Category: Disability

Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: An Emancipatory Manifesto – officially published today

It’s an exciting day: Digital Inclusion in an Unequal World: An Emancipatory Manifesto is officially published today. Find out more at https://ict4d.org.uk/diuw (or http://digital-inclusion.org) – and for a short period get 20% off the recommended price!

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, especially:

  • The 31 authors of the vignettes – listen to them reading their descriptions on our podcast.
  • All those at Routledge who had faith in the book and who helped in its production, especially Helena Hurd, Katerina Lade, Susan Dunsmore (copy-editor), and Jen Hicks (production)
  • Those who read parts of it in draft and provided valuable comments and advice (see the Acknowledgements)
  • And above all those with whom I have worked over the last 50 years and inspired my to write the book!

Upcoming launch events

I’m delighted to share the news that we will be having a series of launch events and discussions around the themes of the book in different locations around the world, including

  • April 20th: at UNU-EGOV in Guimarães, Portugal
  • June (precise date to be confirmed, but between 1st and 6th): Accra, Ghana
  • July (c.6th-8th): coinciding with WSIS Annual Forum and AIforGood (or Bad)
  • December (7th or 8th): Kuala Lumpur
  • London – dates to be confirmed
  • Kathmandu, Nepal – date to be confirmed

At these events copies of the book will be available with a 30% discount.

Links

To find out more about the book, do explore the links below:

Read what people are saying about the book

Our new identity as the ICT4D Collective

As of 1st August 2023, the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London has reverted to its original identity as the ICT4D Collective. We are a group of very diverse researchers and practitioners from across the world, bound together by our commitment to the highest possible quality of research-practice relating to the use of digital technologies in the interests of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people.

Meeting staff and students at the NIC's ICT and Electronics Innovation Lab in Pokhara, Nepal, July 2023
Our last engagement as members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D: meeting staff and students at the NIC’s ICT and Electronics Innovation Lab in Pokhara, Nepal, July 2023

The Collective and the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D

The original ICT4D Collective was created in 2004, and evolved through an agreement in 2007 between UNESCO and Royal Holloway, University of London into the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development). UNESCO Chairs are groups of researchers in specific institutions undertaking work of direct relevance to UNESCO’s fields of competence, and they promote “international inter-university cooperation and networking to enhance institutional capacities through knowledge sharing and collaborative work”. Members of our UNESCO Chair have been very proud to have been associated with UNESCO for the last 16 years, and to have collaborated closely with many good friends in UNESCO’s Paris headquarters and field offices. We were also honoured that Houlin Zhao, the Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) between January 2015 and January 2023, and Jean Philbert Nsengimana, former Minister of Youth and Information and Communication Technology (MYICT) from Rwanda, were our Honorary Patrons.

The following are some of the things we have particularly enjoyed engaging in over the last 16 years:

  • Working together collegially in a truly multidisciplinary context, involving colleagues from Computer Science, Geography, Information Security, Law and Managament at Royal Holloway, University of London.
  • Creating one of the largest groups of postgraduates completing PhDs in the field of ICT4D during the late 2000s and early 2010s.
  • Crafting an extensive partnership network involving governments, the private sector and civil society, and sharing the lessons we have learnt about making partnerships successful.
  • Contributing our experiences in global discussions around the role of digital tech in international development, especially in the UN’s WSIS process (since its origins in 2003), and UNESCO’s many gatherings relating to education and technology.
  • Playing a leading role in the World Economic Forum and UNESCO’s Partnerships for Education initiative.
  • Working on the ground in support of diverse groups of marginalised people, especially those with disabilities, out of school youth, women in patriarchal societies, and migrants and refugees.
  • Being recognised as the 7th most influential global think tank in science and technology in the Go To Think Tanks Index Report for 2015 (we remained 15th in the 2020 index)

Quick links to aspects of our new identity

We are now re-energised as the ICT4D Collective, with 22 founding members drawn from 13 countries – we welcome new members who share our aims and principles. Quick links to our research and practice are available below:

