Introduction

Arab countries were among the first to sign and ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)^[1] , adopted in 2006 and ratified by several states as well.

The implementation of these rights as part of a sustainable transformative disability inclusion is supported by the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy that aims at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

According to the World Health Organization-World Bank “World Report on Disability” published in 2011^[2] ,15% or 1 billion of the estimated 7 billion people world population live with some form of disability with almost 60 million in the Arab countries.

With these staggering numbers of persons with disabilities, the United Nations and many international organizations (ITU, UNSECO, ESCWA, WHO, W3C) have launched many initiatives to promote the inclusion of persons with disabilities in their societies harvesting the benefits and advancements of Information and Communication technologies.

Article 9 in the CRPD clearly requires countries “To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others, to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems and to develop, promulgate and monitor the implementation of minimum standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services open or provided to the public". CRPD Article 4 clearly calls for the development of universally accepted design of standards and guidelines.

The focus of this report is to create a template for technical accessibility guidelines to assist Arab countries in providing equally accessible ICT services and applications for persons with disabilities in accordance with international standards and best practices to fulfill their commitment to the CRPD.

This work complements a parallel project to develop a template on ICT Accessibility National policy that aims to enable policy makers to better achieve their mandate in accordance with CRPD commitments of equal rights for persons with disabilities in all aspects of their daily activities. This would allow governmental and non-governmental organizations to work in a coherent and coordinated approach to accelerate inclusion of persons with disabilities in their respective countries.

In the first section, the report presents a review of e-accessibility for PWD at the global level and provides a number of International standards and guidelines with best practices adopted by various countries that have made substantial efforts for inclusion of persons with disabilities using ICT accessibility.

The second part of the report explores the status of e-accessibility in the Arab region and highlights the challenges facing accessibility from the local Arab point of view and opportunities to further advance the adoption of e-accessibility and the inclusion of persons with disabilities as a part of the digital transformation in the region. The report also showcases the status in two Arab countries namely Oman and Qatar who are ranked among the top world countries in that regard.

The final section presents the three developed e-accessibility guideline templates to help policy makers decide on the best level of compliance. The proposed templates offer gradual adoption options of guidelines from the lowest acceptable recommendations. The templates are based on the internationally approved and recognized standards and best practices, to ensure compatibility of locally adopted guidelines with the International ones. The standards are organized around four principles of e-content, called POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.