Both our government and corporate Websites have done little to be disabled friendly
As part of an exercise of developing parameters to evaluate user friendliness of Websites, I was shocked to see that not much effort has been made to ensure inclusion of the differently-able in the online space.
Though the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) prepared by National Informatics Centre (NIC) do mention that Web pages should allow resizing of text without the use of assistive technology, the 115-point compliance matrix sheet has nothing to suggest on how to make Websites user-friendly for the blind, though it does take care of those with colour vision deficiency and low vision.
It also mentions that while captions should be provided for all important audio content, alternative text should be provided for non-text elements like audio and video clips, images, as well as multimedia presentation for making the Website accessible to people with hearing impairment.
Strangely, out of 83 nominations that we received for the India eGov 2.0 Awards for most user friendly online initiatives from government and public Websites in India, only one complied with the two basic principles of an accessible Website.
The Kerala State IT Mission website <http://www.itmission.kerala.gov.in/> not just allows resizing of text in five sizes