Blind and visually impaired users called for greater efforts to increase accessibility of digital media and for more research and development efforts. At the Arab region’s first technology summit for people who are blind or visually impaired, the community said that public and private sector organisations need to do more to make their websites fully accessible to people with a disabilities.

The meeting was organised by Mada, the Qatar Assistive Technology Centre, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Doha.

Being a member of the erstwhile drafting committee for the Rights of People with Disabilities Bill 2012, I can testify to its stand that ‘it cannot be made perfect as every process involves breaking something else’. That was our guiding principle while drafting the Bill — one that was been jinxed from the beginning given the ups and downs with regard to opinions about it within the sector.

She doesn’t spout quotable quotes like many others. Nor does she give you examples of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. She merely picks up vignettes from her own life — how struggling with blindness she often fell, but every time got up and walked again.