Thursday, May 21, 2009

Building a Destination for All, St. John USVI

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Universal Design: The Seven Principles

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Making The Election Process Accessible to all - an out of box rethinking is necessary

Dear Friends,

Here is my article on making the election process in India accessible to all that I wrote today:

Introduction
India has recently voted in an unprecedented election wherein Indian National Congress emerged as the strongest and the single largest party though with not a clear majority. The overall voting percentage that is being put forward is 50%. I am amazed that despite India being the IT giant, with resources in hand why do we still have to follow the means of the bye gone era where voters lined up for several hours to cast their vote!! I learnt that within my close circle so many couldn't vote. Few travelling, few had official trips & one couple was so old that they couldn't venture out of the house at all. I also learnt from my interaction that all those on poll duty are not able to vote – this includes sizable chunk of teachers and government employees and security forces put on election duty. Their right to vote is denied.

Access at Booths for voters with Disability
On the top of it, our friends in the Disability Sector too, without thinking out of box, campaigned & pressurized and advocated the Election Commission of India to make all the voter booths accessible to voters with disabilities based on a Supreme Court Verdict. That included providing EVMs with braille and ramps to access booths.

The feedback is mixed. At many places especially in rural India, no access was provided in terms of Ramps or braille enabled EVMs while at some places where it was provided, the blind voters did not know the braille!!!!

I am not negating the work, lobbying & successes that we as a sector achieved during this. But to bring home the larger question- Are we giving sufficient choices to our electorate - disabled or not?

Is that the only solution?
Will it suffice and make it accessible to all if we just focused on booths and EVMs in the name of equal rights for the voters with reduced mobility (I include elderly, disabled & those with fractured leg or back, sick and those not able to move out due to any pre-occupation or condition in the definition of reduced mobility) ?

The fact remains that 50% of India couldn't vote. I would say “could not” and not “did not” because the election system is still not friendly to people. I can not vote with comfort still, leave aside those experiencing disability, sickness, busy work schedules or simply have other personal priorities.

Some Solutions
I was just looking at how a multinational bank services its customers. There will always be few who prefer to visit bank and do the transactions – may be due to any reason like illiteracy, bank is closer, not very IT friendly etc. While there are others who use ATMs, Internet Banking for all their transactions, few pay their installments by EMIs and give instructions for payment of utility bills few who give bearers cheques!

To me, this throws ample of examples how voting system could have more choices to facilitate the voting system for the diversity of citizenry. While voting at accessible Booths should continue, more options like email, SMS, (on the lines of phone banking and internet banking), postal ballots should be given to citizens to choose from so that no one is denied his right to vote as a citizen.

For those few who are not able to step out of the houses due to old age or severe disabilities or sickness and yet not friendly with the modern means could be offered choices like the vehicle mounted EVMs (taking clue from mobile ATM Machines) and the same could even go to houses (on the lines of door to door Polio campaign). The voting process can be a week long for those opting email & SMSs and one day for those who physically vote on election booths. It is all the more possible when we have the citizen’s data base on Election Commission’s website, Photo ID cards have been issued and any body can check his data on the internet. Only thing we need to do is relate one email per person for those who are internet savvy. These are just few ideas thrown and I am sure many new could be though out.

Way Ahead
Also, firstly each Indian Citizen entitled to vote should be counted and identified - placing faces to the numbers - with proper identity proofs (biometrics, face recognition, eye recognition software could be used for data base. This would necessarily include identifying voters with disabilities to bring them in to the mainstream. Access to all including those experiencing disability should be an inbuilt feature in all such options.

If we have to become a strong democracy, India has to make enabling provisions that every one irrespective of the situations they are in - busy, out for work, out for wedding, sick at home, caring loved ones in the hospitals, posted at borders as a combatant in forces, experiencing reduced mobility or a disabling condition should be able to vote with equal comforts and with ample choices. I am hopeful that if implemented such ideas could generate 90% turn-out during poll process, for we are a vibrant democracy with maximum young people in the world!

