Page 69 - Peter Farrelly Issue

An Accessible Revolution:
Vashkar Bhattacharjee, the Birth of Inclusive Digital Bangladesh
Perhaps no other person has done more to build an inclusive digital Bangladesh than Vashkar Bhattachar- jee. Working directly with the Aspire to Innovate (a2i) program, initiated by the Prime Minister’s Office, as a national consultant for the Digital Bangladesh Initiative, Vashkar spearheaded a massive overhaul of the coun- try’s sprawling digital infrastructure. “Our government runs the largest web portal in the world,” he told ABILITY Magazine, “with more than 33,000 websites connected to a single central hub.” Thanks to Vashkar and his team, all 33,000 websites are now accessible for persons with disabilities, as are more than 200 government e- services.
games. He told me to stand up and leave the room. I complained to the head of the department, who called the professor to his office. He was shocked when I read my Braille notes back to him. He thought it was magic!”
With such robust online infrastructure comes an equally substantive digital divide. “For persons with access to technology,” Vashkar explained, “Bangladesh has almost everything. But many persons don’t have access, especially persons with disabilities. They might not have computers in their homes, or smartphones, or even electricity. This is something we must work to change.”
Even before arriving at the university, Vashkar had grown accustomed to navigating disabling attitudes. Born in 1979 in the remote, southeastern village of Bag- dondi, Chittagong, he’d gone to a primary school for children with visual impairments, but attended junior high and high school with his sighted peers. “My family was very frustrated by the lack of resources,” he remem- bered. “My father was a civil servant, my mother is a housewife, and both are well educated. When I was two years old and they discovered I was blind, they resolved to do everything in their power to support me. But this idea was rare.”
Vashkar, who served as an accessibility consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, Bangladesh in 2013, has since drafted Bangladesh’s National Web Accessibility Guidelines in accordance with the international W3C 2.0 Standard, led a tremen- dous, country-wide push to convert written materials to accessible formats, and pioneered a disability-inclusive education initiative that’s responsible for making one of Bangladesh’s top universities inclusive for persons with disabilities. All these achievements have been tied to personal experience, of course, but none more so than the last. The University of Chittagong, now Bangladesh’s first disability-inclusive institution of higher learning, is Vashkar’s alma mater, despite once denying him admission because he is blind.
In those days, Bagdondi didn’t even have physicians or hospitals, much less accessible education facilities. After an extended period of searching, Vashkar’s father finally met an eye doctor who told him of a primary school for blind children in Chittagong. For junior high, however, he had no choice but to attend the mainstream school. “There were no Braille books and very few Braille papers or writing frames,” he said. “The teachers didn’t know how to teach me.” High school brought more of the same. Because of these experiences, Vashkar entered the University of Chittagong with his armor on.
To be fair to the University of Chittagong, they weren’t the only ones to stonewall Vashkar. “I tried to enter many universities,” he said, “but they all refused my application. Some other visually impaired applicants and I began a hunger strike. Suddenly, the University of Chittagong decided to let us in!”
Now, thanks to his efforts, the university has introduced a quota system, removing barriers to enrollment and reserving places for students with disabilities. Accessi- ble reading materials are available, as are fellowships for students with disabilities and over 300 free online courses, which students can access through MuktoPaath, a self-directed digital learning platform. Students with disabilities can also avail themselves of university com- puters and smartphones and receive training on how to use them.
Getting through the door was but the first of many hur- dles. The faculty had never taught students with visual impairments, and many still labored under the impres- sion that persons with disabilities are nothing but a bur- den on society, unable to become productive citizens. “One day,” recalled Vashkar, “I was taking notes on my Braille slate, and the professor thought I was playing
In addition to policy changes and material resources, Vashkar also provides guidance and education to the Association of Students with Disabilities, a student group active on the University of Chittagong campus. The group has received training on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)— “Bangladesh,” Vashkar noted proudly, “was the first country to sign and ratify the treaty with all the optional protocols”—as well as the Bangladeshi Persons with Disabilities Rights and Protections Act of 2013. In addi-
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