The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) supports Egypt for inclusion of Persons With Disabilities (PwDs) through its ‘Project for Improvement of Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities through Improvement of Information Accessibility’, which will be conducted in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the National Library of Egypt, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
The project aims to provide PwDs with print-related disabilities with an accessible form of printed material, by converting the contents of books, and different printed material, into the special digital format of Daisy which stands for Digital Accessible Information SYstem.
Print disabilities can be defined as persons with blindness, visual impairments, reading disabilities, and physical disabilities which hinder them from holding and, or dealing with books, and printed material.
According to the above-mentioned project, a public-private partnership project will be conducted in collaboration with a Japanese company specialised in the Daisy production technology, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, to develop the mechanics which would facilitate the production of Daisy content in Arabic with high accuracy, which was a main challenge in the efforts of digitalisation of printed content in the Arab region.
Moreover, JICA participated in the Regional Digital Inclusion Week for the Arab States in the period from 23 to 28 of September 2018, which was organised by the International Telecommunication Union, and UNESCO.
The aim of the Regional Week was to spread awareness, and share the latest updates about the innovation in the field of digital inclusion.
The Regional Week featured various activities, among which is the ‘Digital Inclusion Tech-Talks’ that JICA’s Egypt office has participated in, by presenting JICA’s contribution to the inclusion of PwDs in Egypt.
