Dear all, Hope you guys are doing great. As you are aware; I, Prasant Verma, dipendra manacha are currently engaged by department of electronics & IT, government of India and volunteering our time to formulate action plan and strategy for converting all government web sites into accessible. We had high level advisory committee meeting on December 30, 2015 where Executive director Indian railway was also present. Please to note that they are taking step in the right direction in terms of attempting to make their IRCTC equal access. We are committed to ensure that we will continue to work till we achieve our objectives. I am publishing the minutes for your reference. Please note that scanned copy was forwarded by Ministry and I did OCR it; however it does not offer high quality of reading but it does the job. Please note that this is rather long so read it at your leisure. Thanks again to everyone who helped us by giving their input for identifying additional 50 frequently visited web sites. Thanks and let's work diligently towards positive change. Smile Asif f vmrvwr GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY .A—JdXaA -Jt AfS ft «S 3TTT DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Website: www.delty.gov.in v„ 18(2)/2O09-*-Infr» (Vol.IIl) To, Chairman & Members of the HLAC (As per list enclosed) Subject: Minutes of the meeting of High Level Advisory Committee (HLAC) related to Accessibility. Sir/Madam, The undersigned is directed to enclose herewith a copy of the minutes of the meeting held on December 30, 2014 at DeitY, Electronics Niketan, CGO Complex, New Delhi to finalize action plan to implement the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility for kind perusal/further necessary action, please. (G. Swarnambal) Deputy Director Tel: 011-24301167 Enel: List of Participants in HLAC.^ ^
& •> r, K A. V National ^-Governance Plan m > ▼ ELECTRONICS NIKETAN 6 6, C.G.O. COMPLEX 10003 Public services closer home NEW DELHI-110003 18(2)/2009-e-Infra (Vol. Ill) Department of Electronics & Information Technology E-Infrastructure Division Subject: Minutes of the meeting of High Level Advisory Committee (HLAC) related to Accessibility 1. A meeting to finalize action plan to implement the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility was held on December 30, 2014 at Department of Electronic and Information Technology (DeitY), New Delhi under the chairmanship of Secretary, DeitY. List of participants * is enclosed in Annexure. 2. Dr. Ajay Kumar, DeitY welcomed the Chairman and members and gave a background about the formulation of the policy on universal electronic accessibility. He informed that multi¬stakeholders were involved in drafting the policy. He further informed that since there are not direct action-pomts in the policy, a HLAC was constituted with multiple stakeholders’ participation to decide further course of action to implement the policy. Afterwards, he requested Secretary, DeitY to chair the meeting and also to give his opening remarks. 3. Secretary, DeitY asked all the members to introduce themselves and accordingly, every member gave his/her brief introduction. In addition, he stated that the basic objective of this meeting is to decide key action points to operationalize the policy. Afterwards, he asked Shri Dipak Singh, HoD (e-Infra) to start the presentation. 4. Sh. Dipak Singh gave a presentation covering the details of the policy. He shared that the National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility, 2013 was approved by the Cabinet in October, 2013. This policy recognizes the need to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disabilities and to facilitate equal access to electronics and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). He also highlighted its major objectives. Further, he explained the agenda items before HLAC. 5. Afterwards, the following items were discussed and decisions were taken: 5.1 Websites Accessibility (i) Design and implementation strategy for converting inaccessible government websites into accessible websites; It was proposed that in the first instance, 100 most visited/popular Government websites may be migrated into fully accessible sites. In this regard, following was submitted before HLAC for moving forward: project to convert 100 most popular/visited inaccessible websites into accessible sites. • After migration, NIC may get these websites certified by STQC as per Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW). • For the websites of remaining Government organizations, NIC may issue a notification to concerned organizations that they may go through ‘Content Management Framework’ and make their websites accessible as per GIGW guidelines. Secretary, DeitY asked the members to deliberate on this item and accordingly, the following views were expressed by the members: • Ms. U. Hazarika, Ministry of Railways stated that they are very much willing to make their website accessible but there is a major concern regarding sharing the source code of website with vendor/s. Hence, there should be some empanelment agency, which could provide the competent vendors for such tasks. • Shri A. K. Awasthi, Department of Empowerment of PwDs also was of the view that there should be an agency, which could empanel the vendors for making the websites accessible. In addition, he also expressed his concern regarding the competency of the vendors empanelled by NICSI. • Dr. Neena Pahuja, ERNET India appraised that ERNET India had already conducted the accessibility compliance testing of 50 most popular/visited Government websites. • Dr. Rajendra Kumar, DeitY appraised the HLAC that STQC has taken a project on GIGW compliance testing of 1000 Government websites. • Dr. Ajay Kumar, DeitY was of the view that there are two major points involved in this item: first is to make websites accessible and second is the accessibility audit of these websites. Accordingly, we require two types of agencies to perform these