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Submissions/Accessibility and Wikipedia

From Wikimania 2011 • Haifa, Israel


This is an open submission for Wikimania 2011.

Review no.

6

Title of the submission

Accessibility and Wikipedia : Challenges & Case studies from India

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation)

Presentation

Author of the submission

User:AniVar and User:Santhosh.thottingal

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)

User:AniVar (anivar at movingrepublic dot org) and User:Santhosh.thottingal (santhosh dot thottingal at gmail dot com)

Country of origin

India

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.)

Indic Project

Personal homepage or blog

http://anivar.in & http://thottingal.in

Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal)

Wikimedia Accessibility Initiative (WAI) [1] & most of the accessibility initiatives within wikipedia[2]/mediawiki[3] are focused on the issues of physically disabled people [4]. Accessibility in principle is the access to knowledge available for a person, in his/her level of reasoning, without limited by physical challenges. In a developing country's context , levels of disability are not limited to physical disabilities. There are other levels of accessibility issues that will exclude a large part of the populace - illiteracy, absence of English knowledge, availability of local language interfaces and language technology to name a few.

These concerns get more complex when we consider the accessibility issues of Indian language wikipedias. Approximately 6% of the Indian population has a disability. An additional 34% of the population is illiterate[5] and an additional 77 million are elderly[6].

This presentation is an effort to map various levels of issues in accessing Wikimedia projects, through various use cases and case studies. The presentation also highlights the various accessibility initiatives and ecosystems in Indian states that addresses such issues, and will share some success stories . We hope this presentation can contribute towards the building of a more inclusive accessibility policy for Wikipedia

Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure)

Wiki Culture and the Community

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

No. We can present this session only if We get scholarship.

Slides or further information (optional)

Will be Provided

References
  1. Wikimedia Accessibility Initiative: [1]
  2. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (accessibility) [2]
  3. MediaWiki accessibility [3]
  4. Blind wikia: Mediawiki and Accessibility [4]
  5. 2001 Census Statistics [5]
  6. Family Support and Care for the Elderly: Evidences from India [6]

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

  1. Tinucherian 04:31, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. GerardM 10:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Vibhijain 07:16, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  4. HPN 03:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Amir E. Aharoni
  6. Add your username here.