Shivani Gupta, founder, AccessAbility organisation TECHSHARE, India’s first accessibility conference ended on Monday with the hope of making technology more significant to the differently-abled.

Web designers, software firms, students, NGOs and corporates took part in the two-day conference organised by Barrier Break Technologies, a firm which develops disabled-friendly software.

The Mumbai-based firm also provides accessibility training and consulting services to corporates.

Sitting on her wheelchair facing a computer, Jasmina Khanna (36) shows how she uses the computer despite her cerebral pulsing.

She uses a trackball mouse and the sticky key option—an accessibility feature to aid users with physical disabilities.

“I use the computer 12 hours a day as I work as a software tester in Mumbai. I also frequently check my e-mails and participate in various online forums,” she says.

However, not all websites are accessible to the differently-abled. Pointing to bad accessibility standards of most websites, Rahul Gonsalves, a web designer, quotes a 2006 UN survey, which says only three per cent websites are fully accessible.

“Most website developers are unaware of accessibility standards. Every website can be made accessible at just an additional cost of 2 per cent,” says the 21-year-old economics and sociology student from Bangalore.

But, as nearly 10 per cent of the 600 million differently abled of the world are in India, companies should be aware of the possibility of more reach.

A seminar — Accessibility makes good business sense — was held at the meet to highlight this point. “Corporates can get a good return on investment by complying with accessibility standards,” says Shadi Abou-Zahra, a web accessibility specialist with WWW Consortium (W3C) from France.

“The move not only makes their sites more accessible but it also improves the quality of the site. It helps people who have less bandwidth to access the net better. It can also aid companies, where the employees are getting older,” says Abou-Zahra.

“W3C provides some guidelines to web designers on how to comply with the accessibility standards,” he adds.

On display at the meet included an electronic magnifier which enables the visually disabled to control brightness, size, background or colour of the content of a newspaper, a Braille display keyboard connected to a mobile phone via Bluetooth. These are, however, expensive and rarely available in India. “It cost me Rs 2,000 to get this imported trackball mouse,” says Khanna.