A barrier-free information environment for individuals with disabilities: the international experience and possibilities for its use in Kazakhstan

This article was prepared to implement the "Barrier-Free Information Environment" project as part of the Initiative to Support Good Governance in Kazakhstan with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia.

An individual's involvement in the global information exchange is one of the conditions in a modern post-industrial society determining his/her quality of life and social status. Nowadays, it is clear how a lack of access to vital information negatively affects individuals’ socialization, which is especially noticeable for the following category of citizens: individuals with disabilities. For this reason, the inclusion of individuals with disabilities in the flow of information is a task critical to the entire global community in order to ensure their successful social integration.

In countries across the globe, over a billion people live with some form of disability, almost 200 million of whom have serious operational difficulties.

All over the world, people with disabilities show lower indicators of health, lower educational attainment, lower economic activity, and higher poverty rates than non-disabled people. This is partly due to the fact that people with disabilities face barriers that prevent their access to services that are routine for many, such as health care, education, employment and transport, and information [1].

The 21st century was the beginning of the information age, the essence of which lies in the spasmodic growth of the role and significance of the network principle of societal organization. The global network serves not only as a means of information exchange, but also as a universal means of access to necessary goods and services. It is important that nations are increasingly integrated into network relations and become the same counterparties of the network as legal entities and individuals.

As the importance of the Internet grows, particularly as the main means of obtaining public services and of operative interpersonal communication, the situation of the impossibility of normal activity for any person not included in the virtual network arises.

Kazakhstan, like many countries, has similar problems with ensuring access to information for the disabled. At the same time, in this area, meaningful positive experience has already been accumulated in the sphere of the successful adaptation of information sources and resources to the particularities of their use by individuals with disabilities in some developed countries.

The main message is the need to eliminate the objective social isolation and information inequality of disabled individuals put in an unfair position in comparison with other citizens.

The right to freedom of information is one of the cornerstone democratic standards established by basic international legal acts.

According to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. "[2]

From this point of view, ensuring access to information for individuals with disabilities is one of the responsibilities of all UN member states, which should, by all legitimate means, seek to ensure this right with regard to disabled people, given the objectively difficult circumstances faced by many.

It should be noted that, at present, a notable regulatory and legal framework has been developed in the field of ensuring access to information for individuals with disabilities both at the level of international law and national legislation in some of the most developed countries in the world. This achievement became possible only with the transformation of attitudes towards people with disabilities.

The social model, the essence of which is the recognition of individuals with disabilities as full-fledged individuals of society, in whose path stand various artificially created barriers preventing them from fully integrating, is gradually replacing the medical model that perceives disabled people as only requiring constant care and compassion from society.

The change in attitude toward people with disabilities, which has been developing in international law, has radically changed national principles of the work with them. The emphasis on the social integration of disabled individuals through the formation of a barrier-free environment for them has become a key trend in the social policy of a large number of nations.

The lack of access to information of individuals with disabilities seems also to be a nearly insurmountable barrier, as demonstrated particularly in the experiences of Western Europe and the United States.

The Internet, along with modern information and communication technologies, has revolutionized the lives of people with health limitations. Thanks to screen access programs (screen readers) that read text from a screen, blind users no longer depend on individuals who can read the text, or on expensive and inaccessible media such as audio recordings or Braille. Thanks to transcripts and subtitles, deaf people can fully watch videos. Users with locomotor disorders who can easily take a book from a shelf and open it can now freely read it on the Web through specially designed and adapted personal assistive technologies. The potential of the Internet, however, is not yet being fully realized in the integration of individuals with disabilities into modern life. Many sites have no method of navigation other than the mouse. Only a small fraction of the video content is subtitled for deaf users. Many websites do not contain textual descriptions of images, which seriously negatively impacts the availability of information for blind users [3].

Naturally, not all disabled people have objective difficulties when working with sources containing information necessary for them.

For the purposes of this analysis, the following categories of disabled individuals and low-mobility groups of the population are used, for which additional measures are required in order to normalize their work with different types of information:

In international normative legal acts, the right of citizens to access information is considered a basic political right, the unconditional implementation of which is one of the key factors in the effective construction of democratic society.

A good deal of attention has been devoted to the issue, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and having been reaffirmed in a number of important international instruments, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Aarhus Convention - the Convention of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on "Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters,” the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), and many others.

It is characteristic of international law that there has been a significant shift from passive to active measures with the introduction of binding norms on the state's actions to ensure citizens’ access to information.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [4], which Kazakhstan ratified on February 20, 2015, is the main site for the creation of conditions for a barrier-free environment in the field of info-communications, thereby assuming the obligations to fulfill its provisions.

Article 9 of the Convention, on the principle of accessibility, states: In order to enable persons with disabilities to lead an independent life and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, transport, information and communications, including information and communication technologies and systems, as well as to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and rural areas. These measures, which include the identification and removal of barriers and barriers to accessibility, should be extended, in particular to information, communication and other services, including electronic services and emergency services.

Article 21, on freedom of expression and access to information, states that States parties should take measures to:

• Ensure that private enterprises that offer facilities and services that are open or provided to the public take into account all aspects of accessibility for persons with disabilities;

• Organize, for all involved parties, briefing on accessibility issues faced by persons with disabilities;

• Equip buildings and other objects open to the public with signs made in Braille and in an easily readable and understandable form;

• Provide various types of services to assistants and intermediaries, including guides, readers and professional sign language interpreters, to facilitate the accessibility of buildings and other facilities open to the public;

• Develop other appropriate forms of assistance and support for persons with disabilities to enable them to access information;

• Encourage people with disabilities to access new information and communication technologies and systems, including the Internet;

• Encourage the design, development, production, and distribution of the initially accessible information and communication technologies and systems, so that the availability of these technologies and systems is achieved at a minimal cost.

