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Seminar on Accessibility
for All : Presentations :
Why do we need an accessible Internet and what do we need to
make it accessible?
Overview statement to the Seminar on Internet Accessibility
United Nations, New York
May 6, 1999
by
María Cristina Sará-Serrano
President
Associates for International Management Services
Colleagues and friends,
I am extremely pleased to be here to help open the seminar on an accessible
Internet. I have had a great interest in the subject for some time and this is
one of the reasons that Associates for International Management Services has
sought to be involved in this project. In my other capacity as United Nations
representative of Disabled People's International I became well aware of the
potential of the Internet to remove many of the barriers that persons with
disabilities face in exercising their human rights.
My own experience came in using the Internet to travel to the Fourth World
Conference on Women when an injury made it impossible to travel showed me the
capacity of the Internet to provide me with essential information. Since then, I
have found the Internet an effective way to communicate with colleagues in the
disability rights movement.
The Internet is borderless and its technology eliminates distance as a factor
in communication. That is why it must be accessible. If persons with
disabilities can tap the information that is available on the four million or so
sites that currently exist, we can avoid the obstacles that come from stairs in
libraries, books that aren't in Braille or recorded, films and television
programs that aren't closed captioned. With that information in our hands, about
government services and private opportunities, we have a leveler field in which
to work and play.
I participated in the experimental on-line seminar that was part of this
project and could see with my own eyes the advantages that the Internet can
provide. I was able to confer in real time with Kicki Nordstrom, the Vice
President of the World Blind Union in Sweden and with Santiago Velazquez, the
President of the Latin American Region of Disabled People's International in
Mexico, as well as with colleagues in western Canada and the east coast of the
United States. And we could confer at almost no cost and with little impediments
from our respective disabilities. Our meeting required no airline tickets and no
large telephone charges. For organizations made up mostly of volunteers this was
a significant development.
In the process, however, we learned that the Internet is not automatically
accessible and that creating accessibility means careful planning and being
aware of what needs to be done. Let me describe to you some of the problems and
some of the issues that emerged from our discussion of possible solutions.
First is the issue of accessibility by type of disability. Disability covers
a variety of impairments and an accessible Internet must accommodate all of
them.
Visually impaired people need web sites that can be read by their screen
readers and chat software that is also text based. Many sites are heavily based
on graphics that are hard for visually impaired persons to use. On the other
hand, for someone like me who is mobility impaired, graphics are very useful, as
they are for persons whose native tongue is not English.
The solution, we find, is to plan and design web sites that contain features
that address all major impairments. This means having sites that can be
completely read by screen readers, avoiding use of complex graphics and audio.
Accessible web sites need to be kept simple.
A second point is that the best technology should be made available to
persons with disabilities. There are work-arounds for most of the obstacles to
accessibility. Programs exist that will enable visually impaired persons to
navigate in graphically-based operating systems. Programs exist that can convert
text to speech and speech to text. But these are expensive. They imply that
persons with disabilities have the resources necessary to acquire the best
technology.
This was illustrated to us when we tried to set up our on-line sessions. The
software that we initially chose was not accessible to some of the older
computers that some of our potential participants used. We therefore opted for
an older system, IRC, which permitted log-ins by telnet for text-based systems
rather than using the standard Internet browsers that are largely graphics
based. This system is over-used, unstable and slow. Had we been able to use some
of the newer systems, the result would have been much better.
This leads me to my third point. It is sometimes thought that the best way to
get technology to the disabled is to provide them with equipment and software
that has been discarded by those who have moved on to newer technology. We are
all aware that these days, a computer is probably only "new" for a maximum of 18
months before some new technological development makes it obsolete. Well-meaning
organizations often say, "let's give the old stuff to the poor or the disabled".
Well, that provides the disabled with the promise of technology but not the
fulfillment. Much old technology is still useful for some things. It is mostly
not useful for the Internet as it is developing.
A better approach is to see the Internet as an instrument that can help
empower persons with disabilities and enable them to participate in activities
on an equal basis. This is good for everyone, disabled and able alike. But it
will require both policies and investments to permit a kind of international
"reasonable accommodation". This should be an international standard.
Finally, we learned that accessibility requires some policy choices. One of
our great disappointments in the seminar is that, although persons with
disabilities from all over the world could participate in the on-line, real-time
sessions, no one from the United Nations could do so. There is a policy that
prevents access from the UN to on-line chats and conferences. The UN staff is
prevented from participating in real-time discussions over the Internet.
More broadly, many of the international norms and standards relating to
disability were adopted before the technological marvel that is the Internet was
fully available. Most web sites are still not accessible and most persons with
disabilities do not have access to those that are. The Standard Rules for the
Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities. Paragraph 10 of
Rule 5 on Accessibility states:
"States should ensure that new computerized information and service systems
offered to the general public are either made initially accessible or are
adapted to be made accessible to persons with disabilities."
For this rule to be translated into policy for Internet accessibility it
needs to be elaborated and refined, and accompanied by mandates to provide the
necessary technical advise and investment.
My colleagues will elaborate these points further and we look forward to a
rich discussion. From our perspective, we would hope that this experience and
its discussion could begin to prompt the United Nations, as a global role model,
to begin the process of elaborating global norms and standards for an accessible
Internet in the twenty-first century. |
