Human Rights of the Information Society

There is interesting comments in the "Tentative schedule of Antti in WSIS 15th-18th November 2005" posting (see below). Let's continue the Human Rights discussion in this posting. I agree with Beat Kleeb who was in Geneva 2003 and wrote in his report: "If we don't stand up by ourselves, they will never think about the very special requirements of the Deaf and the blind in this exploding information society. A deafblind woman in a developing country is really the worst case example in this regard." I think here we have another utmost example of digital divide and a benchmark for human rights. The photo was taken from presentation of ms Wantanee Panthachart, the movement of ICT Accessibility in Thailand. She was the representative of the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center and gave her report on 18th november, the 2nd day of the Second Global Forum on Disability in the Information Society. Any comments?

Report on Global Forum on Disability in the Information Society

Tunis Summit is being closed. Summit documents "Tunis Commitment" and "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society" are available at:

http://www.itu.int/wsis/tunis/index.html#documents

Below is the text of the report on the Global Forum on Disability delivered by Hiroshi Kawamura, WSIS CSB Disability Focal Point, at the Plenary on 18th November 2005. The report was presented by Montian Buntan on the last day of the summit in Global Forum.

***************
Thank you Mr. Chairman,

WSIS Disability Caucus held Global Forum on Disability in the Information Society in Geneva and Tunis.
The DAISY Consortium organized the first Global forum in Geneva in December 2003.
The 2nd Global Forum here in Tunis was facilitated jointly by the DAISY Consortium and the BASMA Association for Employment of Persons with Disabilities.
The forum successfully addressed Internet access, education and training, mobile phone technologies, employment, capacity building, global library of knowledge sharing, social inclusion, multi-stakeholder partnership, accessible multimedia for reading and writing, disaster preparedness, indigenous persons with disabilities, etc, and adopted the Tunis Declaration.
Thanks to Tunisian warm hospitalities and support including the opening by the first lady Her Excellency Mrs. Leila Ben Ali, the Forum could facilitate active interactions of all participants including those with most severe disabilities.
It is my great honor to introduce the "Tunis Declaration on Information Society for Persons with Disabilities, November 18, 2005" on behalf of the WSIS Disability Caucus.

Recalling the historic success of the first Global Forum on Disability and the over all first phase of WSIS;
Being encouraged and moved by the spirit of the Geneva Declaration on Inclusive Information Society, WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action;
Noting, however, with great concern the difficulty of transforming words on paper into real actions/implementation, given the fact that the concept of "inclusiveness" in general often leaves disability aspects out, causing persons with disabilities to be excluded, marginalized, forgotten and left behind;
Having high hope and confidence in the ultimate power of the united force, among persons with disabilities, our representative organizations our friends and our empathetic allies of all sectors around the world, to work for the true inclusive information society.
Therefore, we, participants of the Second Global Forum on Disability, held during the second phase of WSIS, on the 18th day of November 2005, in the City of Tunis, Republic of Tunisia:

1. Call upon all governments, private sectors, civil society and international organizations to make the implementation, evaluation and monitoring of all WSIS documents, both from the first and second phase, inclusive to persons with disabilities;
2. Strongly urge that persons with disabilities and our needs be included in all aspects of designing, developing, distributing and deploying of appropriation strategies of information and communication technologies, including information and communication services, so as to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities, taking into account the universal design principle and the use of assistive technologies;
3. Strongly request that any international, regional and national development program, funding or assistance, aimed to achieve the inclusive information society be made disability-inclusive, both through mainstreaming and disability-specific approaches;
4. Urge all governments to support the process of negotiation, adoption, ratification and implementation of the International convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, in particular through enactment of national legislation, as it contains strong elements concerning information and communication accessibility for persons with disabilities.

WSIS in Tunis is over

This experience was very interesting and it will be even more interesting to see how the process continues in the future. We are now waiting to board at the Tunis airport. I will continue blogging next week and update earlier postings.

Closing of the Second Global Forum on Disability in the Information Society

Closing of the Global Forum by ms Khadija Hammouda Ghariani, Secretary of State for Computer Science, Internet and Free open Source Software, Tunisia.

The second Global Forum

The first photo (by Aki Metsola):
Antti Raike and Stig Kjellberg - United colours of Finland and Sweden.
The second photo (by Antti Raike): Stig was here to demonstrate Pocket Interpreter in action. Cool!
Read more about the Pocket Interpreter on the website of Swedish Deaf Association SDR (svenska och svensk teckenspråk) and in English on the site of Post & Telestyrelsen.


