Ensuring the security of data and content is of paramount importance – laws and rules can do this much and no more. There is no gainsaying that it will be necessary to build, maintain, implement and follow the required processes and methodologies.

With e-commerce going to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years, the need for a secure system along with the appropriate checks and balances will increasingly be felt across organizations and sectors.

In the midst of the global economic downturn and the resultant low business sentiment, there might certainly be a focus on driving business needs more aggressively – by even possibly cutting a few corners, turning a blind eye to some business happenings and other related matters. In this midst, business owners might not devote the needed time and attention to Data Security and maintaining high standards of Information security in their organizations.

This lower focus might just be the opening that unscrupulous operators of cyber crime might be waiting for to inflict that killer knockout punch to add the the market misery.

I have attempted to capture some key elements that would be of relevance across borders and organizations. These may not be exhaustive – but are directional and will help personnel involved to understand the intricacies and possibly drive the thinking in organisations.

Five Steps towards Building organizational Cyber Security

1.  Employee Training – on Cyber Security needs
Raising the security awareness level of associates, employees and stakeholder through effective training conducted periodically is a positive  way to ensure security is on their radars at all times and reflected in their working behavior at all times.

Employee training is not only a requirement for most businesses, but it is also one of the best ways to minimize the corporate’s exposure to the most damaging type of security attacks – the unintentional ones created by uneducated or careless employees.

Many current attack methods depend purely upon the behavior pattern of unsuspecting users. This could be in the form of the employee clicking on a malicious link or executing a harmful program; being lured to a harmful website, or even by something as innocuous as using a USB drive.

2.  Periodically enforce testing of  operating systems, networks and applications
Most organizations do simple external network and operating system vulnerability testing, which is a great way to identify Internet exposures.  However, these basic vulnerability assessments and penetration testing processes do not perform application level testing which has become a common attack method.

Two application level attacks that are often getting to be seen as a means for cyber crimes include SQL injection and buffer overflows. Application level testing can identify poorly designed and coded programs (such as home grown applications and online backing programs) that are susceptible to these types of attacks.

3.  Always do security testing and validation of newer technology before deploying it
It is absolutely sacrosanct in the changed worldspace that designers and developers strictly test and validate newer technology than resort to their hasty implementation. The usage of new tools across Web 2.0, P2P, virtualization and cloud computing are growing rapidly.

2008 witnessed a strong adoption of virtualization and a gradual rise in cloud computing. However, cloud computing will be the cause of major security concern among security professionals in 2009. This influx of new technologies, both business and consumer technologies, has opened additional avenues for cyber attackers to steal trade secrets and confidential business information.  It sure is good to be the first to launch a new tool and application to be distinct from the crowds.  It is better to be safe and a tad slow than be sorry in haste.

4.  Have a mobile device policy for employees
It would not be far from the truth to state that there are not very many companies that have successfully   implemented a detailed policy for usage of mobile devices within premises and also outside of the workplace.

PDAs, Blackberrys and thumbdrives have become common in the workplace. However, many companies do not have systems to monitor what kind of information is stored on them by employees and users.  Employees need to be educated on what should and should not be on a device used outside of the workplace. Proprietary, private or financial information should be stored only if absolutely necessary. It’s also important to protect sensitive information by passwords in the event such device is lost or stolen.

5.  Use care while using social and professional networking sites
Social networking has gathered momentum with added features in applications like Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and the slew of others. 2008 also witnessed the slow rise in attacks in these applications and 2009 can also be expected to see the rise in social networking websites to spread malware. Indication of this was observed in August 2008 when Facebook admitted that up to 1800 users’ profiles were defaced by an attack that secretly installed a Trojan while displaying an animated graphic of a court jester blowing a raspberry.

To summarise, it behoves on each and every user, regardless of rank, designation, extent of technology savviness, location, to be wary and cautious in the usage and watch out for any likely slip ups that could jeopardize the business efforts in a single click.

Important Issues in WCAG 2.0:

1.  Tables:
Tables are one of the most widely used attributes in HTML and they do create problems in the accessibility of the web page. Even though tables are not used for the visual layout in the recent era ,they are used to present the important data in a tabular form.  WCAG 2.0 provides no information about tables and the ways in which they can be used whereas WCAG 1.0 guideline 5  entirely speaks about HTML tables.

