Delhi , July 20, 2013: As per the Websites assessment carried out by the Ministry of Personnel during the last month, through the National Informatics Centre (NIC) on directions from the Cabinet Secretariat, which was the first of such exercise, only two of its over 200 Websites are disabled-friendly.
The websites which were found accessible to the disabled were of Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment according to the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW), which is essential for making websites accessible to the disabled.
In a memorandum issued on July 5, the ministry of personnel asked all government ministries and departments to make their websites fully compliant with GIGW so as to make them disabled-friendly. The GIGW makes it mandatory for all government websites to abide by international accessibility standards and guidelines.
An institution National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), looking after for the welfare of disabled people, had written to Prime Minister expressing concern over how most of the disabled people in India found it difficult to access government websites.
However, there are assistive technologies which allow the disabled to browse internet and it is possible only on those websites which conform to the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for people with disabilities like blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these.