tasks. • Shri Sunil Abraham, CIS was of the opinion that there should be a common template for all Ministries/Departments. • Chairman asked that NIC is taking care of this aspect i.e. one template for all Ministries/Departments. Chairman was also of the view that source code should be on open standard and it should be robust. Accordingly, we should inspire for open source based systems. Decision: After detailed deliberation, the following was decided: • In lint Instance, NIC will convert 100 most popular/visited inaccessible Government websites into accessible sites. • After migration, NIC may get these websites certified by STQC as per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C). There are three levels in these guidelines, which are A, AA and AAA. All the Government websites should try to achieve AAA level conformance but conformance to at least AA level accessibility is must for all websites. • For the websites of remaining Government organizations, ERNET India and NICSI will empanel various agencies, which can take up accessibility related projects of different Government Ministries/Departments. Identify possible solutions for converting inaccessible government notifications into accessible; The following was submitted before HLAC: • It is a common practice that government notifications/ order are signed by concerned official and scanned copy of the same are uploaded on the concerned Government websites. However, blind/ low vision citizens cannot access this notification as it is in image format and screen reader can not read images. • To overcome this issue, the best practices around the world are adoption of ePub format or OCR (Optical Character Recognition) based PDF, which produces digital documents. • Hence, it was proposed that a notification may be issued by DeitY through E~ Governance Group that all the Government notifications/orders should be in ePub or OCR based PDF only along with a technical write-up regarding conversion. Decision: DeitY through e-Governance Group will issue a notification that all the Government notifications/orders should be digitally signed and in ePub or OCR based PDF only along with a technical write-up regarding conversion. Identify non-graphics CAPTCHA solutions and provide assistance in implementations. The following was submitted before HLAC: • Visual CAPTCHA does not offer equal access to blind/visually impaired persons due to their disability, • In place of the visual image based CAPTCHA, which are not accessible to several users including the blind/visually impaired, generation of OTP on citizen's mobile, audio, answering Logic Questions, etc. may be considered for possible solution. These questions provide the needed security to the website and at the same time, are accessible to everyone. The web accessibility guidelines also recommend use of these alternate types of CAPTCHA. However, the audio CAPTCHA is also not an alternative since for many users including visually impaired, it is not easy to both listen to the much distorted audio and type the text at the same type on the website. • Hence, DeitY through e-Govemance Group may issue a further notification along with CAPTCHA standard/s that for all Government websites, in place of visual CAPTCHA, either OTP or answering logical questions may be suitably followed. Secretary, DeitY asked the members to deliberate on this item and accordingly, the following views were expressed by the members: • Shri Lokesh Joshi, NIC expressed his concern regarding asking simple question in CAPTCHA. He was of the opinion that this may cause security related issues. • Dr. Ajay Kumar, DeitY apprised the HLAC that in many banks, no CAPTCHA is used. Decision: DeitY through e-Governance Group will issue guidelines that in addition to Visual CAPTCHA, which is already in place, additional methods of logical CAPTCHA like OTP or answering logical questions should also be exercised to facilitate differently-abled persons. 5.2 Formulating access specification templates, which can be inserted in RFP for all government procurements. Formulations of access requirement specification, which should be mandatory inserted with all Government of India RFP as a part of Government of India procurement guidelines had been drafted. The same was sent to NIC for their inputs/comments as well. Based on the inputs, the same was revised and accordingly, the finalized template was placed before HLAC for approval. The template was explained in brief. Chairman was of the view that since all the major aspects, which are given in the template have already been covered in GIGW, we may insert only one line in RFPs that all the procurements should be GIGW compliance. Decision; DeitY through e-Governance Group may issue a notification that all Government procurements should be GIGW compliance. 53 Appointment of ERNET India as a nodal agency for empanelment of third party agencies for accessibility conformance of websites as being done by CERT-IN for empanelment of third party agencies for security audit This item was already covered in 5.1 (i), hence, no further discussion was held on the same. ERNET India and NICSI may charge 5% of the total cost as operational overhead for development of accessible websites. 