Subhash Chandra Vashishth
Advocate-Disability Rights
09811125521,
subhashvashishth@gmail.com

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

A tuition free university - Standardised Education for All

Dear Friends,

I had always dreamt that education should not be open to buying. Its is something that one should learn and earn by hardwork and practice. Since the time Education began to be bought, it became the necessity to earn money too! Young girls and boys today think of education as means to earn money.

I remember some great hindi poet saying, शिक्षे तुम्हारा नाश हो, तुम नौकरी के हित बनी!

To me education should be open to all irrespective of whether the student is rich or poor. Devi Saraswati should be accessible to all irrespective of his/her economic status. In India, Indira Gandhi National Open University has set new standards in bringing education to the door steps. However, there is a good course fee attached to it.

Can't the Government subsidize this and let the students pay once they pick up a job after the course. It might be utopia as of now. However, UN has something like this in mind and an online tuition free Open University, to me is a great step in that direction. It would not only help in standardizing the education but also make its reach easier and cheaper to those who have time and money constraints. This would also reduced the monopoly of some money focussed institutions on higher education too.

Hope this would also amaze you. But there are some hidden charges still which perhaps need to be sorted out gradually. However, I welcome this as a very positive step.

regards
Subhash Chandra Vashishth

Here is the news: To read from source click here


UN launches online, tuition-free university

The world's first online university will use open-source technology and course material, to bring a high level of learning to its students. Published on 5/20/2009 2:07:54 PMBy Shubhendu Parth

New Delhi: The UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) has announced the launch of world's first tuition-free online university.

The university would use open-source technology and course material, alongside peer-to-peer teaching to bring a high level of learning to its students, sources at the United Nation (UN) said.

The initiative, rightly called the University of the People (UoPeople), is part of the agency's focus on education for year 2009 and is aimed at offering higher education to the masses.

"This year the Global Alliance has focused its attention on education [and] how ICT can advance education goals around the world," a GAID spokesperson said. "For hundreds of millions of people around the world higher education is no more than a dream," UoPeople Founder Shai Reshef said pointing out that people are constrained by finances, the lack of institutions in their region, or are not able to leave home to study at a university for personal reasons.

He further stressed that the University will enable people to continue their studies from home and at minimal cost by using open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning methods and peer-to-peer teaching.

"The high-quality, low-cost and global pedagogical model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring collegiate level studies to even the poorest and most remote places on earth," the University claimed on its website.

Reshef further said that in order to open access to as many people as possible, no material requiring broadband connections, such as video, would be used, which would enable people restricted to dial-up connections to follow courses.

And while, he hopes that there would be associated projects to supply computers to those without them, Reshef hoped that people without computers and Internet can still be able access, either through a centralised public computer, an Internet cafe or private machines.

According to sources, while a minimum of 12 years of study is mandatory pre requisite for those seeking admission at UoPeople, students would also need to pass an orientation course in English and computer skills in order to continue on to the major, which would require 40 courses, similar to most undergraduate degrees.

Students will be placed in classes of 20, after which they can log on to a weekly lecture, discuss its themes with their peers in a kind of chat room helping each other understand the material and take a test online.
If students still had problems after discussing the material with their peers, they could go to a course forum where they could consult with academics.Reshef also informed that to fund the University, there would be a sliding scale of fees for admissions and exams—depending on the World Bank's wealth-ranking of each student's home country—from US $15 to US $50 for admission.

Besides, students would also need to pay a processing fee for every test ranging from US $10 to US $100. For the University to sustain its operation, it needs 15,000 students and US $6 million, of which Reshef has donated US $1 million of his own money.

The University also plans to mine much of its course material from courses already made available on the Internet, free of charge, by major institutions like Stanford University in the United States. "However, the term open-use has to be defined carefully to avoid problems," he clarified.

Talking about the initiative Bangladesh's Ambassador to the United States Humayun Kabir and a member of the UoPeople advisory committee said, "The University is an innovation that will be remembered for a long time because of the degree to which it would increase access to higher education around the world."