An exciting future…

We all look forward to continuing the work started by the original ICT4D Collective almost 20 years ago, although we remain very sad that the new leadership team at Royal Holloway, University of London did not see value in the institution continuing to have a UNESCO Chair. Perhaps we represented voices from the past; perhaps we have been too critical and anarchic; perhaps we have just been honest and spoken truth to power. Whatever the reason, we will continue to have fun working together, we will continue to challenge the status quo, we will continue to point out the many harms caused by the use of digital tech, and we will continue to work with and support the world’s poorest and most marginalised peoples.

Akber Gardezi awarded for his work for blind people in Pakistan

It is with great pleasure that we report that Dr. Akber Gardezi (Assistant Professor at COMSATS University, Pakistan, and the Inter Islamic Network on Information Technology) and an Affiliated Member of our UNESCO Chair in ICT4D has received this year’s Saima Ammar award for his work in using digital technologies to support people with disabilities in Pakistan.  The award is made annually by the Young Women Writers Forum (based in Islamabad) in association with Sightsavers, and this year it was made during a ceremony at Rawalpindi Women University.

The award was created in 2011 in memory of Saima Ammar, who had bAkber awardeen a very active member of the Young Women Writers Forum, and had recently passed away battling Multiple Sclerosis.  The Forum did not have any funding available and so they contacted Sightsavers with whom they had an existing MoU to help and support Blind Women Writers in Pakistan.  The first “award” (but not in a physical sense) was a small gathering of like minded people who supported the cause of empowering women and overall inclusion more generally. As the years passed by this gathering which always took place around the 15th of October began a regular feature to honour visually impaired people who had done substantial work within the community.  For the last 3-4 years they have also sought nominations from the wider community to include sighted people working for the service of visually impaired people.

Akber.GardeziAkber writes “I am deeply humbled and thankful to my vision impaired friends who recommended my name for this award. This is very special for me as it links me to the memory of the late Saima Ammar. She was a symbol of activism and defiance; she is someone who fought the cause for access to education for people with disabilities in Pakistan. She is someone who did not let blindness be a burden on her life, but rather used it as a motivation. She did not lead a very comfortable and luxurious life herself but played an immense role promoting educational culture among the visual impaired community of Pakistan. She founded Pakistan Foundation Fighting Blindness (PFFB) and initiated the Audio World Project in 1995 with the aim of providing education, information and entertainment to visually impaired persons through audio books. Let this be a reminder for us all to keep fighting the good fight and remember Saima in our thoughts and prayers”.

Digital technologies and accessibility: from rhetoric to reality – at WSIS 2019

Accessibillity 1Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and our colleagues at the Inter-Islamic Network on Information Technology (INIT) were delighted to have convened and hosted the first session on Accessibility Day (8th April) at this year’s tenth anniversary WSIS Annual Forum held in Geneva.  The theme was “Digital technologies and accessibility: from rhetoric to reality”, and our session began with three short opening presentations:

Building on these inspiring presentations, participants then turned their attention to discussing what still needs to be done to turn rhetoric into reality with respect to the empowerment of people with disabilities through ICTs.  This was captured in the mind map below (link to a detailed and expandable .pdf file of the mind map):

What must we do to turn rhetoric into reality so that people with disabilities can be empowered through digital technologies

This discussion highlighted the continuing need for work in ten main areas:

  • Holistic approaches
  • Enabling voices of people with disabilities
  • Policies and legislation
  • Partnerships
  • Leadership
  • Differentiation between universal inclusion and assistive technologies
  • Training, awareness and capacity building
  • Building appropriate technologies
  • Finances
  • Delivering commitments

Working together, we can all contribute to the empowerment of people with disabilities (details of some of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D’s activities and resources supporting people with disabilities).

