Tanzania needs e-strategies to support people with disability

TANZANIA needs to quickly develop a strategy to enable disabled people to access a wealth of information available locally and globally. That was recently emphasized by Jim Jonazi, a facilitator at a video conference discussion on the access and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for disabled persons project which was held at Tanzania Global Development Learning Centre (TGDLC)
According to him, while Tanzania has electronics policy on disabled persons, yet it does not have a strategy to implement it. Thus making its successes a dream. He 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 to a debate, Mr. Tarek Ben Yousef, a National Director ministry of solidarity and a project leader from Tunisia noted that according to the census made in 2003-2004 in Tunisia, the disabled population was about 152,000 persons. He therefore emphasized in order to give disabled persons access to learning knowledge and culture, and leisure activities in accordance with education, there must be an adequate use of information and communication technologies.
According to him, ICT application is widely available in all special; education centers and inclusive schools in Tunisia, service that give disabled people access to higher training levels and therefore facilitate economic insertion.
During the discussion, a Srilankan head of ICT Mr. Chitranganic Mubarack added that the current status of using ICT in their country is very far and is being applied in all education programs as well as in virtual schools. He noted that the Tele-service offices that enable disabled people to remotely access different services, such as social-economic and cultural information, communication administration are already in existence.
TGDLC that Tanzania used to hook to the other countries is a member of the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) with over 120 networked development communication hubs globally. Its core function is to enable decision makers at all level professional and practitioners to access and share the wealth of knowledge and experience availability in the world through the global communication system that includes video conference, internet video,. VR-ROM and print.