It has taken 16 long years for Prashant Ranjan Verma to view the world the way we do. As a matter of fact, his vision has gotten better. At 34, the consultant for training and technical support at the Switzerland-based Daisy Consortium, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes accessibility of information for the disabled, is clearer than most of us on career objectives and brims with confidence. It was a different story back in 1994 when Verma turned 18, though. His eyesight started deteriorating.
"I was not able to read and write and wasted six years of my life doing nothing." Depressed and with little hope, in 2000, he was introduced to some of the assistive technologies (ATs) on display at Delhi's National Association for the Blind. That single introduction changed his life forever. Exposure to screen reading software that converted text into speech was a great boost. Assisted by technology, Verma went on to complete his education until he became an accomplished trainer and tester in ATs. India accounts for 10% of the 600 million differently-abled people around the world. Despite the Disabilities Act, mainstreaming the disabled is still a far cry in a nation of more than a billion people. Perhaps that explains why Javed Abidi, convenor of the New Delhi-based Disabled Rights Group, keeps sighing. "Out of all books produced in India, less than 0.5% is accessible to the visually challenged, despite all the digital technology and the science available to us," he points out. Devoted to the cause, Abidi is fighting for inclusion beyond barriers - electronic, digital, what have you. In other words, he would like to see more disabled people use television, washing machines and microwaves, the way others do. The 11th Five Year Plan, for the first time, recognised that every ministry must have a policy on disability and allocate at least 3% of their funds for the differently-abled . It's been two-and-a-half years though and no ministry, save the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment , has implemented the policy. Of the 5,000-odd government websites, only that ministry's URL finds an echo with the disabled. And the minister, Mukul Wasnik, is ebullient. "We've moved from charity to welfare to empowerment, and my ministry is the first of its kind to make its website accessible to the disabled... We've taken it up with all the Central and State ministries," he elaborates. The minister is also hopeful of establishing a Centre for Universal Design and a National Centre for Sign Language in the near term, as envisaged in the Plan document. Assurances are always encouraging. On the ground, though, options are few and far between. At Techshare India 2010, an exhibition in Delhi showcasing ATs for the disabled, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo! and a clutch of smaller foreign companies applied mind to disability. Audio screen readers, magnifiers, ATMs for the blind, mobile wheelchairs with joysticks, voice-guided MP3 player-cumbook reader - the lawn bang in the middle of Delhi's India Habitat Centre had become an enabling environment. But what drew everyone's attention was a slew of Indian developers with homegrown solutions for crippling disorders. cheers raghu To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
