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MAY
2-3 May, Bangkok
3-4 May, Bangkok
3-4 May, Kuala Lumpur
8-9 May, Bangkok
8-12 May, Nonthaburi
10-12 May, Phnom Penh
15-16 May, Bangkok
15-18 May, Hyderabad
16-17 May, New Delhi
16-18 May, Hong Kong
16-18 May, Colombo
17-18 May, Port Vila
17-18 May, Port Vila
ISOC Online Privacy Workshop
18 May, Port Vila
19-23 May, Bogra
22-24 May, Yogyakarta
23-25 May, Singapore
JUNE
4-5 Jun, Colombo
5-7 Jun, Bangkok
8 Jun, Bangkok
12-16 Jun, Geneva
15-18 Jun, Kathmandu
Nepal Internet Governance Forum
16-17 Jun, Kathmandu
28 Jun - 1 Jul, Shanghai
JULY
3-4 July, Singapore
SANOG30
10-18 Jul, Gurgaon
16-21 Jul, Prague
2nd Meeting of the APT Conference Preparatory Group for WRC-19 (APG19-2)
17-21 Jul, Bali
22-26 Jul, Bangkok
26-29 Jul, Bangkok
26-28 Jul, Koriyama
AUGUST
7-11 Aug, Seoul
15-17 Aug, Honiara
21-22 Aug, New Delhi
23-25 Aug, New Delhi
SEPTEMBER
5 Sep, Singapore
7-8 Sep, Melbourne
7-14 Sep, Taichung
14-15 Sep, Tbilisi
18-19 Sep, Bangkok
25-28 Sep, Busan
25-29 Sep, Hong Kong
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APRIL 2017
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This is a monthly e-newsletter published by the Internet Society's Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau. It has updates on the Bureau's activities and features insights on the transforming Internet landscape in and around the Asia-Pacific region.
If you like our e-newsletter, you can share it by clicking on the social media links above.
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Editorial: Promoting Digital Accessibility - For Persons with Disabilities, with Persons with Disabilities
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The United Nations
estimates that one in six people in Asia and the Pacific live with disability - that is a total of 650 million people. Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) often face barriers that restrict them from participating in society on an equal basis, including the access to, and use of, information and communication technologies (ICTs). These barriers include none or very little attention to incorporating accessibility features for online content (including websites), limited adaptability in the functionality of products and services, and weak policy frameworks to support the provision of an accessible digital environment.
Over the last 15 or so months, the
Internet Society Asia-Pacific Bureau in collaboration with local stakeholders including government, industry and civil society, led a series of endeavours to help embrace digital accessibility in Pakistan - a country with approximately 30 million PWDs.
These efforts started with a
small workshop organised in December 2015, inviting PWDs to inform and educate us on their accessibility requirements, and the challenges they face while using the Internet and online services in Pakistan. In this workshop, PWDs served as our
speakers and
panellists, providing a unique opportunity for us to join forces in removing barriers to digital accessibility. This effort identified several keys issues, which were broadly characterised as:
- Improving accessibility to local websites;
- Introducing policy measures;
- Educating developers and students; and
- Developing mobile applications for PWDs.
To work on these goals, an informal
Working Group on ICT Accessibility was created that includes representatives from several organisations working with PWDs - Special Talent Exchange Program, Pakistan Foundation Fighting Blindness, and Pakistan Youth Federation of Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
The group then met with the Ministry of IT and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, seeking their cooperation in promoting accessibility at both the policy and practical level. With the active support of these government entities, we first helped make their own websites accessible, and then devised an incremental approach to implement accessibility standards and guidelines for all government websites.
The group was also successful in introducing (for the first time), a separate section on accessibility, usability and promoting digital inclusion of PWDs, in the
draft IT Policy of Pakistan - this will help to achieve broader digital accessibility goals in the country.
We helped launch the
Pakistan Mobile App Awards 2016 competition, which focused on mobile applications that address the needs of PWDs, and can help them be more independent in their daily lives.
