IGF 2021 – Day 1 – DCAD Challenges & Opportunities for PWDs in a Post Covid World

The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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      (Video playing)

   >> We all live in a digital world.

   >> We all need it to be open and safe.

   >> We all want to trust.

   >> And to be trusted.

   >> We all despise control.

   >> And desire freedom.

   >> GROUP: We are all united.

      (Video ends)

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Thank you so much for coming to our workshop. We know we're going to get a lot of stragglers coming in from lunch. We wanted to keep to the time because we're very short on time. If others want, in the back, to come up to the table, feel free to do that.

    Okay?

    So thanks again for coming.

    The Dynamic Coalition has been started years ago. We're working with the IGF to improve access and accessibility. Many of our projects have been working on how to ‑‑ especially in the virtual world, when we're on Zoom, how to make sure that persons with disabilities with specific needs can actually come to the workshop and access them.

    The Zoom platform is one of the biggest successes we've had. IGF used to use the WebEx platform, and, also, we worked to help on the advice on different formats and webinars and also on meeting format as well as other documentation on accessibility and making sure that websites are accessible.

    But we are now going to ‑‑ this is our main session. The Dynamic Coalition is one of the many other different Dynamic Coalitions that work with the IGF.

    The main goal ‑‑ the main session is tomorrow morning, if you want to come. It's 3:09 in the morning in Central European Time, in the plenary room.

    We're also a meeting different times a year. If you're interested in joining the Dynamic Coalition, the link will be posted into the Zoom chat. That way you can actually join our group and get more involved. We would love to have you.

    We have several panelists on schedule today.

    We have Gunela Astbrink. She's currently a MAG member and is going to leave on this term. She's also been very active on disability issues.

    Many others are very active with Internet Society.

    Through the Internet Society, a special interest group on accessibility, which is a project of ISOC New York.

    They're also on the standing group of disability and accessibility.

    Gunela is going to talk about her experience on the MAG and on accessibility issues.

    We have Muhammad Shabbir. She was one of our founders of the disabilities special interest group.

    We also have Lidia Best. She's Polish, and she's been based in the UK and working heading up ‑‑ besides being very active in the TU, working on their accessibility work. She's also the chairwoman of the different hard‑of‑hearing associations.

    We then also have Judy Okite. She's a disability advocate in Kenya, and she's been also very active in the DCAD and working with the DCAD member, trying to be a liaison, helping to create liaison groups with different other DCAD members as well as some of our other special projects. We're working with the other IGFs, other ISOC organizations, and regional and National IGF to make sure that accessibility is considered when they're scheduling their events.

    After an event is scheduled, it's difficult to include accessibility if it's not in the get‑go. So she's been working on that area.

    I think I will go to the panelists now. I don't exactly remember the order, but, Gunela, I think you might have been first.

   >> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Okay. Thank you very much, Judith. I hope everyone can hear me.

   >> GROUP: Yes.

   >> GUNELA ASTBRINK: Okay. So, I would just like to start by recognizing that last week was the International Day of Persons With Disabilities on the 3rd of December. The theme of this year's day was leadership and participation of persons with disabilities towards an inclusive, accessible, and sustainable post‑COVID world. That's quite a name for the theme.

    We all recognize and, as Judith said, persons with disabilities are often very disadvantaged. We find, in this COVID world, that there are more and more disadvantages. It just highlights the accessibility of some online tools that enable persons with disability to communicate.

    The particular saying in the Disability Movement is: Nothing for us without us.

    It really means that persons with disabilities Need to be involved within an organization, working to improve accessibility in various ways. And so we have DCAD working with IGF, and, certainly, the particular interest group and the Internet Society.

    It's making things accessible from the ground up, meaning quality programs and communications will take into account the needs of persons with disabilities, and that means, for example that, websites and documents are accessible and staff understand accessibility requirements, which is really important.

    Also, identifying a disability champion at the senior level of an organization makes a real difference.

    And, including persons with disabilities on boards means there's a disability voice at an intriguing level.

    (?) Who has vision impairment is on the board of trustees and can implement on policy.

    I also want to give examples of Australia about leadership projects. The Women With Disabilities Australia has a project called LEAD. It stands for lead, engage, activate, and drive. This is building leadership skills from the ground up for women with disabilities. Maybe in the future, there will be women with disabilities from Australia, more than myself, who will be joining some of these sessions.

