The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in close collaboration with Asia Pacific Centre for Information and Communication Technology (APCICT) and National Information Society Agency (NIA), is organizing “The Second Regional Workshop on the Enhancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities” to be held from 13 to 15 October at APCICT in Incheon, Republic of Korea.
Information and communication technology (ICT) has provided an added opportunity to promote economic and social development of the global community and will continue to do so in the future. ICT often means better prospects for work, information or social relations for individuals. As a result, ICT accessibility tends to be a prerequisite for daily lives and achievements. However, these benefits led by ICT development do not necessarily provide opportunities for all people. Rather ICT can present yet another challenge for persons who cannot access it, including persons with disabilities, elderly persons and other vulnerable people. P roviding accessibility to ICT for them therefore constitutes a challenge that needs to be tackled in order to achieve inclusive development.
The global community has been endeavouring to meet this challenge. Two meetings of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), were held in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis in 2005, where world leaders adopted the “Geneva Declaration of Principles” and the “Tunis Commitment”, and committed their countries to building people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented information societies. These summits also clearly emphasized that, in order to build inclusive information societies, national e-strategies should address the special needs of marginalized and vulnerable groups of society, especially persons with disabilities and older persons. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which was adopted in 2006 and entered into force on 3 May 2008, requires that persons with disabilities enjoy all human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with others. Among these rights, the Convention pays special attention to the importance of ICT accessibility, which mandates States parties to take appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to information and communication. In the Asian and Pacific region, ESCAP has been working to enhance ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities. In the Biwako Millennium Framework (BMF), which is the main policy guideline on disability in Asia and the Pacific, and Biwako plus Five, which specifies advanced follow-up strategies for further efforts towards an inclusive, barrier-free and rights-based society for persons with disability, ESCAP Members and Associate Members have designated ICT accessibility as one of the seven priority areas and they have been endeavouring to enhance ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities.
In this context, ESCAP has planned to organize regional workshops on the enhancement of ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities, and the first regional workshop was held in Incheon, Republic of Korea , from 29 September to 2 October, 2008. The first regional Workshop, bringing together more than 40 participants, provided the stakeholders, including policy makers with a useful opportunity to review international norms and various policy tools of ICT accessibility, to discuss and adopt recommendations on policy guidelines on ICT accessibility for persons with disability, and to strengthen the networks of experts in this area.
The overall goal of the second Regional Workshop is to help ESCAP Members enhance ICT accessibility for persons with disabilities through:
