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Home : ITU-T Home : Workshops and Seminars : Accessibility
   
ITU Workshop on Accessibility
Bamako, Mali, 13 - 15 October 2009 Contact: tsbworkshops@itu.int
Biographies
 Almaz Abekov
Manager, DIM TV Ltd. Kyrgyzstan

Radio engineer – designer – technologist (Diploma). Mr. Abekov Almaz has an experience in teaching of Physics at secondary school, took a position of consultant on ERP systems (SAP) and business-consultant on automation and optimization of business-projects. Carried out joint projects on telecommunication nets construction in Nepal and Azerbaijan. Mr. Abekov Almaz is an expert in control automation and development of corporative computer nets. He took participation in caring out of projects on divided state informational systems automation focused at more than 10 000 (ten thousand) users. He worked as a technical director of a large GSM Company-Operator. Mr. Abekov Almaz is competent and has experience in telecommunication sphere. He is a certified auditor of management systems ISO 9001 quality.

Mr. Abekov Almaz is an author of a range of interactive training programs for computer users, business-consulting issues author and a book author named “Digital laws in informational age”. The book is about possibilities of informational systems for the purpose of collision exclusion during development of laws in draft and for the purpose of easy and intelligible access securing for citizens without necessity of getting legal education.

Fernando H.F. Botelho
Director of Product Development, Literacy Bridge, Brazil

Fernando Botelho is an international consultant who manages projects in the areas of trade development, poverty reduction, technology, and disability. He specializes in tools and strategies that are inherently scalable; in his own words "The only solutions that matter, given the enormous challenges humanity faces, are those that can be scaled.”

Fernando's experience includes managing the Visionaris Award, a partnership between Ashoka and UBS AG, in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Before coming to UBS Philanthropy Services in Zurich, Fernando worked for the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO, an agency of the United Nations in Geneva. At ITC, Fernando led the development of the first methodology for the integration of professionals with disabilities in the services export sector. Before joining ITC, Fernando was Director of Technology at a New York NGO where he led the development of eSight.org, a groundbreaking online community for the professional advancement of people with disabilities.

Fernando has published and has been interviewed on trade, open source software, public policy, and disability topics. He has degrees from Georgetown University and Cornell University.
Abdoulaye Dembele
(SOTELMA, Focal point between ITU-D, ITU-T and the JCA-AHF for persons with disabilities, Vice Rapporteur for ITU-D Q.20/1)

Nationalit� : Malienne, Mari� et p�re de 4 enfants( 2 gar�ons et 2 filles)
Handicap� physique suite � la poliomy�lite
T�l�phone : +(223) 66 70 23 12
Email : abdoulaye.dembele@ties.itu.int
: dembelea@yahoo.fr
: dembelea@sotelma.ml

ACTIVITE AU SEIN DE LA SOTELMA SA (Soci�t� des T�l�communications du Mali SA):
JE SUIS CHARGE DE FIXER LES TARIFS DES PRODUITS ET SERVICES DE LA SOTELMA, DE L’EDITION ET SUIVI DU GUIDE TARIFAIRE. JE SUIS CHARGE AUSSI D’APPLIQUER LA POLITIQUE DE FIXATION DES PRIX DES PRODUITS ET SERVICES DE LA SOTELMA. ET ENFIN, J’ELABORE UN PLAN DE COMMUNICATION POUR LA DIFFUSION DES NOUVEAUX TARIFS.

ACTIVITE AU SEIN DE L’UIT :
DE 2006 A NOS JOURS, JE PARTICIPE A TOUTES LES REUNIONS DE COMMISSIONS D’ETUDE 1 ET 2
JE SUIS VICE RAPPORTEUR DES QUESTIONS 12-2/1 ET 20/1.
JE PARTICIPE REGULIEREMENT AUX REUNIONS DU GROUPE DE RAPPORTEURS DES QUESTIONS : 20/1, 12-2/1,21/1,7-2/1,19-1,14-2/2, 22-2, 23/2
J’ai �t� d�signer le point focal entre le BDT, le TSB et la JCA des activit�s pour les personnes handicap�s
Au cour de la derni�re r�union des commissions d’�tudes de l’UIT-D, le 11 septembre 2009

CONTRIBUTIONS
J’AI FAIT PLUSIEURS CONTRIBUTIONS POUR DIFFERENTES QUESTIONS (CONTRIBUTIONS DISPONIBLES SUR LE SITE WEB DE L’UIT).
J’AI PARICIPE AUX DIFFERENTES REUNIONS ET SEMINAIRES DU GROUPE TAF ORGANISES PAR L’UIT-T : AU CAMEROUN, EN AFRIQUE DU SUD, EN GUINEE ET AU MOZAMBIQUE.
J’AI CONTRIBUE ET PARTICIPE EN QUALITE D’ORATEUR AUX ATELIERS DE L’UIT RELATIFS A L’ACCES DES PERSONNES HANDICAPEES AUX TIC, A GENEVE (SUISSE) SETEMBRE 2006, Au CAIRE (EGYPTE) NOVEMBRE 2007 ET A LUSAKA (ZAMBIE) JUILLET 2008.
J’AI PARTICIPE ACTIVEMENT A LA REUNION DU GROUPE DE RAPPORTEURS DE LA QUESTION 14-2/2 AU MOIS DE JUILLET 2008 A TOKYO (JAPON )

