A Discussion on E-Governance Initiatives for Disabled Citizens

Disability is not inability. A disability is only actually a disability only when it prevents someone from doing what they want or need to do. Technologies and communication devices help reduce physical barriers. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide a model to allow people with disabilities to better integrate socially and economically into their communities by supporting personal access to information and knowledge, learning and teaching situations, personal communication and interaction and access to educational administrative procedures. When we talk about accessibility issues, removing barriers to accessing ICTs by persons with disabilities is of paramount importance. Government agencies, NGOs and private sector should all come out to remove barriers to access ICTs and work together with the stakeholders so that people with disabilities are able to live independent life.

2010

In its simplest form, the concept of e-Government means the conduction of mutual duties and services between citizens and the state in an uninterrupted and safe manner. In this respect, e-Government enables the provision of public services to the citizens in an electronic/digital environment. This way, the e-Government perspective which tends to replace the bureaucratic and classical state, aims every institution and individual to reach the state via information technology-based systems. In social life, e-Government applications have a great importance in providing equal and indispensible conditions for sustainable development for everyone in the society. An efficient e-Government application necessitates development of services like e-health, e-inclusion and e-learning. In this context, e-Government should be considered as a social inclusion process toward an "Information Society for Everyone" [ISE], especially concerning some groups which have the risk of exclusion. E-Government services, conducted for one of those important risk groups, "people with disabilities", have an unquestionable place in the integration process of this group to social life. In this paper, we examine the extent of the Turkish e-Government services and in particular kinds of services offered to 8,5 million people with disabilities. In general, it is observed that services offered to people with disabilities are concentrated on health, education, employment, social rights-social services, care services and accessibility.

E-government has increasingly been adopted globally by governments in order to enhance the provision of services to citizens and promote inclusive governance. It is perceived that E-government has the potential to significantly improve government-citizen interaction by providing equal access to government services for all citizens. Lack of equal access to E-government services has emerged as one major setback of E-government in achieving its objectives. Studies in E-government have documented how E-government can act as a tool for exclusion particularly for persons with disabilities (PWDs) an already marginalized group if accessibility barriers are not addressed. Developing countries however, have received little attention in this regard which calls for a greater concern; since 80% of the world’s disabled population reside here. Few studies that have been conducted in the developing countries fail to integrate PWDs into the digital society. This calls for the need to examine how researchers conduct studies on E-government accessibility towards PWDs, the research approach they adopt and the understanding they gain of the phenomenon. This paper present findings based on systematic literature review with the purpose of identifying key research foci, methodologies and theoretical perspectives used when studying Egovernment accessibility for PWDs particularly in developing countries.

Disability is not inability. A disability is only actually a disability only when it prevents someone from doing what they want or need to do. Technologies and communication devices help reduce physical barriers. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide a model to allow people with disabilities to better integrate socially and economically into their communities by supporting personal access to information and knowledge, learning and teaching situations, personal communication and interaction and access to educational administrative procedures. When we talk about accessibility issues, removing barriers to accessing ICTs by persons with disabilities is of paramount importance. Government agencies, NGOs and private sector should all come out to remove barriers to access ICTs and work together with the stakeholders so that people with disabilities are able to live independent life.

2012

Network development and the World Wide Web and information technology has considered needs of people with disabilities more than before, and access to this technology creates opportunities for handicaps more than anyone else. Thus walls of discrimination, economic constraints and projects that lead to their deprivation and obstacles their path for participation shall be eliminated. Regarding the high cost of handicaps' life for the governments, findings of this research provided suggestions to increase the presence of handicaps in society by lower costs. This research has studied the current areas for familiarity and access of disables to ICT technology in Tehran. The results of this study show the needs of disabled community to take advantage of ICT technologies and their better and easier access to this technology. While unfortunately, due to the problems mentioned in the article, a significant percentage of the statistical samples in this study despite their desire have lost the opportunity to use and benefit of this technology.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH AND ANALYTICAL REVIEWS, 2019

