PUEDA: for the right to digital accessibility
Within the framework of the PUEDA campaign – For an Accessible Digital Environment –, ADC held meetings with state institutions, civil society organizations, the private sector, and academia, aiming to highlight that digital accessibility is a right, and to generate spaces for reflection with key actors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The current scenario has expanded the use of new technologies to a number of everyday tasks and revealed the deficiencies in equal access of everyone to the virtual sphere. In a society where technological and digital processes are growing day by day, it is essential to develop and apply tools that safeguard the right to full autonomy and citizen and social inclusion of people with disabilities. This reality encompasses older adults and persons of low digital literacy.
For this reason, from the PUEDA campaign, we propose to acquaint key players in the goal of achieving digital accessibility with the results of the study that ADC, together with the team of the Observatory on Disability of the National University of Quilmes (UNQ), conducted in 2019, Persons with Disabilities and Access to Information and Communication Services, which intends to give a regional diagnosis in terms of digital accessibility for Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.
Among the activities carried out during the campaign, it is worth mentioning our participation in the event “Exchange of Experiences in Times of Pandemic”, organized by the Women’s Network for Justice at the end of June. On that occasion, we presented PUEDA to more than fifty women from different judicial branches of the country, in order to project joint action and help awaken to the fact that web accessibility is a right.
On the other hand, we must acknowledge the Board of People with Disabilities, organized by Torcuato Di Tella University’s Companies for Diversity Network (R.E.D.), comprising over sixty Argentinian companies. At this meeting, held a month ago, we referred to the impact that inaccessible websites have on the violation of the rights of people with disabilities.
