AFFORDABLE TERMINAL DEVICES THAT ALL CAN USE, WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION BEING PAID TO THE ELDERLY AND DIFFERENTLY ABLED Group Members Deepa Bhattarai   Chandan Das   Roshan Kumar Regmi  Pawan Singh   Man Bahadur Karki

includes Definition Background Current status/problem Technology accessibility How to implement?

definition The Nepalese constitution defines persons with disabilities as persons who are mentally or physically unable or incompetent to lead a normal life. This term includes persons whose mobility is impaired, who suffer from spinal curvature, who are visually impaired in one or both eyes, who have hearing impairment, who are unable to speak properly, or whose hands, legs or fingers are impaired or missing. Elderly people are those who are 60 years or older. This population is physically weak making it hard for them to use ICT.

background Out of 7 billion people in the world, more than one billion people live with some form of disability. 1.94% of the total population of Nepal have some kind of disability & 2.2% are of 60 and above. ( CBS, 2011) Internet user among those 65 and older grew 150 percent between 2009 and 2011. ( Pew Research Center)

Current status Nepal is not privileged with disabled friendly technologies and environment Lack of skill on how to use such technologies Low budget allocation on such projects Less involvement of Private and government sector for empowering disable people.

Disability map of Nepal

Assistive technologies Terminal devices are considered as such equipments that is used to do specific task in efficient manner built on top of ICT technology Solutions available: Software solutions Hardware solutions

Software solutions Should follow following standards 1. WCAG 2.0 standards for websites which is a stable, referenceable technical standard. It has 12 guidelines that are organized under 4 principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.  2. DAISY consortium (Digital Accessible Information System) for publishing and reading.   3. Unicode Consortium standard to facilitate elderly people to read any content by assigning a unique code for every character

Example website using wcga 2.0 in nepal

Hardware solutions Dot:  is a wearable that is also the world’s first Braille smartwatch. Braille ebook reader a Kindle style e- reader, makes blind and partially sighted people to read easily. It also helps in understanding graphics, figures and even graphs. Tactile Wand Electronic Stick: this helps visually impaired people to determine the object that comes in their way. Stick detects the object in front of the user and vibrates with the increasing intensity as soon as you get closer to it.    

Cont.. Finger Reader: is a wearable tool to help read text with two functions: to help the visually impaired read printed text on a book or on an electronic device, and also to be used as a language translation tool. Sesame phone: is a touch- free smartphone designed for people with disabilities