3-day webmasters confab to create more "disabled-friendly" websites

To adequately equip the "disabled-friendly" websites as tools used to generate IT-related work opportunities for persons with disabilities, the Department of Social Welfare and Development and the National Council for the Welfare of Disabled Persons started a three-day national workshop for webmasters here in Cebu yesterday.

The workshop, entitled "Webmasters' Interface on Accessible Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Empowering Persons with Disabilities through ICT", is being participated in by about 75 webmasters from government and non-government organizations nationwide. This event will assess the impact of three formerly held regional workshops that greatly inspired participating agencies to come up with websites that are accessible to the physically impaired individuals. It will also formulate relevant standards and guidelines to bolster economic activities supportive of the disability sector.

Among the topics discussed during the workshop was "outsourcing", a phenomenon created with the advent of the internet, which allows internet users to compete and participate in globalization. These "internet users" can even be people who know only a thing or two about computers and practical encoding. Access to the World Wide Web is all that is needed. All users, including those who have disabilities, now have the opportunity to work online through adaptive technology.

Considering the fact that increasing Information Technology (IT)-related jobs brought by western countries have opened up many jobs for Filipinos, those with disabilities included, easy access to websites would be a good help.

Medical transcriptions, call centers, data conversion and others continue to boom nowadays. By having jobs like these within reach, the disabled persons are given a wider array of jobs to choose from other than craft-making and the likes.

"Our society is in dire need of citizens who are able to contribute to national development, and that includes people who, despite their disability, can perform duties most (other) people can," Catalina Fermin, executive director of NCWDP said in a speech she gave on behalf of DSWD Secretary Esperanza Cabral. To adequately equip the disabled sector, the government aims to make all its programs open to them through full web accessibility and usability, prioritizing agencies with programs critical to economic activities of Persons with Disabilities.

One of the outcomes of this project will be a plan of action that will be developed and presented by all the participants to strengthen and ensure that their websites are fully accessible by 2007. - Cheryl Baldicantos,