Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology
Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology

Author: Jonathan Lazar

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2017-05-12

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0812294092

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Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology addresses the global issue of equal access to information and communications technology (ICT) by persons with disabilities. The right to access the same digital content at the same time and at the same cost as people without disabilities is implicit in several human rights instruments and is featured prominently in Articles 9 and 21 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The right to access ICT, moreover, invokes complementary civil and human rights issues: freedom of expression; freedom to information; political participation; civic engagement; inclusive education; the right to access the highest level of scientific and technological information; and participation in social and cultural opportunities. Despite the ready availability and minimal cost of technology to enable people with disabilities to access ICT on an equal footing as consumers without disabilities, prevailing practice around the globe continues to result in their exclusion. Questions and complexities may also arise where technologies advance ahead of existing laws and policies, where legal norms are established but not yet implemented, or where legal rights are defined but clear technical implementations are not yet established. At the intersection of human-computer interaction, disability rights, civil rights, human rights, international development, and public policy, the volume's contributors examine crucial yet underexplored areas, including technology access for people with cognitive impairments, public financing of information technology, accessibility and e-learning, and human rights and social inclusion. Contributors: John Bertot, Peter Blanck, Judy Brewer, Joyram Chakraborty, Tim Elder, Jim Fruchterman, G. Anthony Giannoumis, Paul Jaeger, Sanjay Jain, Deborah Kaplan, Raja Kushalnagar, Jonathan Lazar, Fredric I. Lederer, Janet E. Lord, Ravi Malhotra, Jorge Manhique, Mirriam Nthenge, Joyojeet Pal, Megan A. Rusciano, David Sloan, Michael Ashley Stein, Brian Wentz, Marco Winckler, Mary J. Ziegler.

World Development Report 2016
World Development Report 2016

Author: World Bank Group

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2016-01-14

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1464806721

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Digital technologies are spreading rapidly, but digital dividends--the broader benefits of faster growth, more jobs, and better services--are not. If more than 40 percent of adults in East Africa pay their utility bills using a mobile phone, why can’t others around the world do the same? If 8 million entrepreneurs in China--one third of them women--can use an e-commerce platform to export goods to 120 countries, why can’t entrepreneurs elsewhere achieve the same global reach? And if India can provide unique digital identification to 1 billion people in five years, and thereby reduce corruption by billions of dollars, why can’t other countries replicate its success? Indeed, what’s holding back countries from realizing the profound and transformational effects that digital technologies are supposed to deliver? Two main reasons. First, nearly 60 percent of the world’s population are still offline and can’t participate in the digital economy in any meaningful way. Second, and more important, the benefits of digital technologies can be offset by growing risks. Startups can disrupt incumbents, but not when vested interests and regulatory uncertainty obstruct competition and the entry of new firms. Employment opportunities may be greater, but not when the labor market is polarized. The internet can be a platform for universal empowerment, but not when it becomes a tool for state control and elite capture. The World Development Report 2016 shows that while the digital revolution has forged ahead, its 'analog complements'--the regulations that promote entry and competition, the skills that enable workers to access and then leverage the new economy, and the institutions that are accountable to citizens--have not kept pace. And when these analog complements to digital investments are absent, the development impact can be disappointing. What, then, should countries do? They should formulate digital development strategies that are much broader than current information and communication technology (ICT) strategies. They should create a policy and institutional environment for technology that fosters the greatest benefits. In short, they need to build a strong analog foundation to deliver digital dividends to everyone, everywhere.