    We definitely need more leadership in the government space.

    To continue on and talk about accessibility at the IGF, leading the MAG, the Multistakeholder Advisory Group. It's essential that future MAG members also have accessibility and lived experience of disability.

    So as I left the MAG, I made a number of suggestions, and that is in relation to the UN Disability Inclusion Strategy which was launched by the UN Secretary‑General in 2019, there are a number of recommendations, certainly in the 2021 report that was released in October. And that, again, talks about embedding disability inclusion and plans and establishing institutional ownership, building the knowledge and capacities of staff of disability inclusion, improving digital accessibility and supporting the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities and their representative organizations. So relating this to the IGF, I suggested that there be a comprehensive website accessibility evaluation and possible remediation based on that evaluation, and that evaluation should be done by persons with disabilities. They can report disability errors. So it's a matter of finding the right company that specializes in website accessibility and employs persons with disability to undertake such a task.

    Thirdly ‑‑ secondly ‑‑ sorry ‑‑ to run webinars for the IGF community when writing and uploading content to the website. It's one thing to have an accessible website from the start, but if members of a community are not familiar with making sure that their content is accessible when it gets uploaded to the website, then, gradually, there will be a deterioration of accessibility. So it's a matter of building awareness and running some webinars about that.

    Thirdly, it's developing and applying what I call Disability Accessibility Filter Policy when planning any new online tools. So, again, any new tool should be developed by a company that has documented experience in accessibility and staffed with disability to test the tools. Actually, this sort of requirement could be part of documentation. We know there's a guideline, section 508, and European standard that covers accessibility and public procurement, in other words, government purchasing.

    As governments influence this, it helps the marketplace and the suppliers make more accessible products. So they are some of my key points. I will bring it back to Judith.

    So thank you very much.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Thank you. I know you've been doing great work with the MAG. It will be a great loss not having you there. Hopefully, the MAG will get some great people. We do some other great champions of accessibility are coming on the MAG, namely Sherrie Lacagali (phonetic) from the Pacific Islands. Hopefully, she can take up the mantle.

    I hope they continue the cause because they're continuing on the MAG as well.

    I will call the panels. We only have an hour. I want to leave time for questions from the audience. So I will move on to Muhammad Shabbir.

    Muhammad Shabbir, can you take the floor now?

   >> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: Thank you very much, Judith.

    Taking the lead from what Gunela has said ‑‑ and I would actually like to thank her for making my job easier for establishing and setting the ground for me to talk about accessibility for persons with disabilities and about the issues that they face in different parts of the world and in the organizations.

    Firstly, there are a couple of points I would like to make, but I would like to apologize that I don't have any slides. So I would like to speak directly to the audience.

    Firstly, the "nothing for us without us" should not just be a tag line. This line requires that the persons with disabilities, they are included in planning, implementation, and evaluation part of the projects. And talking about the experience of UN and ICANN, there's wonderful work that's been carried out by the IGF. I would like to talk about the national, regional, Internet Governance Forum and their accessibility.

    The IGF, Internet Governance Forum, I know that there have been some people with disabilities, including Gunela and myself, who have advocated for the accessibility of the forum. And at national levels, there are some countries where the accessibility of people with disabilities have been carried out. Then there are some countries where this part is lacking, mainly in Asia. Not just Asia but some part of Latin America as well.

    Also, with regards to the second point that comes to mind with this is the part of the governance leadership and the groundwork that has been done mainly is the schools on Internet governance. Again a couple of schools have had the sessions and participants and speakers, those who have the experience of living with disability and experience as well.

    But then there are schools which have not been forthcoming when it comes to accessibility agenda. Then there's the organization. If I talk about the organization, there's been a lot of good work done by the institutions, United Nations and ICANN and all those organizations, but this work needs to be structured and structured in a way where from bottom‑to‑top and top‑to‑bottom that's applied to different policy and implementation levels.

    If I give the example of Internet Society, as a person with a disability, I happy to be the first elected member of the board of trustees of the Internet Society. By the way, when I speak here, I speak as Muhammad Shabbir and not from the perspective of the Internet Society. It's my opinion.

    I have been the first one elected who happens to have any kind of lived experience of disability. But Internet Society, as we all know, have been doing a lot of work with regards to people with disabilities and making the accessible be given to me and particularly accessible in different parts and regions of the world.

