that must be addressed. These spheres would be web authoring software, web developers, browsing software, and assistive technology. Web design historically has not included accessible design for persons with disabilities. Web developers tend to not educated sufficiently on this issue. Even web authoring software didn’t help and often hindered. Assistive technology is making strides but it isn’t enough on its own. Browsers are getting more standard compliant, but this has only recently been the case. I must admit that while I completely agree with the speakers that assert that accessibility is a human right for all and that more policy is needed, I don’t believe this issue will resonate or convince businesses and organizations around the world to make their website accessible. So I felt a crucial point was made by Shadi when he listed the auxiliary benefits of accessibility. Shadi pointed out that accessible sites are more compatible with mobile technologies, addresses the needs of our ageing demographics, and can open up new markets. I have found that when I state to business people not only the social benefits of accessibility but also the business benefits this helps give the issue more priority than it would otherwise have. As Shadi pointed out accessibility features can improve experience for all users: “Think of it like an elevator. I need an elevator to access a building, but an elevator benefits everyone”. Overall, the session was a good backgrounder on the issue, but I was disappointed that the focus on standards and policy leaves behind the web developers in the field whom may have heard of this issue but then must struggle with limited (or no) resources or budget to adopt this. So I raised this point to the speakers. My question was (yes there was a long preamble) as one who has worked as a web developer and producer for the past ten years and is now researching Internet accessibility, that while I applaud the efforts at creating accessibility standards, they are not enough. The standards are complicated to follow, there are not specifics of how to do it, and the existing educational material is not much help. For example, it’s easy to say don’t use tables for layout but it is difficult to actually make that happen even when building a website from scratch, let alone retrofitting one. It’s also easy to say beware of colour blindness when designing web navigation, but there are many different types of colour blindness and the tools to help demonstrate the issue are insufficient. Among the web developer community I believe awareness is fairly common – most developers know about the issue and some of the remedies – but using alt text is not enough. As the speakers acknowledge, the authoring tools must do more to support this, but also educational material needs to be more comprehensive and simpler. Training needs to be more widespread – and I would add most crucially it needs to be free too. I was excited to learn that the next generation of W3C material on website accessibility is going to be addressing the implementation challenges. Their website was my primary source for information on this issue, and while it provided a good framework, there needed to be more practical information and feasible plans. The discussion after the session was also interesting. We discussed the need for a central, prominent repository of templates to use for this. I pointed out how I could not find any, let alone “proper” code for how to make an accessible table, when one genuinely needs to use a table, that is for presenting tabular data like statistics. I struggled through the standards and came up with a code snippet that I added to my web team’s code snippets in Dreamweaver and then posted on my blog – but we sure need more widespread and prominent sharing of this type of work. Posted: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 by glen.farrelly@yahoo.com Women and the internetInternet accessibility is an issue in the Pacific and issues of illiteracy and education is also a concern in the Pacific countries (particularly rural and remote areas). Most women in the Pacific are still illiterate and the ability to read and write is a major barrier for women’s access to ICTs/internet. How can we help women to develop and promote their own knowledge in ICTs to ensure that their voices are heard? While we see the potential of women accessing ICTs and internet, it can also facilitate the exploitation of women. New ICT tool on the internet attract sexual predators that have access to women’s videos and images that can harm or make use of their vulnerability. There is a need to examine the challenges women face and therefore it is important to involve women in the information society so that they have knowledge of the negative and positive impacts of internet…. Posted: Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 by Anju Mangal |
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