Chairholder on Teledifusão de Macau talk show discussing ICT4D

KelseyTim Unwin, our Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D,  was recently in Macau and Shenzhen, China, in his role as a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University Computing and Society Institute.  During this visit, colleagues at the Institute had arranged for him to participate in Teledifusão de Macau (TDM)’s prime time Talk Show with Kelsey Wilhelm.  This was a great opportunity to share some of his current thinking about the interface between digital technologies and humans!

The show is now available on YouTube, and begins with an overview of the current state of ICT for development, before going on to discuss

  • ways through which people with disabilities can be empowered through the use of technology,
  • the importance of new technologies being inclusive, because otherwise they lead to new inequalities,
  • working “with” the poorest and most marginalised rather than for them,
  • the role of new technologies such as AI and blockchain in serving the interests of the rich rather than the poor,
  • cyborgs and the creation of machine-humans and human-machines, and finally
  • some of the ethical issues that need to be discussed if we are to balance the benefits of new technologies whilst limiting their harm.

We need much wider public debate on these issues!

UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, UNESCAP and INIT expert meeting on inclusion and technology, August 2018 Bangkok

c3b9b34c-aa2d-44ad-87a7-6991e82c0f56Members of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D were delighted to work with colleagues from UN ESCAP and INIT (The Inter-Islamic Network on IT) to moderate an expert meeting  on inclusion and technology on 30th August 2018 on the margins of the ESCAP Regional Consultation on Inclusive Technology and Innovation Policies (28-29 August) which was held in the run-up to the ESCAP Committee on Information and Communications Technology and Science, Technology and Innovation, Second Session (29-31 August) in Bangkok.  This provided a valuable forum for participants to discuss the main impediments preventing persons with disabilities in Asia and the Pacific from being empowered through technologies, and to identify priority policy actions to overcome these.  It included a small number of short presentations, but most of the time was spend by participants in co-creating mind-maps around three key questions which are summarised below:

Main outputs co-created by participants

Presentations

Information and Communication Technologies: resolving inequalities

It was great to be invited to give a lecture in the Societat Catalana de Geografia in Barcelona on the subject of “Information and Communication Technologies: resolving inequalities?” on Tuesday 4th October in the Ciclo de Conferencias Programa Jean Monnet convened by my great friend Prof. Jordi Marti Henneberg on the theme of Los Desafîos de lintegración Europea.  This was such an honour, especially since I had the privilege of following the former President of the European Union Josep Borrell’s excellent lecture earlier in the day on El Brexit y sus consequencias en la goberabilidad de la Unión Europea.

lectureThis was an opportunity for me to explore the relevance to the European context of some of my ideas about ICTs and inequality gleaned from research and practice in Africa and Asia.  In essence, my argument was that we need to balance the economic growth agenda with much greater focus on using ICTs to reduce inequalities if we are truly to use ICTs to support greater European integration.  To do this, I concluded by suggesting  that we need to concentrate on seven key actions:

  • working with the poor rather than for the poor
  • pro-poor technological innovation – not the “next billion” but the “first” billion
  • governments have a  key role to play through the use of regulation as facilitation in the interests of the poor and marginalised
  • crafting of appropriate multi-sector partnerships
  • managing security and resilience against the dark side
  • enhancing learning and understanding, both within governments and by individuals
  • working with the most disadvantaged, people with disabilities, street children, and women in patriarchal societies

ICTs empowering people with disabilities

People with disabilities are amongst the most marginalised people in the world, especially in some of the poorer countries of Africa and Asia.  Yet, those with greater disabilities can be empowered far more through the appropriate use of ICTs than can those who claim to have no disabilities.  The global community needs to do very much more to develop appropriate policies and practices to ensure that people with disabilities are not further marginalised because they are unable to access and use ICTs effectively.  To this end, I am developing a small website that provides information and useful links for all those working on ICTs and disabilities – do visit https://disabilityict4d.wordpress.com/ – and more importantly please share information about this hugely important agenda.

Tim