Internet improving lives of persons with disabilities
Interview of Arun Mehta,
President, BAPSI.org, by Panini Anand, BBC
Panini: There is no doubt that Internet
has provided a modern
low-cost, fast and world-class network to major part of
the world with a means of communication to access information, learn,
understand. Yet more than 10% of the population in the
world consists of people who are unaware of these means of
communication. I am talking about the population which is disabled or
mentally challenged.
Arun: I believe that they have a
different way looking and doing things. we should understand different
abilities in them instead of considering them as disabled.
The earlier means of communication like newspaper, radio,
Television assume that everybody can listen, can see, have two normal
hands, can turn pages of a newspaper.
Under such a
scenario, computer is totally a different kind of medium. If you are
visually challenged, no issues, you could listen to what the visual is
about. You can work with a single button or such similar facility, in
case the hands are disabled enough to use a keyboard or a mouse. You can
operate the computer with your eyes, with one or two buttons, or
through your mind. Facility for automatic captioning has developed for
persons with problem in hearing. Computer can also do translation to
different languages.
Our aim is to find how Internet
and Computer can help making lives better for such persons and how this
very effective medium can help people living in such challenging
situations.
A Great Example
Here I
would like to give example of well known scientist, physician and Writer
Prof. Stephen Hawking. He is a great personality, but for him
everything is made possible through a one button device. We have the
privilege to met him and work for him.
The software
with which Prof. Hawking works is called Equalizer. This is operated
through one button. He can type from one button and this software has an
option to read out the typed-in text. Computer gives voice to what he
has written.
His software runs on a 20 year old
hardware, which is not being manufactured anymore. The voice will be
gone if the hardware gets damaged.
What we did was that
we made a better support system for his software using modern
technology so that if for some reason his system stops working, his
speech and writing would not be affected.
For us
the matter is not limited to Prof. Hawking only. Our effort is to make
support systems for lot of other people who are living with similar kind
of disabilities.
Disabilities are of many kinds and
this poses a big challenge. For different kind of disability different
software would be required. Not only this, the requirements also
increase as the person grows in age.
Role of Internet
When I returned to India on the 80s, I faced a sort of
disability because I could not access much information on computers as I
required. I am a Consultant and that also increased my worries, like
where should I go to increase my knowledge, who should I ask. The first
thing that Internet did was, we got a lot of information in various
forms that we required.
Now our work in how to forward
the information which we received to other people.
In
many places people are using skype and other chat websites to
communicate their messages to others. People have also experimented
teaching Carnatic music and Shashtriya Sangeet through the Internet.
Persons with disability can also do the work which is being outsourced.
The difference between the disabled and normal person disappear on a
computer.
No concrete efforts
United
Nations has formulated a document called the UN Convention for Rights of
Persons With Disabilities, which is a very good document. Many
countries across the world have adopted this. But, it is not being
followed properly. Actually, our government has not implemented it
properly in its affairs and processes. One have to struggle so that any
kind of service to reach the people.
The disabled are
not involved in policies for themselves when government drafts these.
We urge that Government should amend the whole process. To
include them policy formulation, in approving any infrastructure.
Disability should be given due importance, similar to the way a software
is tested before it is adopted.