Today, India has 500 plus startups building assistive technology (AT) and is set to establish reverse innovation and bring technologies from India to the West for persons with disabilities (PwDs).
However, accurate data collection relating to disability is challenging owing to India’s vast geography with high cultural diversity and nuances, said Prateek Madhav, co-founder and CEO of Bangalore-based AssisTech Foundation (ATF), the sole Indian member on the steering committee of the Royal Society of London that released the Global Report on Disability Technology in London, on Monday.
“India is a land of 1.4 billion people, including 90 million PwDs, 22 official languages with around 1600 dialects. Every 100 miles, the language changes in India. Hence, collecting data to build solutions and technology to help PwDs is challenging,” said Madhav. He also mentioned that he would put up the report on how data and digital assistive technologies could support independent, fulfilled lives, before the government, think tanks and civil society in India to initiate action to better the lives of Persons with Disability (PwDs).
“Digital exclusion is a failure of design, policy and imagination. Designing technology for limited people is not the right approach and co-design should be a method,” said Madhav, who is also a part of the committee chaired by renowned Professor of Statistics from Oxford University, Sir Bernard Silverman FRS, and includes the legendary co-founder of the Internet, Dr Vint Cerf, FRS.
The global report outlines a forward-looking vision to enhance the lives of PwDs through inclusive policy, technology, and design practices, while recommending to the national statistics bodies to shift from focusing solely on disability identity to collecting data on functional limitations, to enable more nuanced and effective policymaking.
It also urges governments to recognise smartphones as legitimate and powerful forms of Digital Assistive Technology (DigAT), given their built-in accessibility features such as voice-to-text, screen magnifiers, and navigation tools.
Calling for the promotion of low-cost, interoperable, and sustainable DigAT solutions through collaborative initiatives involving governments, technology companies, and research funders, it stresses the need to preserve high-quality analogue alternatives and human support systems, as digital solutions may not suit all users.
In the concluding remarks, Sir Bernard Silverman stated that the vision of Stephen Hawking was crucial to the development of disability technologies. “Some fifty years ago, I was introduced to Stephen Hawking and told that he would be lucky to live another year. In fact, he had a long and influential life ahead of him and became one of the Royal Society’s most famous Fellows. Writing in his own foreword for a 2011 World Health Organization report, he described the removal of barriers to participation for disabled people as a ‘moral duty’. In his view, achieving this would unlock the vast potential of disabled people and, as exemplified by his own life as a highly accomplished disabled academic, technology can play an important role. This report aims to push forward Hawking’s vision.”