    We also heard that there is a standing group on accessibility, and then there is also a project that is the special interest group on accessibility.

    So all these ventures, they are there, but what is lacking in Internet governance discussions is the actual participation of people with disabilities.

    This brings me to the second part of my discussion, which is very important as well. As a person with a disability, if I stand here and claim that nothing for us without us, then it should be the responsibility of me to participate in these kind of discussions.

    What is observed is that in these discussions, there is less participation of people with disabilities in the schools of Internet governance among others. There could be multiple reasons for that. We can discuss this in the latter part of this session, but what needs to be highlighted here is that people who have lived experience of disabilities, the organizations, those who work for people with disabilities, they need to be proactive in these discussions.

    My last point relates to Gunela's earlier point, that there is a need to strategize this and strategize this with French Revolution the to happen leadership level with response to having a champion with regards to accessibility.

    It is unfortunate ‑‑ on the one hand, it's fortunate that the Secretary‑General started an inclusion initiative in 2019, but it is unfortunate that when the new IGF leadership panel was announced, there was no person with disability on that panel. So this could have been avoided. The message from the top could have been forthcoming. We hope in the future that this can be rectified.

    Ladies and gentlemen, accessibility and digital accessibility is something which we often say needs to happen. I said that it is unavoidable. We cannot have the digital domains accessible for everyone because this is by the humans and for the humans. Humans themselves can make it accessible for everyone if there is a will and a desire. If there is no will and no desire, then nothing can make the Internet forums and the digital domains accessible.

    If there is no will or desire, today we should not think just about that this is for every other person but not for us. Even if we, today, do not need it or may not need accessibility platforms or platforms that are accessible for different people who have different disabilities to model or the day after may need it.

    So disability which may be temporary or may be permanent may occur and available to anyone. As we age, we need these accessibility requirements more and more. So my just humble suggestion to those who would say that, okay, we do not need it, so why do it ‑‑ today, they may not need it, but God forbid that tomorrow you need it and not have it, then there would be no use or no crying over spilled milk.

    With that, I rest my case.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Shabbir, thank you so much for your remarks. I know Shabbir is trying to work from the inside out to change. You can work from the outside with the best chances of making change and working inside the system and getting change to happen. Slowly but surely, we're doing that and working with different organizations both within the IGF and others and trying to convince others of the need to do accessibility. As he pointed out, captioning is not only for people with disabilities. It's also for people whose first language is not English, and it's also for people who have limited bandwidth who cannot see the videos. So that is also one of the universal aspects of accessibility.

    The same is true for a lot of different things. People, as they get older, they lose some vision, and they need to have screens made bigger or other things. So there's a lot of different ideas of what is needed for accessibility.

    I will next bring it up to the next panelist, Lidia Best.

    Lidia, you can take it away. Thanks, Lidia.

   >> LIDIA BEST: Thank you.

    Can everybody hear me?

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes.

   >> LIDIA BEST: Okay. Wonderful.

    So, as Judith has mentioned ‑‑ first of all, thank you for allowing me to speak today and allowing me to be a part of the meeting.

    It is a huge privilege for me to be able to address, while I'm in England, a host country of Poland, the country of my birth. Joint coalition activity on accessibility in UN factors and (?) Communication Union.

    I would like to start, first, when I talk about general accessibility. In lieu of what my previous speakers has said, language, language and perceptions of disability, we do require a spot in leadership to ensure that people with disabilities are fully understood.

    In case of people who are hard of hearing and different, I wear a hearing aid, cochlear implant. There's a situation where medicine can fix it. I don't see it so much in the UK, but in Poland, there's a lack of accessibility and lack of understanding. People who are hard of hearing, we're supporting them and allowing them to hear but not always fully understand, especially digital voices and digital meetings. Therefore, we need additional support such as assistive listening devices and when it comes to Internet captioning.

    In improving access for hard‑of‑hearing people, we still observe the resistance of providing even the basic access in many areas of public life. When it comes to public announcements when it came to the COVID pandemic, I have observed many countries, Poland included, which were not providing the live captioning to the hard‑of‑hearing citizens. They were also not providing them on actual Internet platforms.

    There also seems to be a lot of misconception around policymakers and despite the advances, we are not using the technology which is available. Now, while English language users do enjoy a long history of training of realtime captioners who we are using today at this meeting and all the meetings of IGF.

