From Nabil Eid – people with disabilities and teleworking

13006656_1721388061464890_4359206595524278481_nThis is the text of a recent post on Facebook from Nabil Eid, who has done much to champion the use of ICTs by people with disabilities:

“Dear friends, kindly find my blog this week at Telecentre.org http://bit.ly/1qPWsSQ . Hope to get your opinion!
A new survey around telecommuting indicates that 81% of professionals with disabilities would like to teleworking, at least part time.
Today’s ICT innovation is changing the world, world of Assistive Technology (AT) and high-speed Internet access mean new choices and good paying options for people who want the flexibility and convenience of careers that don’t require commuting to an office, or working for someone else.
It is a possible form of employment for persons with disabilities provided care is taken over selection of workers, identification of work that is suited to the telework format and management of telework units by employers.
‪#‎Teleworking‬ ‪#‎Telework‬ ‪#‎employment‬ ‪#‎telecommuting‬ ‪#‎Remote_working‬ ‪#‎Job‬ ‪#‎Disability‬ ‪#‎PWD‬ ‪#‎persons_with_disabilities‬ ‪#‎working_at_home‬ ‪#‎Assistive‬ ‪#‎technology‬ ‪#‎AT‬ ‪#‎ICT‬ ‪#‎accessibility‬ ‪#‎A11y‬ ‪#‎Middle_East‬ ‪#‎MENA‬ ‪#‎Arab_sates‬“

Vashkar Bhattacharjee

Great to see this new story from the Daisy Consortium about the great work being done by Vashkar Bhattacharjee and the YPSA: “Vashkar Bhattacharjee has climbed what would seem to many people around the world as an unscalable summit. His achievements are many, and he continues to strive to improve the lives of people with disabilities in his country, Bangladesh. Vashkar has attended numerous international conferences and has, on behalf of his organization, YPSA, received several awards in recognition of their accomplishments. The odds against this are very high. In his story Vashkar tells us how he overcame those odds.”

I still remember how inspirational he was at the ICTD2010 conference that we ran at Royal Holloway, University of London!

Refurbished assistive technology

I have long thought that it is close to obscene that ICTs designed to suport people with disabilities are often much more expensive than the standard computers and mobile ‘phones that most of us take for granted. In large part, this is because of relatively low demand for assistive technologies.

However, ICTs can transform the lives of people with serious disabilities much more than they can help those of us who have fewer disabilities. There is a huge debate about the value (or otherwise) of refurbished computers being sent to the poorer countries of the world – and there are clearly examples of good and bad practices in this field. Ideally we should strive to bring down prices of assistive technology so that people in poorer countries can afford them – but the reality is that this is unlikely to happen. It is great to see some companies such as Apple, building its universal access software into every computer it sells – but everyone is not so enlightened.

I am therefore exploring the possibility of working with companies producing assistive technology hardware and existing computer refurbishment organisations to collect and distribute such hardware to people in the poorer countries of the world. I would be really interested in people’s thoughts on this – and particularly on offers of help.

In the meanwhile, the ICT4D Collective has a page on accessibility/disability which might be of interest to readers of this blog!