Winners of the Pakistan Mobile App Awards 2016 were announced in February 2017.
Moreover, the group secured local funding to organise
awareness workshops on mobile accessibility in all major cities of Pakistan, targeting developers and students.
Walking this digital accessibility journey for Persons with Disabilities - with Persons with Disabilities - in Pakistan was truly inspirational. It also made us realise how important digital accessibility is - and more importantly how the Internet and ICTs can help better the lives of PWDs.
PWDs are likely to be part of the last billion to be connected. We hope that our digital accessibility work in Pakistan can serve as a model for a multi-stakeholder community-driven initiative that can help make a change.
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Guest Article: With Social Media, We Can All Contribute to Safer Communities
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by Rajib Subba, PhD, Director, Communication Directorate, Nepal Police
Disaster risk management was traditionally the role of emergency management authorities, and focused on preparing the logistics and human resources for catastrophes. Today, with a deeper understanding that disaster risks can be minimised by engaging with multiple sectors to reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen people's resilience, effective coordination and information management has become more important than ever. The three critical areas for disaster risk management are: (1) response timeliness; (2) communication and coordination; and (3) technological infrastructure.
To manage these three critical areas, emergency responders have harnessed information and communication technologies to help save lives, such as the use of emergency information management systems. However, such initiatives are generally not cost-friendly for many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and they are not always successfully deployed. Moreover, such information systems are controlled by organisations, and are often off limits to the general public, hindering their participation in disaster risk reduction activities. The SAHANA-based disaster management system deployed during the 2015 Nepal earthquake is such an example.
Recent studies indicate that social media, such as
Twitter and Facebook, play a vital role in humanitarian assistance and disaster risk reduction. Particularly, they allow cost-friendly two-way communication between the general public and emergency responders, and among themselves.
The use of Twitter by the Nepal Police in the aftermath of the 2015 Nepal earthquake demonstrates that Twitter could be used as an effective communication and collaboration platform between the public authority and the general public, making it easier for the former to serve the community. Information exchange on the status of road situations, casualties, landslides, relief and rescue operations, and contacts and missing persons, helped build a collaborative relationship between the emergency responders and the general public. Moreover, the use of social media for disaster risk management helped highlight the differences in response priorities between the Nepal Police and the general public, thus allowing the former to reconsider its planning activities in real time. This kind of understanding was not easily available to crisis responders during the pre-social media era.
With the advent of social media every one of us can now take part in building more disaster resilient communities and nations. Such applications are significant to the Asia-Pacific region for two main reasons. According to the United Nations, the Asia-Pacific is the most disaster prone region - 8 of 10 countries most at risk are in this region, and from 2005-2014, 40% of the world's disaster events occurred in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, by the end of 2017, this region will account for almost half of the world's social media users according to a
survey. Thus, it is imperative that countries in the region incorporate the use of social media in their disaster risk management strategies and plans.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the Internet Society.
Further References: Bui, T., and Subba, R. "A tale of two disasters: Assessing crisis management readiness", Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, R. Sprague (Ed.), January, 2009; Hughes, A., L. Palen, J. Sutton, S. Liu, and S. Vieweg, "'Site-Seeing' in Disaster: An Examination of On-Line Social Convergence", Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference , Washington, DC, USA, F. Fiedrich and B. Van de Walle (Eds.), May, 2008; Palen, L., R. S. Hiltz, and S. B. Liu, "Online Forums Supporting Grassroots Participation in Emergency Preparedness and Response", Communications of the ACM, 2007, 50 (3), pp.54-58; and Subba, R., & T. Bui, "An Exploration of Physical online Convergence Behaviors in Crisis Situations" Proceedings of the 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, R. Sprague (Ed.), 2010.