2.  Users of older browsers and turn-off features:
WCAG 2.0 includes the turn-off feature for the ones who use older browsers that do not support images, java script and so many new features.

3.  Auto refreshing and auto redirecting:
The features such as auto refreshing, auto redirecting and causing pop-ups create problems for visually impaired users who can be both low vision and screen reader users. These features are explained clearly in check points 7.4 & 7.5 in WCAG 1.0 but were not defined in WCAG 2.0.

4.  Usage of deprecated features of HTML:
WCAG 2.0 does not contain any information about deprecated features of HTML,  that cannot be used as per WCAG 1.0.

5.  Usage of frames:
The usage of frames is clearly explained in checkpoints 12.1 & 12.2 of WCAG 1.0 but were left unexplained in the latest version of WCAG.

6.  Usage of style sheets:
Nowadays, most of the web designers are using CSS for visual lay out of the web pages. WCAG 2.0 do not contain any relevant information about the usage of style sheets.

7. Usage of HTML doc type:
There are no guidelines about doc type declaration in WCAG 2.0 where as WCAG 1.0 has it explained. The latest version did not focus much on the alidation of HTML and its perfect usage.

New issues brought in by WCAG 2.0:

1.  Usage of links in meaningful sequence:
WCAG 2.0 guidelines 1.3.2 defines that the links should be presented in meaningful sequence so that the user can use the track to find the required information easily. In the checkpoint 1.3.2 it is given that any audio or video should not play continuously for more than 3 seconds, if it plays the user has to be given an option to pause or stop, or at least have a mechanism to reduce the volume without changing the over all system volume.

2.  Input errors:
This is one of the issue, where WCAG 1.0 didn’t focus  much, but it does have a vital role in web pages. This was nicely explained in the guideline 3.3 of latest version.

Some more issues raised by WCAG 2.0 are:
1.  Foreground and background colors selected by the user.
2.  Width should not be more than 80 characters or glyphs (40 if CJK).
3.  Text is not justified (aligned to both the left and the right margins).
4.  Line spacing (leading) is at least space-and-a-half within paragraphs, and paragraph spacing is at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing.
5.  Text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent in a way that does not require the user to scroll horizontally to read a line of text on a full-screen window.

Accessibility means the ability to make available technology to both disabled as well as regularly abled people  without any discrimination.
For e.g: If a person visits your website and has a disability, say  low vision, there should not be any difficulty for him to gather all the information available in the website – information accessible to any vistor should be available to the disabled person also. Hence , the ability to access any information/service on the web  by any kind of person irrespective of his/her disability is said to be accessibility.

Why should we make the website accessible?

Accessibility is part of your job
To many people who make a living from designing or programming websites, accessibility is something unknown,  something frightening and something that is hardly ever taken into account

I don’t understand that way of thinking at all. Accessibility is one of the fundamentals of the Web, so how people  who claim to be passionate about the Web and  deliver high quality,  can choose to ignore it is beyond me.

Why Accessibility? Because It’s Our Job!
Its-our-job/ If we call ourselves professionals, we owe it to our clients, their clients, and ourselves, to do our job properly.

A chef must care about health,
a builder must care about safety,
and we must care about accessibility.

Now if only everybody working in the web industry could take their jobs seriously enough to realise that accessability is a must….
For more information on how it is not taken seriously,  click the link below

Most websites’ failing Accessibility

There are certain laws which make the accessibility  compulsory  for the websites. Companies all over the world have now started to make there websites accessible.

There are well defined  guidelines on Web accessibility provided by ‘World Wide Web Consortium W3C’, even section 508 (1194.22) gives 16 points to be satisfied by the websites to make them accessible. The Web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) suggested by W3c are 14 with priority levels.

WCAG and Section 508 guidelines:
Section 508:

The legislation referred to as “Section 508″ is actually an amendment to the Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The amendment was signed into law by President Clinton on August 7, 1998. Section 508 requires that electronic and information technology that is developed by or purchased by the Federal Agencies be accessible by people with disabilities.