Ensuring Digital Accessibility through Process and Policy
Ensuring Digital Accessibility through Process and Policy

Author: Jonathan Lazar

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann

Published: 2015-06-03

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0128007109

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Ensuring Digital Accessibility through Process and Policy provides readers with a must-have resource to digital accessibility from both a technical and policy perspective. Inaccessible digital interfaces and content often lead to forms of societal discrimination that may be illegal under various laws. This book is unique in that it provides a multi-disciplinary understanding of digital accessibility. The book discusses the history of accessible computing, an understanding of why digital accessibility is socially and legally important, and provides both technical details (interface standards, evaluation methods) and legal details (laws, lawsuits, and regulations). The book provides real-world examples throughout, highlighting organizations that are doing an effective job with providing equal access to digital information for people with disabilities. This isn't a book strictly about interface design, nor is it a book strictly about law. For people who are charged with implementing accessible technology and content, this book will serve as a one-stop guide to understanding digital accessibility, offering an overview of current laws, regulations, technical standards, evaluation techniques, as well as best practices and suggestions for implementing solutions and monitoring for compliance. This combination of skills from the three authors—law, technical, and research, with experience in both corporate, government, and educational settings, is unique to this book, and does not exist in any other book about any aspect of IT accessibility. The authors' combination of skills marks a unique and valuable perspective, and provides insider knowledge on current best practices, corporate policies, and technical instructions. Together, we can ensure that the world of digital information is open to all users. - Learn about the societal and organizational benefits of making information technology accessible for people with disabilities - Understand the interface guidelines, accessibility evaluation methods, and compliance monitoring techniques, needed to ensure accessible content and technology - Understand the various laws and regulations that require accessible technology - Learn from case studies of organizations that are successfully implementing accessibility in their technologies and digital content

Discrimination, Copyright and Equality
Discrimination, Copyright and Equality

Author: Paul Harpur

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-03

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1108210570

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While equality laws operate to enable access to information, these laws have limited power over the overriding impact of market forces and copyright laws that focus on restricting access to information. Technology now creates opportunities for everyone in the world, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, to be able to access the written word – yet the print disabled are denied reading equality, and have their access to information limited by laws protecting the mainstream use and consumption of information. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the World Intellectual Property Organization's Marrakesh Treaty have swept in a new legal paradigm. This book contributes to disability rights scholarship, and builds on ideas of digital equality and rights to access in its analysis of domestic disability anti-discrimination, civil rights, human rights, constitutional rights, copyright and other equality measures that promote and hinder reading equality.

Accessible Technology and the Developing World
Accessible Technology and the Developing World

Author: Michael Ashley Stein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-10-13

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 019258541X

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When digital content and technologies are designed in a way that is inaccessible for persons with disabilities, they are locked out of commerce, education, employment, and access to government information. In developing areas of the world, as new technical infrastructures are being built, it is especially important to ensure that accessibility is a key design goal. Unfortunately, nearly all research on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility and innovation for persons with disabilities-whether from the legal, technical, or development fields-has focused on developed countries, with very little being written about developing world initiatives. Accessible Technology and the Developing World aims to change this, by bringing increased attention to ICT accessibility in developing areas. This book brings together a unique combination of contributors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including authors from well-known non-governmental organizations, significant United Nations entities, and universities in both the developing and developed world. Together, they present a unique and much needed review of this critical and growing area of work, and primarily address three core themes - the lack of attention given to innovations taking place in the developing world, the need to ensure that infrastructures in the Global South do not present barriers to people with disabilities, and the need to exercise caution when applying techniques from the Global North to the Global South that won't transfer effectively. This book will be of use to researchers in the fields of civil rights, development studies, disability rights, disability studies, human-computer interaction and accessibility, human rights, international law, political science, and universal design.

International Perspectives on Disability Exceptions in Copyright Law and the Visual Arts
International Perspectives on Disability Exceptions in Copyright Law and the Visual Arts

Author: Jani McCutcheon

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-27

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1000193551

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This book provides an overview of disability exceptions to copyright infringement and the international and human rights legal framework for disability rights and exceptions. The focus is on those exceptions as they apply to visual art, while the book presents a comprehensive study of copyright’s disability exceptions per se and the international and human rights law framework in which they are situated. 3D printing now allows people with a visual impairment to experience 3D reproductions of paintings, drawings and photographs through touch. At the same time, the uncertain application of existing disability exceptions to these reproductions may generate concerns about legal risk, hampering sensory art projects and reducing inclusivity and equity in cultural engagement by people with a visual impairment. The work adopts an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions from diverse stakeholders, including persons with disabilities, cultural institutions and the 3D printing industry. The book sketches the scene relating to sensory art projects. Experts in intellectual property, human rights, disability and art law then critically analyse the current legal landscape relating to disability access to works of visual art at both international and regional levels, as well as across a broad representative sample of national jurisdictions, and identify where legal reform is required. This comparative analysis of the laws aims to better inform stakeholders of the applicable legal landscape, the legal risks and opportunities associated with sensory art and the opportunities for reform and best practice guidelines, with the overarching goal of facilitating international harmonisation of the law and enhanced inclusivity.