ACTIVITE AU SEIN DES ASSOCIATIONS
MEMBRE FONDATEUR DES ASSOCIATIONS : COLLECTIF DES HANDICAPES DIPLOMES, EMPLOI INTEGRATION DES HANDICAPES POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT.
MEMBRE DE L’ASSOCIATION : CENTRE DE READAPTATION DES HANDICAPES
MEMBRE FONDATEUR DE L’ASSOCIATION COLLECTIF DES HANDICAPES DIPLOMES
Dr. Alexandra Gaspari
ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector

Dr. Alexandra Gaspari currently works at ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector and provides support for the accessibility coordination project in ITU-T.

She also serves as Secretariat for the Joint Coordination Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors as well as the Internet Governance Forum Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability.

She holds a specialization doctorate in Political Science with a focus on International Studies and Human Rights, a master degree in Economics and European Studies and a Degree in International Relations.
Claudio Giugliemma
Dominic Foundation, Switzerland

Claudio Giugliemma (Swiss citizen born in 1966) is the founder, CTO and BoD Member of QualiLife Inc., a Swiss company specialized in the development and distribution of award-winning software solutions for the Health Care market. (www.qualilife.com)

Claudio is a steering committee member of AIA (Assistive Interoperability Alliance) as well as member of the Voices For Innovation organization.

IIn 2005, Claudio founded and is the president of Dominic Foundation, a Swiss Foundation with the goal of providing fully accessible and sustainable solutions for people as well as eHealth ICT support and consultancy in emerging countries.

With over 20 years of experience in ICT development, in the past twelve years he has focused with great success on eHealth, and in particular on accessibility and usability of ICT. In the year 2000, he founded QualiLife and as CEO for over 9 years he took the company to an international leading position; the company main goal is to provide a new generation of Unified Communication solutions for the Health Care market that can make all technologies fully accessible to anyone, regardless of age, location, ability and knowledge.

This new approach has measurably increased the use of ICT in several areas, including the home, the work environment, in hospitals, retirement homes, and so on.

Claudio iugliemma believes that technology should serve the people, not the opposite; therefore he started to work and strongly supports ITU activities in 2008 since the WTISD-08 in Cairo.
Dr. Mamoru Iwabuchi
Associate Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan

Mamoru Iwabuchi is an associate profeesor at RCAST (Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology) of the University of Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Iwabuchi has been conducting applied research of two types of technology to support people with disabilities: (1) assistive technology (AT) and (2) alternative and augmentative communication (AAC). He has developed a PC-based multilingual communication system, UNICORN (UNIversal Communicator Over Remote Networks), and a mobile phone-based communication tool, e-PP (Electronic Personal Profiler). He is interested in development of AT using existing and generally available mainstream technology, such as PC and mobile phones.
Axel Leblois
Executive Director, G3ict

Axel Leblois is the Founder and Executive Director of G3ict – the Global Initiative for Inclusive Technologies, an Advocacy Initiative of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development. G3ict mission is to promote the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in matters of accessible and assistive ICTs in cooperation with industry, disabled persons organizations, academia and the public sector.

Prior to creating G3ict, Axel Leblois spent over 20 years at the helm of information technology companies in the United States including as CEO of Computerworld Communications, CEO of IDC – International Data Corporation, President & CEO of Bull HN Worldwide Information Systems – Formerly Honeywell Information Systems, CEO of ExecuTrain and co-founder and President of W2i, the Wireless Internet Institute. Axel Leblois is a Fellow of UNITAR, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and founding trustee of its North American affiliate CIFAL Atlanta. Axel Leblois holds an MBA from INSEAD and is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris.

