ABSTRACT
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) opens up great opportunities to improve the quality of life of differently abled persons. However, without substantial social effort, there is a risk that these technical developments will only give us products and services which increase the information gap. If determined efforts are made, ICT can indeed become an effective tool allowing a greater number of people to participate in society.
Disability is not a tragedy but an inconvenience. About 600 million persons or one-tenth of the world population is estimated have disability in some form or the other–whether visual, auditory, physical, speech-related, cognitive or neurological. I CT fundamentally aims to meet our demand for information and knowledge and our demand to communicate the same. Technology that facilitates meeting this basic human need is therefore very useful. In introducing an ICT-based methodology, there is the need to consider how to help differently abled persons gather and disseminate knowledge and information. In this regard, certain questions arise: what information to convey? Which sources to access? How ICT? Which ICT? This paper focuses on these questions, particularly how ICT can be used for the collection of information, its 22documentation and dissemination to society for the benefit of differently abled persons. Finally, it looks at an old yet reinvented strategy for including the differently abled in society. This strategy is community-based rehabilitation.