Disability Human Rights Law 2018
Disability Human Rights Law 2018

Author: Anna Arstein-Kerslake (Ed.)

Publisher: MDPI

Published: 2018-11-14

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 3038972509

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This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Disability Human Rights Law" that was published in Laws

The Routledge International Handbook of Disability Human Rights Hierarchies
The Routledge International Handbook of Disability Human Rights Hierarchies

Author: Stephen J. Meyers

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 552

ISBN-13: 1000959732

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Disability is defined by hierarchy. Regardless of culture or context, persons with disabilities are almost always pushed to the bottom of the social hierarchy. With the advent of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), disability human rights seemingly provided a path forward for tearing down ableist social hierarchies and ensuring that all persons with disabilities everywhere were treated equally. Despite important progress, the disability human rights project not only remains incomplete, but has often created new hierarchies among persons with disabilities themselves or across the human rights it promotes. Certain groups of persons with disabilities have gained new voices while others remain silenced and certain rights are prioritized over others depending on what states, international organizations, or advocates want rather than what those on the ground need most. This volume was inspired both by the continued need to expose human rights violations against persons with disabilities, but to also explore the nuanced role that hierarchies play in the spread, implementation, and protection of disability human rights. The enjoyment of human rights is not equal nor is the recognition of specific individuals and groups’ rights. In order to change this situation, inequalities across the disability human rights movement must be explored. Divided into five parts: Who counts as disabled? Political, social, and cultural context Which rights on top, whose rights on bottom? Pushed to the periphery in the disability rights movement Representations of disability and comprised of 34 newly-written chapters including case-studies from the Anglophone Caribbean, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Ghana, Haiti, Hungary, India, Israel, Kenya, Latin America, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Serbia and South Africa, and other countries, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, human rights law and social policy.

Making Computers Accessible
Making Computers Accessible

Author: Elizabeth R. Petrick

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 1421416476

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The revolution in accessible computer technology was fueled by disability activism, the interactive nature of personal computers, and changing public policy. In 1974, not long after developing the first universal optical character recognition technology, Raymond Kurzweil struck up a conversation with a blind man on a flight. Kurzweil explained that he was searching for a use for his new software. The blind man expressed interest: One of the frustrating obstacles that blind people grappled with, he said, was that no computer program could translate text into speech. Inspired by this chance meeting, Kurzweil decided that he must put his new innovation to work to “overcome this principal handicap of blindness.” By 1976, he had built a working prototype, which he dubbed the Kurzweil Reading Machine. This type of innovation demonstrated the possibilities of computers to dramatically improve the lives of people living with disabilities. In Making Computers Accessible, Elizabeth R. Petrick tells the compelling story of how computer engineers and corporations gradually became aware of the need to make computers accessible for all people. Motivated by user feedback and prompted by legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, which offered the promise of equal rights via technological accommodation, companies developed sophisticated computerized devices and software to bridge the accessibility gap. People with disabilities, Petrick argues, are paradigmatic computer users, demonstrating the personal computer’s potential to augment human abilities and provide for new forms of social, professional, and political participation. Bridging the history of technology, science and technology studies, and disability studies, this book traces the psychological, cultural, and economic evolution of a consumer culture aimed at individuals with disabilities, who increasingly rely on personal computers to make their lives richer and more interconnected.

Being Heumann
Being Heumann

Author: Judith Heumann

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2020-02-25

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 080701950X

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A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year for Nonfiction "...an essential and engaging look at recent disability history."— Buzzfeed One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.