Nourlan Mamyrov
Adviser on international cooperation, DIM TV Ltd. Kyrgyzstan









Education:
  • Moscow State University, Laser Physics
  • Karakol Institute of Business Administration, BA
  • Kyrgyz National State University, Law
Work experience:
  • 2008-present Adviser on international cooperation, DIMTV Ltd.
  • 2002-2004 Adviser to Vice-Prime Minister of the Kyrgyz Republic
  • 1996-2007 ABB International Marketing, Representative
  • 1994-1996 Price Waterhouse, Project Manager
  • 1994 Ministry of Economy, Leading Expert
Other:
  • Honorary consul of Sweden in the Kyrgyz Republic
  • Vice-president, National Kyrgyz Equestrian Federation
Languages:
  • Kyrgyz (native)
  • Russian (fluent)
  • English (fluent)
Prof. Arun Mehta
President, Bidirectional Access Promotion Society (BAPSI), India

I obtained a B. Tech degree from IIT Delhi in 1975, a Masters in Computer Sciences from the State University of Stony Brook in two semesters thereafter with the equivalent of a 4.0 GPA. I then worked with Siemens AG in Erlangen, Germany for three years, designing the electricals, electronics and process control software for steel rolling mills. In 1979, I returned to Mumbai, India, where I designed and marketed hard wired and programmable solutions for a large variety of industrial control problems. In 1982 I joined the PhD program of the Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, as a fellow of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. My solution for a time-optimal crane controller demonstrated a 5% improvement in the throughput of a 35-ton grab crane at Hamburg-Wedel, and was also presented at the World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control in Munich, 1987. I was awarded the "Dr.-Ing" title the same year.

On returning to India, I became the Managing Director of Indata Com Private Limited, in which capacity I write software, teach, and provide consultancy services. My clients include Tata Iron and Steel Ltd, Jamshedpur, and the University of Pittsburgh, for whom I developed software that helps in the early detection of Alzheimers' disease. I have written extensively for publications in India, Pakistan, the US and Germany. In 2000, I started radiophony.com together with Vickram Crishna, a .com dedicated to audio-centric solutions to the problems of the under-privileged. At the request of Professor Stephen Hawking, I wrote eLocutor, free and open source software that allows persons as severely disabled as him to write and speak. I have taught programming as a volunteer at the National Association for the Blind, helping my students become members of international development teams of cutting edge software that will help improve the lives of not just the blind.

Currently, my passion is software that might make it easier for children with autism, cerebral palsy and dyslexia to communicate, which is being made available free of cost at skid.org.in and documented at arpitblog.wordpress.com. This software received the Manthan Award in 2008.

I have conducted three workshops, each a week long, with autistic children and their care givers, to find ways that persons with severe communication disorders might learn to use the computer to communicate. I mentor a few students at school and college level with severe disabilities, helping them with their computing problems, even writing special software to make it easier for them to communicate.

From 1989 to 1991, I was President of the Indian section of Amnesty International, and have since been at the forefront of initiatives to improve cyber rights and telecommunications policy, to allow rapid spread of the benefits of information technologies to all segments of society. I am part of the ONI-Asia project, in which I am seeking to make the monitoring of Internet filtering in India sustainable.

I moderate several Internet discussion groups, most notably india-gii@cpsr.org which brings together experts from academia, government, industry and the media to critically examine India's bumpy progress along the information highway.

I am a professor and chairman of the computer engineering department at JMIT, Radaur, an engineering college in rural Haryana, 180km from Delhi. I have taught Pascal, PL/1, Visual Basic, Ruby, Perl, C and C++ programming, as well as web technologies, including Ruby on Rails.

I have co-authored a book "Technology and Competitiveness", which was published by Sage, and compares the machine tool industries of Brazil and India. In 2007, O'Reilly published "Beautiful Code", in which the world's leading programmers, including Brian Kernighan and Matz, contributed a chapter each. In this Jolt-award winning book, I am proud author of a chapter on eLocutor, entitled "When a button is all that connects you to the world."
Asenath Mpatwa
Senior Advisor, Regional Office for Africa, ITU-D/BDT

After five years with a development Bank in Tanzania, I started my telecoms carrier with the Tanzanian national operator where for 22 years, I was responsible for various functions including strategic & business planning, heading the privatization of Tanzania Telecommunications company Ltd. and as the last CEO before the company was privatized in 2001. During this period, I played a leading role in the restructuring and network development for the telecommunication sector in Tanzania. The restructuring process included establishment of the regulatory agency, separation of postal and telecommunication businesses and divestiture of non-core activities from the telecommunications company. Alongside these activities, I was responsible for monitoring the implementation of the largest telecoms development project valued at USD 250 million in Tanzania. This required extensive coordination with the seven donors, suppliers and the government. I also served in a number of Boards as a Director including the first data communications company in the country.

In 2001, I joined the ITU-D as a Coordinator for Africa region, a post I occupied until March 2007 when I was transferred to head the Special Initiatives Unit. My primary responsibility there was to raise awareness on policy and technical issues and assist member states to provide ICT access and services to persons with disabilities, gender, youth & children, indigenous people and people living in underserved/remote areas. In April 2009, I moved to the ITU Regional office for Africa as a Senior Adviser.