W3C is the World Wide Web consortium which has a control over the websites through out the world and gives a 14 point list of guidelines called WCAG guidelines. In the year 1999 the first version of WCAG guidelines were  released (WCAG 1.0) , the next version of guidelines, finalized in november 2008 (WCAG 2.0). are about to release by December  2008.

For a complete list of WCAG guidelines visit:
WCAG recommendations Section 508 :
Section 508: The Road to Accessibility

Tools for testing Web accessibility:
Our CEO and Founder Sriram Bharatam and the other experts in this area in the organization have suggested the following tools for testing the accessibility of websites

Ten tools for testing accessibility

For a complete list of the tools see the following link Complete list of testing tools

Manual Testing of accessibility
Here is some useful  information to check accessibility of your website manually.

Manual checks for web accessibility

Here are some other ways to test accessibility manually

Case 1:Check whether the text in the site can be enlarged and decreased in size .

This can be done by activating different options of text size sub menu in view menu of internet explorer.
In Internet explorer view>textsize>largest, larger, medium, smaller, smallest . Or press alt+v+x+g(for largest), l (for larger) , m (for medium) , s ( for smaller),a(for smallest)

Case 2: Check whether enough contrasting is available for people with low vision to easily use the website. This can be done by changing the settings in display options in control panel .
Press shift + alt+ print screen to get high contrast dialog box.

Case 3: Avoid the feature of opening the link in a new window.
This can be done by avoiding target attribute in links . It is not suggested that this be  completely avoided,  but it is advisable to decrease the usage. This  is suggested because when the focus moves to new window , it confuses for a visually impaired user.

Case 4: Make sure that Maps and Graphical representations are understandable by every one.
You can do this by giving long descriptions for maps and graphs.

Case 5: Make sure that all the assistive devices are able to work perfectly in your website.
You can do this by using screen readers , screen magnifiers and even checking with keyboard and mouse.
(a) Verify the short cuts and all the other related features of the assistive devices are working perfectly .
(b) Make sure that the screen magnifier is magnifying the text and is perfect.

Case 6: Check whether your webpage can be navigated entirely using key board and mouse.
You can do this by checking with your standard input devices keyboard and mouse and verify that you can navigate from left top to right bottom.

Case 7: Check whether  labels are given to all elements.
You can do this in JAWS by opening the virtual features dialog box by pressing insert +f3 and selecting the required element .
Now the list of the particular element is opened , if it shows ‘unlabel’ in the list it is said to be unlabeled.

Case 8: Conforming the title and making sure that it is the required one.
Setting title for the webpage is a must and it should be like this,
Website name : visited link 1 : visited link 1 (a) :visited link 1(a)(1)
Here the website name is ‘website name’ visited link 1 refers to the link in home page , visited link 1(a) refers to the link home page> visited link 1> visited link 1(a) …

Case 9: Make sure that there are no blank spaces in the web pages.
The table attribute makes your websites read blank with screen readers and this can be restricted by using divs in most cases instead of tables.

Benefits if the website passes the accessibility test:
What are the benefits if a web site is accessible?
Click here to get the information
Benefits in making a website accessible
 

I

Its my privilege to talk about the other three you see here in the clipping …. Sriram, CEO of iridium Interactive, the company I am part of and proud to be associated with. As a person who began my career with NGOs , what attracted me to iridium Interactive in the first place was the importance the company accords to social responsibility – be it through the various social welfare activities of CauseanEffect or by training and employing disabled people or as crusaders of web accessibility. And Sriram has been at the helm of it all ..

You also see Rakesh, my colleague, who works as a software engineer and Raj Kishore who handles the front office. Guys with the most pleasant disposition, they really are an inspiration – the way they have handled adversities in life and emerged winners are perfect examples of what disabled people can do given the right opportunities. Three fantastic people ….read on to know more about them and the place we all work ….

Recently, as a representative of iridium Interactive and the Cause an Effect Foundation, I was honored with the Udyog Rattan Award in recognition of contributions towards the empowerment of the disabled. The Udyog Rattan Award is conferred by the Institute of Economic Studies in New Delhi, one among the country’s premier research institutes.

