Accelerating Disability-Inclusive Digitalization — NCBM's Cross-Disability Digital-Accessibility Training in Malaysia

Between February 2021 and May 2022, the National Council for the Blind, Malaysia (NCBM), based in Kuala Lumpur, ran ‘Accelerating Disability-Inclusive Digitalization’, an ESCAP-supported project funded by Rehabilitation International and delivered online across Peninsular and East Malaysia because of COVID-19 restrictions.
Its core activity was Malaysia's first cross-disability training in digital accessibility and website auditing, alongside accessible-publishing training. Twenty-three people completed the digital-accessibility course — 10 women and 13 men — drawn from blind and low-vision, Deaf, physical-disability, chronic-illness and dyslexic communities; a further 38 people took part in a related gender-disability intersectionality course. A companion survey on ‘the Situation of Persons with Disabilities in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Access to ICT’, run in Malay, English, Chinese and Malaysian Sign Language video, found that half of respondents struggled to access COVID-19 information and 94.9% reported negative psychological symptoms during the pandemic.
Trained participants used their new skills to audit government websites for accessibility gaps — NCBM's leadership cited missing alt text on images as a recurring failure — and to advocate for Malaysia's accession to the WIPO Marrakesh Treaty, which took effect alongside the Copyright (Amendment) Act 2022 (royal assent 26 January 2022; accession 31 March 2022). A seminar on disability-inclusive digital accessibility held in Kuala Lumpur on 31 May 2022 drew officials from 19 government entities. Follow-on activity included peer WhatsApp support groups, a prototype training for Ministry of Health staff and early work on a telehealth app for Deaf users.
Direct training reach was modest — 61 people across the two courses — and the link drawn between the training and the Copyright Act/Marrakesh Treaty outcomes comes from ESCAP and NCBM's own project reporting rather than an independent evaluation, so it is best read as one contributing strand of advocacy rather than a proven sole cause; no independent audit of participants' subsequent website-auditing work was found.

Read the full analysis: https://www.maketherightreal.net/covid-19/initiatives/malaysia