    Respeakers and also we are using sometimes automatic captioning, depending on whatever situation people use. Uses of minor languages such as Poland language, they do not get much, and we're still excluded from participation in society.

    I have just checked with some of the Polish people by social media, if this meeting is accessible to them in Polish language, and they said no. Perhaps there is room for improvement with different hosts of different countries.

    But to make room for improvement, we have to ensure that there is a real leadership which promotes training of professionals providing captioning. At the same time, promoting legislation and policy which includes sign language and any other accessibility that should be afforded to citizens with disabilities in the country.

    In addition, funding and advancement towards developing the accessibility in the native languages, the minority languages specifically.

    In countries which are, as well, like Poland, are excluding persons with disabilities which make up around 15% of a society are not yet fully inclusive, despite signing up to the United Nations Convention (?) With relation to access to information.

    We would like to see the involvement of persons with disabilities, a real meaningful involvement in developing policies and training, et cetera, any areas which we are working towards. Please make sure the first kind of engagement are really meaningful and we provide accessibility that the persons with disabilities require.

    International Telecommunication Union has also published a technical paper on accessible meetings, and, in addition, the overview of captioning. It doesn't have to be only remote. It can be on site. It provides some building blocks and information about what it means and which ways you can provide accessible meetings.

    However, that document is provided for the English language predominantly. We need similar guidance, similar quality papers in minority languages so we can have a benchmark to ensure a full and real quality with information definitely provided to the Society.

    One other thing I would like to touch on is something which I came across recently. Polish Parliament is currently updating the legislation related to accessible elections. This is a great initiative. I really applaud it. We're looking into it and making efforts to ensure that people with disability can have successful participation in elections.

    There is a small part where there's not a real focus on making sure that the information is fully accessible to voters in Poland. There is still lack of live captioning as Universal Access, and that's something I would like to make others to actually start putting reminds on and checking: Are we fully accessible? Are we fully inclusive to our 15% of society?

    So thank you very much. I would not like to talk anymore.

    Judith, over to you.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Thanks so much, Lidia, for your insightful remarks. Yes, that is a thing. In many other states, I know in the U.S., there are strict laws, but that is mostly caused by the different ‑‑ the disability act as well as other communications laws, that a certain number of hours have to be captioned and TV shows during prime-time hours and any movies and any other things. So there's a big movement in the U.S. to do this, but it all stems from a law and enforcement of a law. So that is something that other states have to look into. How do we do this? If any other country is interested, this program is administered by the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. regulator. They can go through and host different topics for different countries on how they've worked on accessibility and disability issues.

    They also have a fund to give out devices so that people with accessibility challenges can actually get low‑cost devices to watch TVs or other equipment.

    So other countries in Europe have similar laws, but I think that's something that needs to be more engrained into the population and into the law.

    Our last speaker today is Judy Okite. She is from Kenya. She's been working with the government and others there to work on accessibility.

    I did notice that, since our effort in the past few years, many more countries in their national and regional IGFs have been using either sign language interpretation or captioning. One of the main comments that came out from the NRI session yesterday was that a realization by some of the regional IGFs, especially where they've always had human captioning, they tried this year to have AI captioning, and it did not work well for them because the AI is not yet there to determine and to work well with English spoken in foreign accents.

    Although humans don't have that issue as much, machines do. So there's always a different learning curve on that.

    So, Judy, I will turn it over to you.

   >> JUDY OKITE: Thank you very much, Judith.

    Good afternoon, good morning, everyone.

    I hope you are well.

    Can I be heard?

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes.

   >> JUDY OKITE: Thank you very much.

    Okay. So I will just continue from where my colleagues have left.

    Sorry.

    My name is Judy Okite. I come from Nairobi, Kenya.

    I would like to take a different angle to my colleagues and address the persons with disabilities themselves. Many times, when we talk about accessibility, we assume that every person with disabilities actually do understand what we are talking about.

    Many ‑‑ rather, the challenges I face, whenever I'm addressing matters of accessibility more especially, like here in Kenya, then we are not on the same page because the persons with disabilities themselves, they're not finding an issue with what it is that I'm talking about. I would like to take, for an example, when I was advocating for ramps into buildings, I had a lot of backlash from the disability community. Why would you be advocating for ramps? The steps work fine. They have been working fine for us.

