'State cyber space not disabled-friendly'

Despite tall talks about the government efforts to ensure equal justice to persons with disabilities, Kerala's cyber space remains mostly unfriendly for persons with disabilities.

Kerala was among the first states in the country to launch programmes based on information communication technology (ICT) to empower the differently-abled.

In 2007, a project, Insight, was launched with an objective to use ICT. However, even after five years, the state IT department has not managed to make even the government websites disabled-friendly. While the Kerala state IT mission claims to have made its website disabled-friendly, the Centre for Disability Studies here could not fully convert its official website into a disabled-friendly one.

With many government websites failing to comply with the international standards, the court of chief commissioner for persons with disabilities, under the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment, recently directed all chief secretaries to apprise the commission of the action taken by each state to make the government websites disabled-friendly.

In a letter dated January 23, the commissioner directed the chief secretaries to send their reports in 30 days. However, not even the state IT department has received any directive to speed up the efforts to improve their websites.

When contacted, chief secretary K Jose Cyriac said he was not aware of any such directive.

According to IT Mission director Jayasankar Prasad, all government departments have already been told to make their websites disabled-friendly.

"Many government sites, including that of the IT Mission, are accessible to differently-abled persons. However, no auditing has been done yet to ascertain how many government sites really comply with the directives,'' he said.Ends...

Source : TOI , ThiruVanthapuram ( 24th Feb 2013 )