Purpose: The primary objective of this review paper is to prepare a report on various Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) tools available for Children with Intellectual Disability in India. This is the well-known fact that persons with disabilities still face disadvantages in many aspects of life. This is one of the prime reasons children with disabilities drop rates are high in schools. In the late 20th century the world was very much inclined towards adapting Information and Communication Technologies. There was lots of continuous research in this area showing dramatical change in our daily life. We are now well connected to people around the world. Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) not only provided the opportunities for teaching learning but also in recreational and leisure time activities. Method: This paper reports on an investigation of various Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) tools available for Children with Intellectual Disability in India. To achieve this purpose the investigator has reviewed and analyzed various researches done in this field. Result and Conclusion: The main outcome study is that there are lots of ICTs tools available in the Indian market and National Institutes are also working hard for the betterment of Intellectual Disabilities to provide equal opportunity and full inclusion. Further scope for the research is to analyze these ICTs tools to check the successful practice and implications in an Inclusive Setup in India.

2021

According to World Health Organization (WHO,2011) 15 per cent of the world population consists of Persons Living with Disabilities (PLWDs) of which 80% live in developing countries. Kenya National Bureau of Statistics survey 2009 (KNBS) show that an estimated 1.3 million Kenyans live with vision, hearing, mobility, cognitive disabilities or some form of disability (KNBS,2009). In 2013, the Kenya government initiated Huduma centre programme which is a single point of access to public services. This centres leverage on electronic services and information offered by different public agencies countrywide. This is the government initiative to access public service with ease through technology to her citizens. Therefore, the government Huduma programme will go a long way in providing a very good platform to achieve access, equity, and quality services especially Persons with disabilities. However, the concerns are whether PWD are accessing e-government services or not at these centres. With increasing recognition of rights for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups such as PWDS in Kenya, there is need for government to ensure that the e-services are accessible to all. This paper, therefore, seeks to establish the extent to which PWD access e-government services offered at these centres, highlighting issues PWDs face in accessing the services, drawing lessons. The paper further suggests the way forward in access to quality services for PWDs.

The concept of impairment (of some extend) rather than disability, shifted the perception of technology usage by the disabled people. The contemporary policy in developed countries for the disabled does not reflect only the commitment of these communities for the development and use of the special technology in support for those individuals but, also, for non-discrimination at any level. The rapid developments and relevant innovations in the ICT field, whether wired or wireless, mainly based on the broadband paradigm promise a better quality of life without exceptions and improved results in the battle against the digital divide. The communities worldwide can, reasonably, hope that the, thought as, minorities of the people with disabilities will suffer gradually less from e- exclusion thanks to ICT innovation and supportive state policies.

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2013

To meet the need of digital inclusion and to mitigate the digital divide between disable and general people different ICT interventions are implemented in different developing and developed countries. But question arises to what extent these interventions are successful? Are these interventions are successful for creating new hope and confidence among disabled people? In this w o r k i n g paper we have tried to find the impact of these interventions from actual beneficiary perspectives. We have adopted Technology Acceptance M o d e l (TAM) to know about perceived usefulness an d perceived easiness from the disabled/visually impaired person's perspective. We found that though Technology has provided initial access to technology and information but the users are facing many challenges to overcome language barriers. Our ongoing study also reveals that social issues/ variables are also i m p o r t a n t for getting acceptance of ICT interventions for disabled people.

2012 10th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology, 2012

It is the era of information technology and governments around the world opting for electronic government and official websites are now under the use of a diverse population for the purpose of information retrieval. A number of disabled persons are becoming the part of this society but they are ignored when web projects are planned and developed. If this practice of software development is kept continuing then disabled persons would not take the advantage in the electronic government era. This study evaluates the websites of central government in Pakistan including all ministries and divisions using accessibility evaluation tools based on World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) web accessibility standards. Functional accessibility evaluator and total validator are the tools which are used for the evaluation process. The results shows that most of the web sites are not developed according to the accessibility standards for disabled persons. In the light of these results, recommendations are made to improve the accessibility of these websites for disable persons.