Accessibility
APC Hafkin Communications Prize
The Hafkin prize was established to honour Dr. Nancy J. Hafkin, a true pioneer of networking, and development information and communications in Africa, over the course of a twenty-three year career. APC’s objective is to recognize African ICT efforts, and to extract some of the lessons learned in order to make them accessible to others doing related work.
Convergence for development: Community radio as a digital inclusion strategy
The distinction between “new” and “old” technology is no longer significant in the current state of technology convergence. People from community radios and telecentres are working together for more democratic and participatory access to communication, specifically in rural and poor urban areas. This paper by Carlos Rivadeneyra provides conceptual tools to re-think, from this perspective, what we understand by information society [pdf version, in Spanish].
South Africa - APC supports national regulator against monopoly
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international non-profit actor on internet access worldwide, has stated its whole-hearted support of the Independent Communications Authority o
Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA)
CATIA was a three-year project supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) to enable Africans to gain maximum benefits from the opportunity offered by ICTs and to act as catalysts for policy reform.
Open access in Africa: FibreForAfrica.net
APC’s FibreForAfrica.net site provides basic information about international bandwidth in Africa, its costs and the existence of monopoly access to it. It focuses especially on the proposed East African cable projects and the ending of the monopoly of SAT-3.
Interconnection costs
This paper produced by South African Mike Jensen covers increasing North-South inequities (“paying both ways”) and proposed strategies for minimising the disparities in interconnection rates, accelerating the restructuring of the communications sector, supporting the establishment of national and international internet exchange points, and building local demand for national and international backbones.
ICT literacy training across southern Africa develops awareness as well as skills
“People won’t benefit from improved access to digital networks, if the necessary capabilities to select, apply and interpret the available information are not better developed”, says Arnold Pietersen of CECS. With oversight from ICT NGOs from Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia, CECS designed an ‘ICT Literacy’ programme.
Launch of Brazil's first Observatory of Public Policies on Infoinclusion
APC’s member in Brazil, RITS, set up the OPPI site as a web-based tool for monitoring, analyzing and undertaking projects and policies which contribute to infoinclusion, as well as covering other issues related to democratization of ICTs in Brazil.
Canadian institute for the blind gets accessible news
The Canadian National Institute for the Blind (www.cnib.ca) today launched an innovative service for its members, allowing them to access articles from daily newspapers on the day of publication. The CNIB chose APC member in Toronto, Web Networks, to produce and host their site to ensure newsfeeds were automatically fed to a private website page, and that visually-impaired users could easily convert the text to voice using standard software. Find out more about Web Networks.