Fifty govt websites to be made disabled friendly

Disabled rights groups have approached the IT ministry with a list of 50 government websites like
that of the Indian Railways, Central Information Commission and Income Tax Department which they
want to be made disabled friendly.
"We have identified 50 organisations and departments in the government. We have sent a proposal
to the IT ministry to make sites of these WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines) 2.0
compliant, thereby making them disabled friendly. The ministry has shown a very positive outlook
on this," Javed Abidi, convener of the Disabled Rights Group, said.
According to Abidi, such a move would simplify the Internet interface for people with disability
by making the websites compatible with the special software they use to access websites.
"With an aim to enable disabled people to be a part of e-governance, we came to a consensus on
the list after discussions with various disability groups across the country. Simple things like
booking a rail ticket will be possible for people with visual impairment once the site carries
out technical changes," he said.
Abidi, who is also director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled
People (NCPEDP) - an umbrella organisation of various NGOs and civil society organisations
working on disability issues - said that 99.99 percent of the estimated 5,000 websites and web
portals hosted by the government of India listed by the National Information Centre (NIC) can't
be accessed by people with disability.
At the e-governance conference in Goa February 12, it was announced that all government websites
would be made WCAG 2.0 compliant.
These government websites would now enable web access to a wider range of people with
disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning
disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities and photosensitivity.
The challenge, Abidi said, was to make existing sites WCAG 2.0 compliant and sensitise concerned
government departments.
"While the IT ministry initiated immediate action and made India's largest sites - india.gov.in
and bharat.gov.in - accessible to the disabled, the social justice and empowerment ministry
continues to drag its feet. It is ironic that it is this ministry that is supposedly nodal for
various issues concerning disabled people," he said.
Abidi added the website of the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped (NIVH) was not
accessible to visually impaired people.
"Similarly, the CCPD (Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities) website is still not
accessible to people with disabilities. And they are supposedly the watchdogs for any Disability
Act violations that may occur," he said.