[WSIS CS-Plenary] observation of the PrepCom3 from disability point of view

[Hiroshi Kawamura]

Dear All:

At the last stage of PrepCom3 there are so many new documents for 
negotiation of Governments and a lot of drafting group discussions generates 
new texts.

For your convenience, I put the web address of the most current list of 
PrepCom3 documents:

http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing-all.asp?lang=en&c_event=pc2|3&c_type=all|

I observe that in the document 
http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/pc3/working/dt12.pdf, unfortunately available 
only in pdf format, there are two paragraphs currently two paragraphs refer 
to PWD; para 10 and para 11A.

"Assitive technogies and universal design" is mentioned in para 10.

On the Internet governance, I submitted a written intervention as follows 
and handed out to government delegations of EU, Japan, South Africa and New 
Zealand as follows:

"Accessibility of the Internet is one of the key issues of persons with 
disabilities in next 10 years. Although there are well recognized guidelines 
and standards for web accessibility at national as well as international 
level such as the Web Accessibility Guidelines of W3C, continuous awareness 
raising and participation of persons with disabilities in the implementation 
process is the key to successful implementation of guidelines and standards.
The WSIS process itself must show the best practice of awareness raising and 
guarantee full participation of persons with disabilities.
Assistive technologies for Internet access has been developed to give 
alternative access channels for persons with various disabilities so far. 
However, the availability of those technologies is very limited in terms of 
its cost, language and geographical region.
We find the cost of screen reading tools in some language much higher than 
computer itself. Voice synthesiser and voice recognition system are key 
access technologies for persons with various disabilities. But availability 
of those technologies in local languages are extremely limited.
We urge governments, intergovernmental organizations, private sectors and 
Civil Society, firstly to develop and implement Internet accessibility 
guidelines and standards, and secondly, to promote universal design concept 
including development of key access technologies to guarantee digital 
opportunity without extra cost for individuals with special needs.

Therefore, on behalf of the WSIS Disability Caucus I would like to propose 
to add the following 2 sub paragraphs to para 57 of $B!H(BDocument 
WSIS-II/PC-3/DT/10-E$B!I(B.

d) Implementing Internet accessibility guidelines and standards at national 
as well as international level

e) Promoting universal design concept including development of key access 
technologies to guarantee digital opportunity without extra cost for 
individuals with special needs."

Subcommittee A on the Internet Governance will meet at 19:00-. No body knows 
when it will end.
Since Monday this week, Subcommittees meets until 21:00 everyday. Some of 
the drafting groups worked all night.

- Hiroshi Kawamura, Palais des Nations, Geneva