    That is one of the things that I would like to address, that because you have a disability and you don't need this particular accessibility or what we're talking about doesn't mean you need to shut it down. You should be able to support it because just as the previous speaker said, Shabbir, that because you do not need it does not mean that somebody will not need it later.

    So that has been a challenge here. So even when we're talking about digital accessibility, like just Lidia has mentioned about the captioning, you will find that the deaf community here do not agree that captioning is very important. So you find that we are fighting even amongst ourselves whereas we should all be on the same page.

    So, for me, I would say that there's a lot of capacity building that is needed, that is required, even for the persons with disabilities. We need to be able to understand our rights, what rights do we have, and how can we advocate for them inclusively, all of us together.

    When we are talking about digital accessibility, what exactly do we mean, and how can we all advocate for it whether it is affecting you directly or not. When we want to bring together the community, we want the people who are outside of the disability community to understand us, then we also need to understand ourselves. We need to understand our needs, what it is that we want. How can we forge this together as opposed to fighting one another.

    Just lastly on that, I would like to mention that even as we advocate for accessibility, let's do it not just at a national level. Let's do it at a regional level. Let's come to understand there are accessibility experts within our nations. There are accessibility experts within our regions. How do we bring them together that we can all be able to just learn together, learn as persons with disabilities so that we can ‑‑ after we have converged and have one voice, then even as we go out and advocate, then it is one person talking. It is one voice talking. So we are not fragmented. We don't fragment ourselves within this same community.

    Thank you very much.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Thanks so much, Judy. Thank you for all the work you've done with the NRIs and all the work on accessibility.

    Now is the time for questions. So we will look to our virtual audience. What questions might you have? If you could raise your virtual hand through the Zoom portal, it's often found in the "reaction" section on the computer, down on the bottom. If you're on the tablet, then it's underneath the three dots that say "more."

    So we can ask for people to raise their hands, if they have any questions, and we would love to call on you. We'll wait a minute or two. I think while waiting for a hand, we may ask the first question to Shabbir.

    What changes have you been able to make on the first year of the ISOC Board? I know you're applying for a second year, and we hope that the chapters will re‑elect you. I know you were making some other ‑‑ working and making a lot of headway and changes on the ISOC Board. I wanted to bring that to you and ask that question to you.

    Shabbir, if you're talking, we cannot hear you.

   >> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: Judith, can you hear me now?

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes.

   >> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: The voice, for me, was faded. Can you repeat the question?

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Sure. My question was: During your first year on the ISOC Board, what changes have you been able to make as being the first person with a disability on the Board? And, if you could, talk a little bit more about that. I know we have talked about that beforehand. I just wanted to hear from you how you've been working on that and changes you've been able to make.

   >> MUHAMMAD SHABBIR: So thank you very much for this question, yes.

    I said in the beginning as well, that the Internet Society have been working for persons with disabilities and engaging with regional offices as well. Since I joined the Internet Society Board, I had a couple of purposes in my mind. One was to sensitize the Board and the senior leadership through personal examples. Accessibility is not something that can be put at the back‑burner and taken out where it suits our interest. It has to be at the forefront. It has to be at the forefront of the organization by any means.

    I'm pursuing that quest, but I do understand there is organizational mindset that needs to be changed with regards to accessibility of persons with disabilities when it comes to the organization mindset.

    So, for now, I've asked for and the board has started captioning the open sessions of the board meetings. Each of these sessions is now captioned, and the transcription of those sessions is and would be available from now on to the website of the Internet Society for the 159 and 160th meeting of the Internet Society Board, which is happening tonight, and the transcript for that should be available.

    What is my aim here? My aim is to make the Internet Society an organization where every policy, every procurement document, every RFP document is accessible. And every person employed as a staff or an organization with demonstrated person working with a disability and their message is vetted as they vet it from the legal point of view.

    If we consider a legal requirement for the organization to follow, it seems to be the case for accessibility for organization to follow. If we achieve that level of accessibility within the organization, I would consider my job done. But I understand that happy day is a little bit late, and we may not see that every day very soon because of the mindset and organization cultural that is at work.

    I hope this answers your question.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Thank you so much.

    We have a hand up from the Bangladesh hub. Please ask your question.

   >> Bangladesh hub: ‑‑ (Distorted audio) ‑‑

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: The interpreters and the captioners are having a hard time hearing you. Maybe you could be closer to the microphone so we can get it interpreted.