I hold a Master of Arts from the University of Dar-es-salaam and a Master of Science in Telecommunications from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Prof. Kenryu Nakamura
University of Tokyo, Japan

Kenryu Nakamura is a professor at RCAST (Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology) of the University of Tokyo, Japan. Prof. Nakamura has been conducting applied research of two types of technology to support people with disabilities: (1) assistive technology (AT) and (2) alternative and augmentative communication (AAC). He has also created a database of e-AT (electronic- and information technology-based assistive technology), namely, AT2ED. He is currently interested in good use of generally available mainstream technology, such as PC and mobile phones, as a form of AT.
Christophe Oul�
Director of �Centre de formation pour handicap�s visuels au Burkina Faso�

Christophe OUL� est n� en 1960 � Zaba, Province du Nayala, BURKINA FASO.

Il est ing�nieur en G�nie Civil Option B�timent, dipl�m� de l’Ecole Nationale Sup�rieure des Travaux Publics de Yamoussoukro, C�TE D’IVOIRE.

De 1985 � 1998, il a �t� Chef du D�partement Exploitation d’une Soci�t� P�troli�re install�e au BURKINA FASO. Il avait en charge la conception et le contr�le des constructions de stations services. Il supervisait �galement les approvisionnements et la gestion de la s�curit�.

En 1998 il a cr�� une Entreprise de Construction B�timent qu’il a g�r� jusqu’en 2003.

Suite � une infection des yeux, il a perdu la vue en 2003. En 2004, il a suivi un stage de r�adaptation d’adultes nouvellement devenus aveugles � l’Union Nationale des Associations Burkinab� pour la Promotion des Aveugles et Malvoyants (UN-ABPAM), Ouagadougou. Durant l’ann�e scolaire 2005/2006, il a �t� enseignant suppl�ant dans une classe de r�adaptation d’enfants nouvellement devenus aveugles ou malvoyants.

En 2007 il a suivi un stage de formation de formateurs en Informatique Adapt�e � la D�ficience Visuelle au si�ge de l’Association Valentin HA�Y (AVH), Paris France avec un recyclage en 2008. Depuis mars 2007, il est responsable de la Formation en Informatique Adapt�e � la d�ficience visuelle de l’UN-ABPAM.

Il est le Secr�taire G�n�ral de l’UN-ABPAM depuis octobre 2008.

Postal : 01 BP 5588 Ouagadougou 01, BURKINA FASO
T�l�phone/fax professionnel : +226 50 34 33 86
Mobile : + 226 70 04 54 26
e-mail : formation@abpam.com ou O.christobal@gmail.com
Dr. Joyojeet Pal
University of Washington, Seattle, USA

Joyojeet Pal is a research associate at the Center for Information and Society and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work is primarily in the use of technology in low-resource scenarios. He heads a project at the University of Washington, looking at the impacts of technology centers on issues of employability for people with disabilities. His team is currently examining the role of technology within the larger ecosystem of socio-economic opportunities for people with disabilities in Guatemala, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, and El Salvador.

Joyojeet's past work has been in design ethnography for children's technology use in schools and computer centers in the developing world. As part of this research, he has been involved in the conceptualization of shared-use models of computer use for children. Joyojeet is an US National Science Foundation (NSF) Computing Innovation Fellow for 2009-2010. He received his doctorate in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.
Andrea Saks
Convener, ITU-T Joint Coordination Activity on Accessibility and Human Factors, JCA-AHF

She grew in a family of two deaf parents and assisted them from an early age as their interface with the hearing world: She as responsible making doctors’ appointments, arranging guests’ visits and other appointments by using the telephone which was then inaccessible to her family without her.

Her father, the late Andrew Saks, the late Robert Weitbrecht and James C. Marsters (who recently died July 2009) were the first pioneers deaf themselves, who created deaf telecommunications using surplus teletypewriters and modems that spread throughout the world. These devices were the precursors of textphones and today’s real-time text messaging.

She took that role to the next level when she relocated from the US to the UK in 1972 to promote the use of textphones internationally. She worked with the British Government Post Office (then the regulator of UK telecommunications) and was granted a license for connection of text telephones on the regular telephone network. She was able to successfully lobby the US FCC to allow the first transatlantic textphone conversation over the voice telephone network (1975).

Her first involvement with ITU standardization activity started in 1991 and has ever since increased in scope. Self-funded, she currently attends many ITU-T study group and focus group meetings promoting the inclusion of accessibility functionality in systems being standardized by ITU, such as multimedia conferencing, cable, IPTV and NGN. After the recent creation of ITU-D Q20/1 on accessibility matters by WTDC-06, she also started attending that group and now performs as a bridge between the two sectors on accessibility for persons with disabilities

She has been a key person in the creation of all accessibility events in ITU, and currently is the convener of the recently formed joint coordination activity on accessibility and human factors, as well as the coordinator of the Internet Governance Forum’s Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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