The Smart Cities for All Digital Inclusion Toolkit, which helps smart cities to ensure that their digital services are accessible to people with disabilities and older people, is now available in additional languages, including Arabic.
The toolkit, which was launched by agencies G3ict and World Enabled, supported by Microsoft, has been created to help smart city authorities to ensure that their services are suitable for use by all people, to ensure accessibility and inclusion.
At the Smart City Expo World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, and Marathi versions of the toolkit were announced, in addition to the existing English, Portuguese, and Spanish languages versions.
As cities increasingly leverage technology to engage their citizens, the accessibility of ICTs will be play a key role in ensuring digital services provided by cities reach all citizens, including those with disabilities and older persons.
The toolkit was launched in May this year, as part of the Smart Smart Cities for All (SC4A) global initiative to narrow the digital divide for persons with disabilities and older persons, by Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies (G3ict) and World Enabled.
G3ict is an initiative launched by the UN, promoting digital accessibility and Assistive Technologies for people with disabilities.
World Enabled is a global education, communications, and strategic consulting group, focused on research and initiatives to support the rights of persons with disabilities, including digital accessibility and Assistive Technologies in urban planning and inclusive urban development,
The Digital Inclusion Toolkit, providing cities with a model policy for procuring technology, an inventory of three key standards that define ICT accessibility criteria, strategies for communicating the importance of digital inclusion in cities, and an alpha version of the database of Smart City solutions that could benefit persons with disabilities in cities.
Dr Victor Pineda, President of World Enabled commented at the new launch: "Thousands of city leaders in hundreds of cities will now be able to access critical tools in their native languages. We are proud of the partnerships we are forming with leading global stakeholders and networks to quickly get these critical tools in the hands of key decision makers today."
Charlotte McClain Nhlapo, Global Disability Advisor at the World Bank, added: "To operationalize Inclusive Smart Cities, we need a suite of good tools on digital inclusion and digital accessibility. The SC4A toolkit is a welcomed contribution to advancing article 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals. It's also exciting to know that the toolkit will be available in eight key languages to make it accessible to many of our partners."
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