The Institute of Economic Studies was established in 1980 by a group of economists, parliamentarians and industrialists who came together to study and discuss problems concerning various aspects of the economy and economic development of India and offer their expert advice and services.

While the award itself deserves no more than a passing mention, I do believe that the work it recognized could do with a lot more awareness and support. We founded the Cause an Effect Foundation (CnE) in 1999 to help the victims of the super cyclone that affected Orissa that year. Leveraging the power of internet, we built a global community and raised funds to the tune of 1.8 million$ in just 45 days.

The CnE Foundation then went on to generate funds for the victims of the Gujarat earthquake and Andhra floods, as well as the Tsunami-affected victims across Tamil Nadu and AP. In all CnE projects, iridium Interactive functions as the commercial interactive agency, and has been highly successful in generating awareness and publicity for the various initiatives. It is heartening to see the ii management and employees wholeheartedly contribute their time and expertise to these initiatives.

A lot of the work that we do is mainly in the area of empowerment of the disabled. The process of empowering disabled people is an end-to-end value chain that spans Iridium and CnE, and is done through multiple initiatives. CnE has conducted disability camps bringing together the State Governments, transport authorities and medical personnel to issue 5000 disability certificates to the differently-abled. It has also conducted livelihood trainings that have empowered a thousand people with financial viability, and workshops in education and English language to bring the differently-abled community closer to the mainstream and services on offer through the internet.

A focus area for me personally, and for ii at large, is that of Web accessibility and usability, i.e. making websites accessible for the differently-abled. ii has been instrumental in promoting ‘web accessibility’ for visually impaired and motor disabled people, enabling them to access technology- and information-related products through the use of Internet. We work to create awareness amongst website owners (government and private) on the need to make sites accessible to disabled users, and also on promoting Internet usage within the disabled sections of the society. Additionally, we have also helped in making various websites (dealing with employment, transport and travel, education, and e-banking) user-friendly for people with disabilities, thereby promoting equal opportunities for disabled people.

All CnE initiatives are for the betterment of the marginalized or disadvantaged communities in India, be it the differently-abled, or the rural poor. For instance, another project that we are very invested in is that of livelihood training, where we have used the power of ICT to develop 7 livelihood training modules for rural farmers and fisherfolk, to train them in alternative livelihoods.

As I mentioned earlier on, the causes that we work for could always do with more publicity and more support. Being awarded a prestigious award like the Udyog Rattan focuses attention on our causes and turns the spotlight on them.
To know more about CnE efforts in these and other areas, I encourage you to visit the website (www.causeaneffect.org) and perhaps even join our community.

Recently the Web Accessibility initiatives taken up by iridium Interactive were featured by ETV2 in ETV2 News.Here goes a synopsis

Visually challenged software engineers are part of the workforce at iridium Interactive which works towards making web pages accessible. Accessibility is more than making a website compatible, it’s about making the pages friendly to the blind.
We can view the world by just sitting infront of our computers. News from space to mango pickle recipe can be known. But blind people who form 10% of total population cannot utilize the information and services available on the internet.

iridium Interactive is actively involved in the cause of disability and web accessibility, engaged in research and testing to make web accessible to the blind, and in this initiative they are supported by Nasscom.It is unfortunate that visually disabled need to take some one’s help to use Computers. With the emergence of screen reader software that reads out the contents of webpage, the visually impaired people have finally been able to enjoy access to the vast amount of information and services available on the internet.This software cannot, however, read all the pages on the web, because the pages are partially /completely inaccessible due to a myriad of reasons.

To overcome this problem iridium Interactive, in association with Enable India has taken up the cause of Web accessibility. Currently iridium Interactive is working on a project to make rediff.com accessible .The tester for this new emerging software is also a visually impaired- Rakesh Paladugula. The vision of iridium Interactive is to make web pages accessible to people with various levels of visual disability.

I am planning a trip to Gods own Country, Kerala in a couple of months and recently visited the Indian Railways website to book my tickets online. The experience was mixed.

The site is very nice even though it is missing some accessibility guidelines. Let me share the good things first.

I could recognize the link which I required by navigating through the link.

eg:- link for seat availability, Internet reservation link etc

The links are in sequential order, so it makes navigation more easy.

