About the Challenge

India is home to not only half a billion internet subscribers, but also to a billion plus population of which approximately 2% is disabled. As India continues to adopt digital for greater reach, almost all facets of the economy are realizing the benefits from leveraging technology for enhanced efficiency, convenience and effectiveness. The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has given Digital an important role to impact the daily life of each person in the entire nation.

While the Government of India is taking all necessary steps to ensure that we are prepared well to face the challenge and threat posed by the pandemic of CoronaVirus, the outbreak has led to unprecedented hardships for the masses, and magnified the challenges manifold for the disabled. In such a scenario, it becomes important for all digital solutions to be geared to solving the problems of the masses by being accessible for all citizens. To ensure accessibility of digital solutions, an effective accessibility assessment solution that is cloud-based, & hence itself easily available is the need of the hour.

Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) has launched the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) as a nation-wide Campaign to achieve universal accessibility for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). Access to information creates opportunities for everyone in society. Access to information refers to all information. People use information in many forms to make decisions about their daily lives. This can range from actions such as being able to read price tags, to physically enter a hall, to participate in an event, to read a pamphlet with healthcare or any relevant information, to understand a train timetable, or to view webpages. The Accessible India Campaign envisages an era where no longer should societal barriers of infrastructure, and inaccessible formats stand in the way of obtaining and utilizing information in daily life.

The National Policy on Software Products-2019 has a vision to drive the rise of India as a Software Product Nation, so as to make India a global player in development, production and supply of innovative and efficient Software Products, thus facilitating growth across the entire spectrum of ICT sector. The present proposal would be one of the key products/solutions, having tremendous capability for scalability, market and domestic value addition.

In the light of these developments, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology announces an Innovation Challenge for Development of a Cloud Based Web Accessibility Reporting Solution under Digital India Initiative.

The solution is proposed to be a self assessment tool to be used by the departments to evaluate/ continuously monitor the accessibility of their websites.The solution is not meant to be a certification tool however the certifying bodies( like STQC) can perform the automated reporting phase of the certification process using this solution. The solution must have features but not limited to the few indicated in the following section.

Eligibility Criteria

1. Participating teams must be an Indian company registered under Companies Act or comply with the definition of Start-up as per the latest notification of DIPP (Available at http://startupindia.gov.in).
   [Indian company: 51% or more shareholding is with Indian citizen or person of Indian origin]
2. If Participating Team is not yet registered, they are still allowed to participate, but are required to get registered if they get selected for the final submission.