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INSPO 2003 for Internet without barriers
24.3.2003

Speakers at the conference fixed the attention at many problems and obstacles of a wider usage of the Internet by disabled people. The first one is a high price of PCs – the prices of PCs is falling down slowly but the price of special additional tools and features for disabled people remains the same, and is inaccessible for most of them. This problem has been solved for a few hundreds of disabled people by Charta 77, which started the project “Computers against barriers” in 1996. During the period almost 300 home working places were arranged for disabled people with the help of the Czech Microsoft. The activity of Charta77 is focused also on building up schoolrooms for disabled – more than 900 disabled people went through different types of PC learning courses, said Mr. Martin Bojar, the chairman of the project. The next problem pointed at the conference is finding of a job. Despite of existing law legislation supporting the employment of disabled persons – it is still very difficult for them to find a job. The basic criterion to get it is level of qualification and professional skills. The law regulation measures are not efficient enough in case of the employment of disabled people – much more important is effort to help them and the sufficient level of their competencies. From this point of view – Internet shall play more important role in education and professional training of people with disadvantages. Big help in the above can play specialised information servers focused on the problems and questions of life with disabilities. The conference concluded, there is a lack of a grant and funding support of such Web content building – such Web sites can’t run on a commercial basis because of limited area and number of the “target group”. Attendees of the conference met with interest the presentation of the HelpNet Web site, which is projected by AISO and BMI Association with a financial support of CZ.NIC. The Web site will concentrate information as well as different sources dealing with information important and interesting for disabled. There will be also monitoring of national and foreign media based on the database of Anopress. It will contain information and news from the field of healthcare, social care, transport, culture, family life, etc. towards disabled people form hundreds of media sources including press, TV, and radio. There was also the presentation and the first meeting of the Czech Prelude Cluster for Innovation. Irina Zalisova has introduced the Czech Prelude project and Marie Collins of the Irish MWA made interesting presentation of the common task of Prelude. The meeting of members and partners of the Prelude project finished the INSPO conference.

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