The most used links are given in a table which is a very useful thing for users of screen reader.

(giving a label or summary to the table works more efficiently)

• The web pages are small and concise. It makes less confusion.

• Graphics and frames are less in number, It is good for accessibility.

I could find a lot of scope for improvement from the accessibility point of view, that I am enlisting here. Some food for thought !!!!

• Relevent text:-

The graphics of this website are not having text which tells about the graphic, the screen reader can recognize only the label of the graphic but it cannot make what the graphic contains.

• About links:-

Only a few links can be recognized by its labels. It is better to give relevant labels to the links or provide some text after the link which speaks about the link. Then the user can see the label or the text of the link and make sure that this link is the required one.

For example : The link “bottom1” is taking the focus to the home page but it cannot be recognized by its label. The link “IRCTC” is for online reservation but it is highly impossible to recognize it.

• Opening new browser window:-

In most of the links the focus is moving to new browser window so it is confusing to the user in checking the focus, Even the link to move the focus to home page .i.e. link “bottom1” cannot work when a new browser window is opened.

• Assigning short cut keys:-
  It would be helpful if short-cut keys are available for usually used links like “link for PNR status”, “link for train enquiry” etc.

• Font size :-

The font size has to be increased to 12 so that the low visioned users can also use the website more easily.

• Giving proper labels to frames:-

If the labels of the frames are resembling the contents of the frame the navigation becomes more easy.

Hope these will be helpful the crusaders of accessibility !!!

Rakesh.

When many companies prefer to pursue corporate social responsibility as an activity extraneous to organisational functions, Hyderabad –based iridium Interactive has embraced it as a human resource policy and is hiring the visually challenged without batting an eyelid.

Chances are that a casual or even a business visitor to iridium Interactive‘s offices will spend a good half hour in the Internet consultancy firm without seeing the truth. About 5% of the employees are visually challenged. They go about their work like any other professional, sitting at their desktops, making presentations, interacting with US-based clients and even heading projects. Even the headphones that help them with the screen-reader software do not stand out as they are so ubiquitous in an office with a young crowd.

When Sriram Bharatam, the CEO & Founder of iridium Interactive went ahead and hired these professionals, they were absorbed into the workforce seamlessly after just one orientation programme and within half-a-working-day. It was the “inclusion” workshops held for the other employees blessed with vision, which took up many many hours and workdays.

Sriram is a social entrepreneur who first made waves after the Orissa Cyclone in 1999. Leveraging the power of the Internet, he floated a website, CauseanEffect to raise $ 1.5 million in 45 days to help the victims. While he went on to win the Kauffman Community award for Social Entrepreneurship for this effort, he had already launched several other social re-engineering projects in the areas of sustainable livelihood, rescue and rehabilitation, animal care, health and nutrition and childcare and education.

Spotting the right kind of talent

Meanwhile, a chance encounter with a blind engineer hired as a telephone operator urged Sriram to give this wasted pool of talent a fresh lease of life. “I did some research and found that most blind professionals, no matter how qualified they were, had been hired only for odd jobs”. EnableIndia, a leading NGO working in the disability sector supported Iridium in identifying disabled talent and inducting them. The people hired proved themselves to be no less or perhaps even better in terms of enthusiasm, adherence to deadline and quality of work. Soon, iridium Interactive made it part of its human resource policy to be an equal opportunities and equal pay employer.

iridium Interactive employs the visually challenged and is an ‘equal opportunity and equal pay’ employer, headed by social entrepreneur Sriram Bharatam

Today, in addition to the visually challenged persons, a professional with cerebral palsy works at Iridium. They are all mostly graduates. What do they do? “They are engaged in programming, database and server management functions,” reveals Sriram. Is the office specially equipped to help them perform their duties? Do they need additional training and work-aids?

Sriram scoffs at the question. “Have you ever felt the ‘F’ and ‘J’ letters on your computer keyboard? There is a slight protrusion. None of us even notice it. But it is with the help of these two keys alone that the visually challenged manage to negotiate with typewriters, computers, phones (check the number 5)—they are already designed with such interventions.” he says. Desktop software like MS office, “shortcuts” and keyboard combinations are designed to enable use by the visually challenged. “You would be amazed to see the speed with which they manage the keyboard just using shortcuts,” he adds.

