Thank you to the two WSIS+20 Co-Facilitators, the Ambassadors from Albania and Kenya, and to the Informal Multistakeholder Sounding Board (IMSB), for convening this consultation and for ensuring that the voices of civil society, the technical community, the academic community, and the private sector are included in this process.
My name is Judith Hellerstein, and I am speaking as one of the two Coordinators of the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability (DCAD).
The position of IGF-DCAD is that, despite years of advocacy, the digital divide facing persons with disabilities is only mentioned tangentially throughout the WSIS+20 documentation.
If WSIS+20 is to fulfil its promise of a “people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society,” disability inclusion must move from footnotes to the main agenda.
The text is filled with ambitious language about a “people-centred, inclusive” Internet, addressing issues from artificial intelligence governance to digital finance. Yet there is very little reference to persons with disabilities, and no meaningful mention of the leadership or participation of people with lived experience of disability.
For twenty years, we have built a digital world that has systematically excluded 1.5 billion people. The digital divide is not only about rural connectivity or access to 4G. It is also about the millions of uncaptioned videos, inaccessible websites, and unusable applications that define the online experience for users with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive disabilities.
The WSIS+20 document itself, in Paragraph 66, reaffirms the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as an indivisible part of international human rights law. The legal obligation could not be clearer. When public digital infrastructure is inaccessible, this is not simply a design failure. It is a violation of human rights.
In our response to Revision 1 of the document, DCAD highlighted several areas requiring improvement and provided concrete textual recommendations, including the following:
- Paragraph 22: While the text references the CRPD and the general aspiration for accessibility, it does not address the implementation or enforcement of accessibility standards. We recommended explicit reference to international accessibility standards and guidelines, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1 and 2.2).
- Paragraph 27: In the discussion of local content, we proposed adding text to ensure that content is delivered in formats compatible with accessible technologies, including screen readers, captions, sign language, and simplified language, so that persons with disabilities are fully included.
- Paragraph 38: Under emergency services, we requested additional language committing to ensuring that emergency systems and interventions are accessible and responsive to the needs of persons with disabilities, and that early warning communications, evacuation processes, recovery tools, and digital information channels adhere to accessibility standards and assistive technology compatibility.
- Paragraph 39: We similarly requested that accessibility and disability inclusion be explicitly added to commitments on emergency communications and digital response systems.
- Paragraph 60 (Capacity Building): We recommended adding a commitment to co-design and deliver digital capacity-building and leadership development programs for persons with disabilities, ensuring that lived experience informs policymaking, particularly in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and data governance.
- Paragraph 86: For any new fellowship programs, we recommended explicitly including persons with disabilities as both beneficiaries and contributors, and establishing leadership pathways for experts with lived experience to shape inclusive and ethical AI governance.
- Paragraph 90: We proposed adding language to ensure the participation of persons with disabilities not only as beneficiaries, but as equal contributors and leaders in Internet governance and standards-setting bodies.
- Paragraph 116: In the discussion on metrics, we requested the inclusion of indicators and reporting on disability-disaggregated data related to digital access, usage, accessibility, and affordability, in alignment with CRPD obligations.
The WSIS+20 review presents a historic opportunity to move beyond tokenism and to enshrine digital accessibility at the core of a truly inclusive Information Society. Without explicit commitments and concrete actions for persons with disabilities, and without the active leadership of people with lived experience of disability, the vision of universal, meaningful, and affordable access cannot be achieved.
As one of the Coordinators of the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability, I urge the Co-Facilitators and all stakeholders to ensure that accessibility and the inclusion of persons with disabilities are not treated as afterthoughts, but as core priorities reflected throughout the WSIS+20 outcome documents and in the future mandate of the Internet Governance Forum.
Only by doing so can we build a genuinely multistakeholder and inclusive governance model that serves the needs of all people and sets a lasting precedent for equitable global digital policymaking.