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Profile Feature: Benjz Gerard Sevilla, Vice President for Development, Internet Society Philippines Chapter
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Benjz is the Planning Officer at the newly established Department of Information and Communications Technology in the Philippines. He also co-chairs the Philippine Network Operators' Group. His interests include Internet Governance, Digital Economy and Local Community Networks.
Connect with Benjz on
LinkedIn.
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Chapter News: A Drone Project to Enhance Humanitarian Disaster Response in the Philippines
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by Benjz Gerard Sevilla, Vice President for Development, Internet Society Philippines Chapter
The Philippines is the fourth most disaster-prone country in the world. When natural disasters hit, mobile services may be completely wiped out. In remote and rural parts of the Philippines, telecommunication networks can be spotty most of the times. The
Internet Society Philippines Chapter has been working to improve connectivity, as well as enhance emergency response to disasters through a new project supported by the Internet Society
Beyond the Net Funding Programme.
The aim of the project is to demonstrate the ways in which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) - or what most of us call drones - can act as wireless relays and data aggregators to save lives during a disaster. The UAVs can create a local mesh network to help people get in touch with the loved ones, and help emergency responders work safely and talk to one another.
While much of the focus on UAVs to date has been on military applications and as toys, the use of UAVs for humanitarian response is becoming more promising by the day. Commercial industries are using UAVs for logistics support, including parcel delivery. They are also used by environmental bureaus for tracking river flow changes.
In a country prone to disasters like the Philippines, researchers has been exploring the potential of UAVs for disaster risk management. Over the years, the Ateneo Innovation Center has been developing use cases for UAV technology, mostly for mission-critical scenarios as a decision-support platform.
Dr. Nathaniel Joseph Libatique, professor at Ateneo de Manila University said: "We can all do optimisation on battery life, rotor design and frame aerodynamics, but at the core of engineering for humanity is the UAV's payload - this niche is a breeding space for innovation. Say for example, we can do a fly-by and detect victims in a collapsed building, or do cooperative flights with ground teams. We can cover the breadth of a situation while scaling up value-added systems such as location detection, risk profiling and even Internet connectivity!"
Using hybrid communication technologies and devices, including push-to-talk radio, Android-based protocols, Raspberry Pi hubs, 915 MHz and 760 MHz transceivers, and delay-tolerant communication standards (RFC 5050), the project team has demonstrated how critical information such as victim or survivor identities and needs can be robustly transmitted to the command-and-control centres. Moreover, information analysis such as facial recognition and pre-stored information of survivors' social networks, especially for the elderly and persons with disabilities, can enable efficient and targeted response.
In the municipality of San Juan, Batangas, a province 140 kilometres south of Metro Manila, the project team carried out a series of experiments to demonstrate the benefits of UAVs during a disaster situation. The UAVs were linked with various radio communication media and the ground vehicles of the emergency responders, and the UAVs functioned as rescuer/alert vehicles. The UAVs were flown above the antenna setup, subject to the applicable civil aviation rules, and utilising the frequency (760 MHz) as approved for experimental use by the telecommunications regulator. Initial results reveal the potential of UAVs to complement ground teams in search and rescue missions during emergency response.
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Cybercriminals Building An "Army of Things"
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A report by Fortinet confirms that Internet of Things devices are sought-after commodities for cybercriminals around the world. Unlike other parts of the world, vulnerabilities in home routers formed the majority of IoT-based attacks in Asia Pacific.
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According to the latest Mastercard Online Shopping Survey, one in two consumers in the Asia-Pacific feel secure shopping online, but providing secure payment facilities (85.9%) remains the most critical to getting shoppers in the region to make such purchases, along with price (85.5%) and convenience (85.1%).
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NBTC, the telecom regulator is figuring out how to impose an Internet bandwidth fee on over-the-top (OTT) companies. OTT companies might also need to apply for an operating license to create a level playing field between OTT and telecom operators.
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The Department of Telecommunications has informed the Supreme Court that it would soon formulate a regulatory regime, similar to one existing for all telecom operators, for OTT services like WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype.
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