Working for web accessibility

iridium Interactive has also forayed into making and testing websites, intranets and software products accessible for the blind. Web accessibility for the blind has become a mantra of sorts for Sriram. A random survey of all the Internet sites of Indian origin revealed that most were inaccessible to the blind. In contrast, in most countries abroad accessibility to physical structures and cyber spaces including Internet sites are mandated by law. Ironically, 1% of India’s population (around 12 million people) suffer from some form of blindness and this number is estimated to go up to 24.1 million by 2020

Sriram has been lobbying with policy makers to make the necessary changes in the Disabilities law, the Right to Information law and other related statutes to make web accessibility a must. “Imagine the future scenario which would be further dominated by the Internet—the physically and visually challenged will be marginalised,” he points out. According to him India Inc is neither aware nor interested in taking steps to undo this. “We have approached several entities. It is not just the corporate, even government sites and social organisations are lagging behind,” he points out.

Most websites of Indian origin are not accessible to the blind. iridium redesigns them to make them so. But there are few takers.

At present though, iridium Interactiveis in the last leg of making rediff.com accessible. “The redesigning is not just for the blind, but for the colour blind, those with eye defects and weak sight,” he clarifies. According to him, most sites can be re-designed to make them accessible to all at just a fraction of the initial cost. If the accessibility is planned at the launch of a site, a separate section can also be designed. But there are not many takers.

Undeterred by the lack of enthusiasm, Sriram is striving on. For a Media Labs Asia and Rehabilitation Council of India initiative, iridium Interactive has designed and developed a website for the challenged, www.punarbhava.in This site hosts all rules and regulations –both domestic and international—on disabilities. It showcases all products and helping aids for the disabled. It has also put up a disability registry to help the physically challenged register for a certificate or for other facilities.

Software pros aid disability certification

Iridium was specifically assigned this task because it has already worked in the area of disability certifications. Going out to rural areas in Andhra Pradesh, software engineers from iridium conduct ‘disability melas’ over weekends and have awarded 6000 certificates of disability last year. “A disability certificate is very important for the challenged. It helps them access several benefits throughout life. But it takes nearly two years for a disabled person to get this document. So iridium has stepped in and works with the authorities to help speed up the process,’ Sriram says. The disability mela has also become an IT-fraternity and family- and -friends mela of sorts as everyone ropes in everyone they know and it is growing in popularity.

Software engineers from iridium Interactive tour rural areas in Andhra Pradesh during weekends to distribute disability certificates to the visually and physically challenged. 6000 certificates have been distributed in association with the authorities last year, speeding up the process which normally takes two years.

Working on solutions to help the deaf access multimedia content (which is captioned in detail), the blind to understand graphics (screen-readers that convey graphics and images too), and handicapped to work without a mouse, iridium has a fast growing business in this space too.

Among the various projects is an Intranet with a potential 10,000 users across a business school campus in the US which is to be made accessible to the handicapped.
Another revolves around making telecom products similarly accessible as well as software solutions for use in a call centre where the visually challenged are to be employed. For all of these assignments, iridium Interactive actively employs the services of the handicapped. “We have signed MoUs with organisations that care for the disabled and we hire them from there to help us in these assignments,” says Sriram. He plans to set up an Accessibility Lab in Hyderabad to facilitate further research and development in this area.

In the beginning there was some discomfort within the organisation and some “unchallenged” employees left, feeling challenged in the new atmosphere. But now it has become an accepted practice and people hardly discuss the issue. In fact, there have been instances where employees are inspired by the visually challenged in their midst and have worked harder. Isn’t this a grand vision that has made an HR practice turn into a corporate social responsibility activity, fuelling enterprise growth as well… …to Cause an Effect?

Remember Amitabh Bachchan pushing Rani Mukherjee to speed up her typing skills to pass her examinations in Black?

Visually challenged software engineers are part of the workforce at Sriram’s firm — iridium Interactive, which works towards making web pages accessible. Accessibility is more than making a website compatible to users grappling with bandwidth restrictions. It’s about making the pages friendly to the blind.