Third and fourth photo (by Aki):
IDA members gave a ten minutes speech in the panel:
* Khalfan H. Khalfan Al-Salmany (Disabled Peoples' International)
* Betty Dion (Rehabilitation International)
* Kicki Nordström (The World Blind Union)
* Antti Raike (World Federation of the Deaf)
* Andre Van Deventer (World Federation of the Deafblind)
* Sylvia Caras (World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry)


I used Finnish Sign Language which was translated into English by Ari Savulahti.


The WFD presentation in PDF format.

Content of the presentation "Internet and free access for Deaf users. Perspectives of collaboration, accessibility, and multi-modal communication"

Information access:
- Signed languages on the Net
- Spoken languages in written mode
- Bilingualism

Inclusive Communication:
- Policy agreed by all stakeholders
- Freedom of speech in open society
- Perceivable information for all users
- Accessible information seeking and barrier-free communication
- Benefits from the use of digital technology

Different output and input modalities:
- Multi modality (pictorial, verbal, tactile) for presentation of information
- Technology should be developed in collaboration with the users (Deaf: Sign Language; Blind: Speech, Braille etc.)
- Active citizens vs. passive consumers

Effective ICT for distance interpreter services, learning, working, and social life

Free access of Deaf - Enabling environments
- Regardless of ambient conditions or the user's sensory abilities like deafness or blindness
- Barrier-free communication and collaboration between Deaf individuals & Deaf and hearing communities
- ICT for free communication

Last photo of the panel and my "Thank you - Shukran" slide (by Jim Fruchterman).

The third day in the summit

17th November
We met Abdelbasset and Dhouha Souayah at the UNESCO stand during the ICT and Education presentations. Siblings live in Tunis (above). They followed Finnish Sign Language although it is totally different from the Tunisian one.

The last workshop was Electronic Governance in Developing Countries - 1st Network-Building Workshop (middle). It was really good. We were lucky to find it after noticing that proper translation by the UNESCO stand would be impossible due the noise. It would be nice if Teemu from medialab/UIAH and Mikko from FAD would have time to check this site of the United Nations University:
http://www.iist.unu.edu/
The presentations were excellent and WFD should contemplate carefully the possibility of using open source in future projects.

Teemu and Philip, this is for you ;-)

On wednesday we met Doyun Lee from UNESCO digiarts. She collaborates with Teemu Leinonen and Philip Dean from Media Lab, UIAH. See the site
http://portal.unesco.org/digiarts
for more information.

A night in the Finnish Embassy

The ambassador of Finland in Tunisia, ms Kaija Ilander invited all the Finns on 16th november to have a nice evening at her beautiful residence.

Among the ministers, parliament members and employees of different state bodies were staff members of the Finnish virtual university. Leena Koskinen and Eva-Maria Hakola work in the virtual university project of UIAH. See the site
http://www.uiah.fi/virtu/
for more information.

ICT and people with disabilities

The second day begun with the UNESCO workshop ICT and people with disabilities. Tunisian teacher of the Deaf, ms Senkez Latifa followed the presentations with the help of two french interpreters.

When coming to the venue on tuesday my first impression was: this is a big happening! But it was a bit false one, because the second day (wednesday, the first official day of the summit) was enormous and shadowed the initial impressions. Security is in class AAA (c.f. WAI standards) and programme seems to start late every day. It takes only 15 minutes from the centre to the venue, but it takes altogether something around 45 minutes to get finally in.

I have been wondering earlier why organisers of the conferences tend to schedule everything in so tight slots. Today, 16^th November, we did not have time at all for a discussion in the workshop ICT and disabled. That was pity because as Markku pointed out UNESCO has not mentioned signed languages in their documents. However, the workshop had very good presentations of the sign language projects, e.g. in Brazil. Also, there was sign language interpreters working again (as in the first Global forum on 15^th November) and moderators referred couple times to the importance of sign languages to the Deaf people.

Digital Divide?

Sign Language interpreters in the first Global Forum

Above: Ari Savulahti, Marie Dion, (?), and Aki Metsola. Send your corrections if I have written the names wrongly, please.
Below: Ari Savulahti, Aki Metsola, and Chelmi Abdelhalim

First Global Forum

The first day of WSIS is soon over. The Global Forum was quite packed, but the moderator Judy Brewer from W3C kept the programme going with mr Hiroshi Kawamura, representative for WSIS of the DAISY Consortium. There was two Finnish, two French and one Tunisian SL interpreter. The first photo: Judy Brewer from WAI/W3C & MIT with Antti Raike from WFD & UIAH.
Second photo: Hiroshi Kawamura.

Third photo: First lady Leïla Ben Ali opens the Forum. Hiroshi Kawamura on the left.