One should note the following: ensuring the accessibility of an entire array of information for people with disabilities is the responsibility not only of the state, but also of individuals. It is clear that the state should be the driver of this process and, through the formation of a model state information environment adapted for the perception of and use by different categories of persons with disabilities, should, in practice, set an example for private information owners. The latter, however, should be aware of their social responsibility to disabled persons as full members of the global community and take independent steps to rationally adapt information resources for the needs of disabled people.

In the foreign experience of the world's leading countries, the problems of the legal regulation of access to information for individuals with disabilities are closely linked with ensuring the rights of citizens. It is the issue of protection from discrimination against individuals with disabilities in the field of access to information while taking into account their special needs, which is central to legislative regulation, but with characteristics specific to each country.

With the development of the Internet and information and communication technologies, the issue of web accessibility of the information environment for individuals with disabilities has become more relevant.

Taking into account the quickening pace of the implementation of the global information network, in virtually all spheres of social relations and the organization of the life of societies in international practice, the trend towards the formation of legal mechanisms that especially oblige state agencies to adapt Internet resources to use by disabled people has clearly emerged.

In general, when considering the essential principles and practical configurations of the national models of the world's leading countries in realizing the rights of people with disabilities to access information, in particular through the global Internet, the following prevailing trends can be identified.

1. The legal basis of these models is both general legislation (international and national) in the field of citizens' rights to information and the specialized-subjective addressing of problems of access to information sources for persons with special needs (disabled people).

2. Conceptually, the issues of regulating the accessibility of information are closely linked with ensuring the rights of citizens. Accordingly, within the framework of legal protection of persons with disabilities from discrimination in the implementation of the right of access to information, rules and norms are established which, taking into account the specific objective needs of the disabled, are aimed at meeting their information needs.

3. The issue of access to information has a wide basis for interpretation. This issue pertains not only to obtaining it on request, but also to obtaining it across the entire spectrum of relations between the citizen and state and the citizen and society. That is, legal regulation in this sphere also affects vital spheres such as education, public procurement, the sale of goods and services, etc.

4. The generally binding legal norms on the adaptation of web resources to the specifics of their use by individuals with disabilities are established in relation to Internet sites that are created either by state authorities and state organizations or within the framework of state orders.

5. There are mostly recommended norms with regard to private Internet resources, but in the case of violation of the guidelines on web accessibility, there is a possibility of judicial appeal (especially relevant for countries in which legal systems are based on precedent).

6. In general, the system for ensuring the realization of citizens' rights to information consists of three basic elements:

1) specific legislation;

2) mechanisms for enforcing compliance with legislation, including both public and public; and

3) institutions of control and supervision.

7. Organizational support includes the appointment of a specific government body or groups responsible for promoting the policy of openness of state bodies and monitoring the prevention of discrimination against individuals with disabilities in matters of access to information. In this case, even with the existence of this responsible body, an authorized body on the social protection of persons with disabilities may act, as well as an authorized body on information policy or government structures.

8. International standards for Web accessibility, based on the Web Content Accessibility Guide (WCAG), are widely used by states under national law, but, at the same time, a few countries use them without modification. In general, the prevailing approach is that WCAG provisions are applied in a truncated form, taking into account site specifics.

9. Some countries are actively using strategic plans to implement the principles of web accessibility for all citizens, including disabled people, but, at the same time, this is not always the case. In this respect, the experience of South Korea should be recognized as an exemplary, clearly outlining its strategic goals in this area with reference to specific and measurable indicators.

10. Most states apply sanctions to government bodies and their officials as part of their administrative responsibility. Special sanctions related specifically to the responsibilities for ensuring accessibility have not been introduced by any state.

In Kazakhstan, the issue of web accessibility of the info-communication environment is very relevant. Most of the Internet resources of state bodies, organizations, and enterprises with state participation are not adapted to the needs of individuals with disabilities. That is why, considering that Kazakhstan is a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the state is obliged to ensure the unhindered access of individuals with disabilities to information, especially that of state bodies. Further, taking into account the best tested practices of foreign countries in this field, it is necessary to develop a step-by-step strategy for ensuring the accessibility of information for people with disabilities in Kazakhstan, which should be based on the implementation of WCAG 2.0 international standards, the formation of a system for monitoring their use in Internet resources of all governments administrative structures, and the introduction of administrative liability for their violation.

List of referenced literature:

1. World report on disability. World Health Organization, 2011 //http://www.who.int/disabilities/world_report/2011/report/en/.

2. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Adopted by Resolution 217 A (III) of the UN General Assembly of December 10, 1948 // The Official Website of the United Nations -http: //www.un.org/en/documents/decl_conv/declarations/declhr.shtml.

3. Policies on the accessibility of web resources: the international experience. The official report of the Global Initiative on Inclusive ICT (G3ict). Compiled by the Internet and Society Center. - Moscow, December 2010 // The UN Information Center in Moscow -http: //www.unic.ru/library/publikatsii-informtsentra/politika-v-oblasti-obespecheniya-dostupnosti-veb-resursov-mezhduna.

4. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Adopted by General Assembly resolution 61/106 of 13 December 2006 // United Nations Official Website - http://www.un.org/en/documents/decl_conv/conventions/disability.shtml.

Author: Serik Temirzhanovich Zhussupov, Deputy Director of the Institute for Humanitarian Studies and Projects