We spot Rakesh Paladugula, one of the visually challenged software engineers in the firm, trying to book railway tickets online.

Aided with screen reader software that reads out the contents of web pages, Rakesh usually works at a pace that makes his other colleagues to work harder. “I was diagnosed with Retina Pigmentosa as a child and lost my eyesight during my graduation,” he recalls.

Trained by Enable India, a Bangalore-based NGO, Rakesh fine-tuned his skill sets. At iridium, he conducts training sessions during the weekends. The firm has more professionals like him taking on varied tasks — from conducting training sessions to interacting with the US clientele.

“We hire trained challenged people as a HR strategy. They work twice as much as the regular employees do. They are eager to acquire new skill sets. This motivates the regular staff,” says Sriram. Each visually challenged person, when recruited, is trained for an hour or two to find their way in the office. Then, they are on their own. “We have inclusion programmes that help normal people learn to deal with their challenged counterparts. The moment you see a blind person, you tend to be too helpful. But trained people need no help. It’s amazing how they find their way across floors easily,” says Sriram.

Apart from the screen reader software, Sriram shows us how the websites can be reader-friendly to those with partial blindness. Two icons placed on the right upper corner can help increase and decrease the font size. Navigating through the webpage and working on a computer is simple thanks to the existing keyboard shortcuts.

The industry has also been aware of its social responsibilities and come forward with various CSR initiatives. In an attempt to formally measure the impact of IT industry on the socio-economic development of the country, Nasscom Foundation, in association with Deloitte and Touche conducted a research for annual research publication ‘Catalysing Change’ which focusses on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) within the IT/ITES industry.The research attempts to bring forth the impact that the industry creates in the society at large, beyond the immediate stakeholders.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen, once expressed

“My point is not that the IT industry should do something for the country at large, for that it does anyway. It makes enormous contributions: it generates significant incomes for manyIndians; it has encouraged attention to technical excellenceas a general requirement across the board; it has established exacting standards of economic success in the country; it has encouraged many bright students to go technical rather than merely contemplative; and it has inspired Indian industrialists to face the world economy as a potentially big participant, not a tiny little bit-player. My point, rather, is that it can do even more, indeed in some ways, much more. This is partly because the reach of information is so wide and all-inclusive, butalso because the prosperity and commanding stature of the IT leaders and activists give them voice, power and ability to help the direction of Indian economic and social development.”

The findings of the research indicate that the industry has indeed taken his words very seriously. iridium Interactive has also found a place in this report for its outstanding work towards the cause of disability and Web Accessibility.Thefollowing excerpts are taken from the report:

Encouraging employment of differently abled

• Iridium Interactive Limited has a work force of about 100 people, 5% of which are differently abled. iridium Interactive has recruited people who are visually challenged for high end technology jobs from various tier 2 cities. These people are then put into a “Finishing School” where the company puts them through a custom hands on training program for 6 months and then on the job training before they are absorbed into the company thereby getting every one at an equal platform. iridium is also planning to recruit about 25 visually impaired people in three of its testing centres in Noida, Mumbai and Hyderabad, who would test all their disable-friendly products before launching.

iridium Interactive Ltd. – E-powerment of people with disabilities

• iridium Interactive Ltd. has been instrumental in promoting ‘web accessibility’ to visually impaired and motor disabled people, thereby enabling them to access technology and information related products through the use of Internet.
• The company is involved in creating awareness generation amongst website owners (Government and private)on the need to make sites accessible to disabled users and also promoting internet usage within the disabled sections of the society.
• It has helped almost 5,000 disabled people to get certificates issued by Government as recognition of a disabled person, by co-ordinating with State Governments, Local Governments, Transport Authorities, Medical personnel,etc.
• The company has also helped in making various websites (dealing in employment, transport and travel, education and e-banking) user friendly for people with disabilities, thereby promoting equal opportunities for disabled people.
• This makes iridium Interactive Ltd. the first Indian company to have endeavored an end to end approach to empower the differently abled through web accessibility and to have been included in NASSCOM’s Top IT Innovators for 2007.

The full report is available at www.nasscomfoundation.org

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