   >> Bangladesh hub: (Distorted audio) even though ‑‑

      (Audio is poor)

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: No. There's a lot of distortion on the line. Maybe you could actually put it in the chat, and then I can read it aloud, and we can get it answered for you.

    I'm sorry about that.

   >> Bangladesh hub: Thank you very much.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Yes. That's a problem with the remote hubs. Sometimes the audio is not as clear as it could be. And the echoes and reverberation from them are making it even tougher for the captioners and the interpreters to hear.

    One of the other points that we failed to mention in the beginning ‑‑ and we didn't have the speaker, but he's actually our Rapporteur. We don't want to forget. People forget, when they're focusing on accessibility issues, it's not just people with a hearing impairment or visual impairment. There's also cognitive issues. The cognitive issues are also extremely important, and they often somehow get left off because many people with cognitive impairments can hear and can see, but they are not able to either vocalize their comments or it's often a tougher thing for them to do.

    Many aspects, especially in Zoom, they sometimes type it in the chat, and then the Zoom officials say it's unofficial. So it's important to read the comments in the chat so we don't forget about our people with cognitive impairments.

    I don't mean to put Peter on the spot, but if Peter wants to say anything, we would love to hear any comments from him.

   >> PETER CROSBIE: Hi there. Well, you put me on the spot. (Chuckling). I think it's very difficult to summarize this. I think one of the main issues with cognitive accessibility to bear in mind is that cognitive disabilities are disproportionately represented among the young. Many believe it's something you tend to be born with. There are more people, more children, with cognitive disabilities than all the other disabilities put together, and that's where it has the greatest impacter in terms of education.

    And now, as we're seeing more and more through COVID and so on, online education, online accessibility is having a really ‑‑ the difficulties with digital accessibility are being exacerbated amongst people with cognitive disabilities who are in education and, in particular, with children.

    So just to take another point, yes, we have to be always aware that people will use different means of communicating. I know for many people like me, who are autistic, always prefer using text, for example, than speaking. There are many people for whom verbal speech is not always accessible. So using chat and other forms of communication are important.

    Thank you.

   >> JUDITH HELLERSTEIN: Peter, thanks so much.

    Yes. Even in the verbal meetings, chat, official ones, some are not considered official. I know I've been on ITU meetings where they say, Oh, well, the chat is not official. So we're not going to read it out, and we're not going to put it in the record. That is also something that people need to be trained on, that there are people with disabilities who are posting in the chat because they cannot verbalize or they can't get access or they lose access to the transcription and other parts.

    So those especially need to be verbalized.

    Thanks to the Bangladesh chapter for writing in their question in the last few minutes.

    The question is: During the pandemic, people, especially in Bangladesh face lots of challenge, especially in the health sector. They are looking at besides the education sector, what schools were closed, in the health sector, how do we overcome these challenges? Many of these, they couldn't bring someone in with them to translate in the hospitals or in other places. They couldn't call someone on the phone, and then that often meant they were denied coverage or denied service. Those are also really big challenges. It's all about awareness. We have to raise awareness just like when we first went to the Zoom platform. People were not aware that, oh, people with disabilities cannot see the screen. They cannot see documents that are on the screen. You need to give them a link for a document so they can actually view the document.

    Many times, people were just not aware. They were like, Oh, I never thought about that!

    Okay. But then they have to keep being educated. Oh, yeah, I have to put that in the chat. I have to put the link in. I have to send that out to people.

    There was also issues of visual impairment. Although a lot of applications now have ability to put alternative text or other documents and describe images and describe videos. People are just not aware of how to do that. That is also a major thing. It's not that they would not like to do it. They would like to do it. They're just not aware of how they can do it.

    So, as we wrap up, I'm just going to look around our virtual audience and see if there's any other questions that people have. If they can come to the front in our last minute, we would love to hear from them. If not, it's been a great ‑‑ we only had an hour time slot in here. We would love to you. If you're interested in joining the DCAD or IGF Accessibility Group, please let us know. Post it in the chat, and our members will get back to you.

    I just want to make sure we bring this thing to a close because I know our time ‑‑ everyone else's time is valuable, and we have a lot of sessions that are going on back‑to‑back.

    So thanks so much.

    I hope you join the other accessibility sessions in there. Look at them on the schedule. Hopefully, you can join them and we can make the community more accessible so that the Internet will be for everyone and not just for people who don't have a disability.

    So thanks so much.