Where is GIGW 2? No website accessibility without content and data accessibility!

[Vaishnavi Jayakumar]

Dear Datameeters,

Nisha thought this as off-topic and wanted me to add a few lines to explain how this was of relevance to DataMeet so here goes...

DataMeet partnered with CBGA and others to bring out the Open Budgets website this year: openbudgetsindia.org

Here's what the 5 minute feedback on accessibility revealed :

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From: Meenakshi B. <meen...@equalscpsj.org>

Date: Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 2:12 PM

MEENAKSHI

Hi,

I Have already made a representation to CBGA. It isn't accessible.

Thanks & Regards

Meenakshi

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RAGHU

The Site is good and is accessible to navigate, but the charts, formats, provided as examples are in jpeg, png or image formats all of them should be in accessible word documents So that it would enable the Screen Reader user to understand easily.

SHANKAR

A good resource with all information in one place. Unfortunately, many of the sections like Budget documents (PDF) are not giving the last mile accessibility. Able to navigate using screen reader.

Let us request them to check each page after development to check with WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation tool) from webaim.org. It's a free tool. 

http://wave.webaim.org/

I tested two pages after finding the screen reader not able to move further.

http://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://openbudgetsindia.org/

http://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://openbudgetsindia.org/dataset?res_format=PDF

So in effect, there's no point in making data open unless it's first accessible to print disabled.

Now read on!

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Only 38 of 7,000 govt websites disabled-friendly, says petitioner PIL 29214/2015 

6/24/2016

Chennai: Of the 7000 such websites, only 38 of them have made the cut.  This unfortunately leaves an estimated 70 million disabled people out ‘Digital India’ initiative, aimed at simplifying governance. The disconnect in enabling web services came to light after a physically challenged petitioner, A Syed Ansari from Avadi, moved the Madras High Court in 2015. He had missed out applying for the civil services exams because the site meant for it was not disabled friendly. He had sought the court to direct the government to maintain its websites as per National Informatics Centre (NIC) standards. 

The disabled use various assistive technologies to browse the Web. However, if a website is not constructed as per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the assistive technology fails to help those it is meant for. The NIC’s Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW), makes it mandatory for all government websites to conform to the international accessibility standards, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0. 

The government’s failure to respond to the High Court’s notice prompted it to rap the agencies concerned, with a threat of imposing costs. When the counters were filed the first bench led by Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, said, “We are not satisfied with the response from the Central Government as to what the time period is or who is monitoring the whole issue.” The NIC then initiated the ‘Development of Common Minimum Framework for Government websites’ to convert 100 sites as feature rich and GIGW compliant websites. 

Only a fraction of them been are disabled friendly. When the case came up for hearing recently, the first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan wondered if government agency intends to complete the task only by the next century, and granted a year’s time to finish the process.

dtnext.in/News/City/2016/06/24002012/Only-38-of-7000-govt-websites-disabledfriendly-says.vpf

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From:        Vaishnavi Jayakumar <jayakumar...@gmail.com>
Subject:        [WeThePwd:1939] Re: Accessible version of Niti Ayog Action Plan document

 

NITI AAYOG Draft Three Year Action Agenda, 2017-18 to 2019-20

 

This is NOT entirely accessible, graphs and bookmarks need work,
It IS however readable as text.
It's in book format, so facing pages, But it's been checked with a screen reader, and it is reading top down correctly.
NO thanks to NITI Aayog for this. To get to this has taken many days, wasted too much of time and necessitated much jettisoning of ego..

 

Inaccessible Source : Gibberish text version at 
http://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/coop/ActionPlan.pdf

This is thanks to a person at NIC who pointed me to the social media private party who pointed me to the design agency.
All of that should have taken a sum total of 15 minutes and 1-3 phone calls. Instead this maddening paper chase.
, 
1.        We need to not only get GIGW 2.0 to mandate document accessibility but ideally get National Informatics Centre to create a tool which will check document accessibility before it's uploaded.

2.        AND strip the compliance certificates from the likes of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India and Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, MSJE who are amongst the worst offenders on the document accessibility front.

3.        AND mandate passing an online learning course on accessibility to whoever lands tenders / contracts of ANYTHING to do with communication.

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Subject: Accessible version of Niti Ayog Action Plan document
To: Alok Kumar 
Cc: bibek debroy, "A.K. Chakrabarti"


Dear Mr. Alok Kumar, 

Recently Mr. Ankit Rajiv Jindal, a visually impaired colleague from the disability sector sent a letter to Dr. Debroy regarding his inability to read the much anticipated 3 year action plan document by Niti Aayog which was sadly out of bounds for the blind. 

The details are available in the letter from Mr. Ankit Jindal to Dr Debroy as attached and linked in the articles below.                         
               
Disability Activists Say Niti Aayog’s Action Agenda Is Inaccessible to the Visually Impaired [WIRE] 

NITI Aayog document inaccessible to blind [HINDU]

A visual representation of what Niti Aayog's document reads to a blind citizen using a screenreader is below :



Please do let us know when a screen reader friendly document of the Niti Aayog action plan will be available for blind citizens, as we have been unable to access it for over a week now despite Niti Aayog's response to Ankit promising a 'priority' fix. 

Ankit has already elaborated what needs to be done to make a document accessible. As of now the web delivery service of Niti Aayog is non-compliant with the GIGW for Indian government websites. 

After analysing the puzzling nature of the file text converting to gibberish when copied and pasted, I am convinced the problem is as follows  : 
1.        Either the fonts have not been embedded or have been wrongly encoded with too many types when exporting the document as PDF (Screenshot 1 & 2 below) or 
2.        This is a pre-press impostion version (Creo - Preps) which is meant for printing press plates usage alone, and is unnecessary/unsuitable to print to PDF. (Screenshot 3 below)
Screenshot 1


Screenshot 2


Screenshot 3​
​

The disability community has faced similar issues with the erstwhile Planning Commission with the 12th plan sub-portal for citizen engagement. Sadly, unlike the Planning Commission experience, 5 messages and 4 phone calls chasing this problem have not been met with a favourable response, leave alone speedy action.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is coming up on 18 May. While an uploaded fix should take your web manager 10 minutes to accomplish, we hope that by then, the government's currently patchy track record in walking the talk on Sugamya Bharat Abhiyaan and Digital India is
transformed into the following for a start :

A) A fully accessible Action Plan document (as highlighted by Ankit).
B) SOP for creating accessible documents to be included in the GIGW with NIC-wide training and
C) Procurement GPAT template for vendors to comply with for digital accessibility. 
 
 ​
I look forward to your intervention in addressing these concerns.

Sincerely,

Vaishnavi Jayakumar

[Gaurav Godhwani]

Dear Vaishnavi,

Thanks a ton for pointing this out. We have created a Github issue for the same: https://github.com/cbgaindia/ckanext-openbudgetsin_theme/issues/37 and hope to fix it in coming weeks. 

We are a community led open initiative(in BETA phase) and we welcome such crucial feedback, suggestions, and contributions. Please feel free to reach us at in...@openbudgetsindia.org.

Regards,

Gaurav

[Vaishnavi Jayakumar]

That's wonderful. We will be happy to do so! Let us know when you are ready.

 EqualsCPSJ in fact has been a partner of CBGA for ages, and wrote the chapter on disability this year for the budget report. I was hoping this would have been fixed by now considering she had flagged the issue at the start itself, but happy it is happening .

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