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Manique at the Braille Printing Machine
Manique handing over the Braille publication to an official from the Department of Census and Statistics
Manique Gunaratne reading Braille
By Randima Attygalle
The recently concluded Disability Accessibility Project led by the Specialised Training and Disability Resource Centre of the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (EFC) in 134 local government authorities in its Accessibility Audit Report has made recommendations for public documents of the local authorities to be made available in accessible formats for the benefit of people with disabilities. The project, supported by the UNDP and the EU, covered four provinces and 12 districts. The Manager, Specialised Training and Disability Resource Centre of the EFC, Manique Gunaratne who steered the project, told the Daily FT that following the audit report, a few local government authorities have already made public documents available in accessible formats and several more have reached out to EFC’s Specialised Training and Disability Resource Centre to follow suit.
Access to information
The Department of Census and Statistics since their first collaboration in 2021 with Manique to make their print and digital media content on data and statistics available for people with diverse disabilities, recently launched a tri-lingual Braille publication to be distributed among vision-impaired persons across the island. “Access to public information is a basic human right. When people with disabilities have equal access to communication material, they can be empowered for enhanced employability and contribute to the economy,” says Manique who lost her vision to Retinitis Pigmentosa in her late 20s but went on to climb up in ranks to become what she is today, changing countless lives of those with disabilities.
According to the WHO an estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability, representing 16% of the world’s population. About 80 % of them are of working age. The right of people with disabilities to decent work, however, as the ILO points out, is frequently denied. “In Sri Lanka, of the 1.6 million people with disabilities, only 21% are economically active. If they are enabled better access to information starting from school level and progressing to vocational and university level, more people with disabilities could reach their true potential as employees and entrepreneurs,” observes Manique.
Training material
The EFC Specialised Training and Disability Resource Centre trains people with diverse disabilities on various skills including ICT skills. Six types of training material are given to trainees in accessible formats. These include Braille for the vision-impaired, large prints for partially sighted persons, accessible e-copies, DAISY audio format, sign language (with the help of an interpreter) and simple text for those with intellectual disabilities.
“Today, more vision-impaired people are becoming tech-savvy and to help them use their training material on Smart phones and computer screens with the assistance of a screen reader (where the device reads out the typed content), we make the material accessible as e-copies. Unlike in English, when it comes to Sinhala and Tamil material, we need to make adjustments in a Unicode font,” Manique explains.
DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) is another format which offers a flexible and navigable reading experience for vision-impaired people and those who are print-disabled. “DAISY specification particularly helps people with Dyslexia, a learning disorder which makes reading difficult due to problems in identifying speech and sounds and how they relate to letters and words. Unlike other audio formats, DAISY makes it easier for people to go to a particular page or a line on a page through its navigation system,” says Manique. The Specialised Training and Disability Resource Centre of the EFC also undertakes to prepare communication material such as leaflets, brochures, notices, etc. for any organisation on request, in accessible formats in all three languages. The services, as its Manager points out, are offered at a nominal fee. In addition, they also print a Braille calendar for the benefit of the vision-impaired.
High cost of assistive devices
“The cost of communication material here at home in accessible formats is quite high and people with disabilities cannot individually bear this. Through our Centre, we strive to bridge the communication gap by enabling wider access to communication material for people with disabilities at an affordable price,” observes Manique who goes on to cite the prices of Braille paper and Braille writers as examples. “A Braille writer is essential for vision-impaired students starting from nursery until they complete their higher education. However, the cost is not easy to bear,” says Manique who urges more orgnisational and collective support for such machines and other services such as sign language interpreters. She also calls for subsidised rates and tax exemptions for assistive devices.
With more companies now coming forward to employ people with disabilities, there is a need for HR materials to be available in accessible formats, especially, e-copies which the vision-impaired employees could access with the help of a screen reader. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops standards and guidelines to help build websites of accessibility. Despite these guidelines, most of the local websites are not in Unicode format, thus making them inaccessible to people with disabilities.
Although Sri Lanka has made some progress in terms of making information accessible for people with disabilities, there is a lot more to be done starting from the policy-making level, observes the internationally recognised advocate for disability rights. “People with disabilities should not be discriminated against as they are equally important partners in economic growth. There is a lot more to be done in the sector if we are to realise a society where nobody is left behind,” concludes Manique.
