Tanzania has been urged to develop a strategy to enable disabled people to access information locally and globally.
The call was made by Jim Yonazi, lecturer of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) at the Institute of Finance Management (IFM) during a Video Conference Discussion on the access and use of ICT for Disabled Persons’ Project held in Dar es Salaam.
The Tanzania Standard said, while Tanzania had electronics policy for the disabled, it does not have a strategy to implement it.
Mr Yonazi, who was the facilitator during the discussion emphasized that for the government to serve the disabled people in the ICT era, it must come up with a strategy to implement the existing e- policy for disabled people. Contributing in the discussion, Mr Tarek Ben Yousef, a National Director in Tunisia’s Ministry of Solidarity, noted that for the disabled to access learning, knowledge and culture and leisure there must be an adequate use of ICT.
Mr Chitranganie Mubarak, a Head of ICT unit in Sri Lanka said ICT was being applied in all education programmes as well as in virtual schools in Sri Lanka. He said that Tele- services offices that enable disabled people to remotely access different services such as social-economic and cultural information, Communication Administration were already in place. Other countries which participated in the discussion included the United States, Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia.
