of life commemorated International Day of the Disabled on 3 December, under the theme ‘E-accessibility’.
Everywhere we look, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has established itself as a driver and multiplier of knowledge, experience, development and inspiration, and the driving forces behind the transformation of societies to Information or Knowledge societies. Increasingly, the world is shifting from an economic divide to an information divide, with information seeking to supplant money as the new medium of wealth.
The ability of ICT, and in particular the Internet, to transcend geographical, cultural, and political boundaries, and in the process making information a common or social good and a freely exchangeable social commodity, has important implications for human relations and development. Those with ready access to ICT will have access to a wide range of vital information, allowing them to move progressively upwards from lesser to greater levels of efficiency, energy, quality, productivity, complexity, comprehension, enjoyment and accomplishment.
This is the essence of development. Allied to this capacity for social development that is ushered in by ICT, is the capacity for individual development – the constant awakening, reawakening and development of human ideas, values, attitudes, aspirations, skill, knowledge and initiative. The continuous stimulation of these human values and attitudes is critical, for these are the chief determinants of development, and not the instruments created by development.
At the other end of the spectrum, because of the peculiar conditions of their
disability and also because of their lack of access to the fundamental rights
and freedoms that other people take for granted, people with disabilities have
little or no access to ICT, which is specifically the state of affairs that
‘E-accessibility’ seeks to address. This lack of access to ICT isolates them
from a wide range of information, which is crucial to their individual and
collective development.
At the heart of this year’s e-accessibility theme is a simple and all-too-evident reality that society ironically chooses to ignore – that not everyone can see or hear the text displayed on our computer screens which are our main window to ICT, or reach the computer keyboards with their fingers. There is a desperate need to make available disability-friendly technology or assistive technology to enable people with disabilities to access ICT. Such technology would include the procurement and provision of technology such as ‘JAWS’ which reads aloud the words written on computer monitors for the benefit of the visually impaired while complementary techniques such as text and screen enlargement and speech recognition would go a long way towards ensuring e-accessibility for those with partial sight.
Access to Braille technology remains elusive for the majority of visually impaired people while Zimbabwean society still has to come alive to the need to produce and make available assistive technology that would allow wheelchair users to be able to reach and use computer keyboards.
E-accessibility would, however, be meaningless if people with disabilities cannot have access to the built environment, to places where ICT technologies are housed. These include Internet cafes and places of employment, the majority of which are out of reach of people with disabilities as evidenced by a NASCOH research which revealed that 83% of the buildings in the Harare Central Business District area inaccessible to them.
E-accessibility assumes the existence of access to the fundamental rights and freedoms like education, employment, health, sports and recreation for its facilitation. As