5.4 It was proposed that to make W3C Compliant websites, there is a need for the following types of trainings: • Training for web developers, • Training for disabled persons, and • Training for procurement personnel including vendors. In this regard, a proposal had been received from ERNET India for Setting up of ICT Resource Centers for Skill Development and Capacity Building of Different! y-abled Persons and Awareness Programs for disabled* with outlay of Rs 2398 lakhs for 3 years. Sh. Dipak Singh, DeitY requested ERNET India to give a presentation on the project proposal. Mrs. Tejal Tewari from ERNET India made the presentation on their proposal covering various points such as past experience of ERNET India in the execution of such projects, a brief outlay of their proposal and end users along with complete details of establishment of ICT centres for differently-abled persons. The Chairman commented why should ERNET India will execute such types of logistic projects? He further stated that the major role of ERNET India is to work on technology. Organizing trainings etc. through resource centres should be done by the Department of Empowerment of PwDs, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. He enquired whether Department of Empowerment of PwDs is having any such schemes for trainings. Shri A. K. Awasthi, Department of Empowerment of PwDs informed that his department supports such activities and at this stage, Department of Empowerment of PwDs may support training projects with total budget out-lay up to 5 crores. In addition, he also informed that Department of Empowerment of PwDs will consult its various National Centres and NGOs for organizing such training programmes. Decision: After detailed deliberation, it was decided that Department of Empowerment of PwDs will organize aforementioned trainings by leveraging existing Institutions and NGOs. For this purpose, ERNET India may be appointed as a Technical Consultant to Department of Empowerment of PwDs. Afterwards, the Chairman asked the members to offer their views, if any related to the policy and accordingly, the following major views were expressed: • Dr. Neena Pahuja, ERNET India informed that ERNET India is going to organize workshops regarding usage of technical products very soon. • Shri A. K. Awasthi, Department of Empowerment of PwDs asked that there is a major need for low cost technology tools for disabled. • Dr. Rajendra Kumar was of the view that we need TTS in regional languages. • Sh. Sunil Abraham, CI^ informed that we have various schemes for differently-abled persons but we also require the data regarding usage of these schemes. In addition, in spite of addressing all kind of disabilities, our focus should be initially on one or two. He also informed that TTS developed by TDIL and C-DAC cannot be used on mobile phones. • Sh. Prashant Vcrma, NAB informed that only 1% information is accessible to disabled persons. To make this more accessible, awareness on tools should be created. • Sh. Md. Asif Iqbal, PwC informed that major problem is implementing TTS for Indian languages is because of the Indian languages are not in Unicode. Afterwards, the following action items were also decided: (i) A sub-committee may be formed, which may submit the reports on the following: • Status of existing TTS tools in regional languages for disabled persons; and • Actual need for TTS in regional languages. (ii) In first instance, TTS may be developed in five Indian languages. (iii) To prepare these aforementioned reports and development of TTS in five Indian languages, various agencies may be hired with financial support from DeitY. The meeting ended with a vote of thanks to the Chair. 1. Secretary Department of Electronics & IT Electronics Niketan CGO Complex New Delhi. 2. Secretary Ministry of Human Resource Development Department of School Education & Literacy Shastri Bhawan New Delhi. 3. Secretary Ministry of Health & Family Welfare Department of Health & Family Welfare Nirman Bhawan, C-Wing New Delhi-110001. 4. Secretary Min. of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Nirman Bhawan New Delhi-110011. 5. Secretary Ministry of Science & Technology Department of Science & Technology Technology Bhawan New Mehrauli Road New Delhi* 110016. 6. Secretary Department ofTelecommunication Ministry of Communications & IT Sanchar Bhawan New Delhi. 7. Chairman Railway Board Rail Bhawan New Delhi-110011. 8. Secretary Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports Department of Youth Affairs & Sports C-Wing, Shastri Bhawan New Delhi-110001. 9. Director General Dte. General of Employment & Training Ministry of Labour & Employment Room No. 108, Shram Shakti Bhawan New Delhi. 10. Chairperson National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation & Multiple Disabilities 16-B, Old Rajinder Nagar New Delhi-110060. 11. Director Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Institute for the Physically Handicapped Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment Government of India 4, Vishnu Digamber Marg New Delhi-110002. 12. Director Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for Hearing, Handicapped KC Marg, Bandra(W) Reclamation Mumbai-400050. 13. Director National Institute for the Orthopaedically Handicapped BT Road, Bonhooghly Kolkata-700090. 14. Director National Institute of Mental Health & Neuroscience(NIMHANS) Hosur Road Bengaluru-560029. 15. Director National Institute for the Visually Handicapped 116, Rajpur Road Dehradun, Uttarakhand-248001. 16. Director Artificial Limb Manufacturing Corporation of India(ALIMCO) GTRoad Kanpur-209217. 17. Shri Jagdish Kumar Director Department of Disability Affairs Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment Paryavaran Bhawan, CGO Complex New Delhi-110003. 18. Shri Rajesh Arya Director(Trg) Deptt of Personnel & Training Block 4,3rd floor, Old JNU Campus New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi-67. 19. Director General C-DAC, Pune University Campus Ganeshkhind, Pune. 20. The Head Barrier Break Office No. 102, Highway Commercial Complex IB Patel Road, Opp. Laghu Udyog Industrial Estate Goregaon (E), Mumbai-400063. 21. The Head Centre for Internet & Society #194,2nd ‘C’ Cross, Doralur 21"1 Stage Bengaluru-560071. 22. The Head National Association for the Blind (NAB) India R.K. Puram New Delhi-110022. 23. The Head Enable India 1“‘A’Main Road Koramangala, 8* block Bengaluru-560095. 24. Group Coordinator, E-Infrastructure Division, DeitY 25. HoD(TDIL), DeitY 26. HoD(E-infra), DeitY Celebrating Louis Braille birthday Jan4th Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ 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 Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
