Tunisia's OGP Digital Inclusion for People with Disabilities Commitment -- Standards Drafted, Limited Operationalisation

An estimated 49,000 to 2 million Tunisians live with a disability, and Tunisia ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008; its 2022 Constitution enshrines a right to information. Yet persons with disabilities continue to face practical barriers to Tunisia's growing digital public services.
Commitment TN0076, "Digital Inclusion for People with Disabilities," was included in Tunisia's Fifth National OGP Action Plan (2023-2025) and led by the Electronic Government Unit. It set out to develop unified technical standards for public digital services, factor in the needs of persons with disabilities and older people when designing e-services, and align public portals with international digital-accessibility benchmarks.
Independent evaluation: in Tunisia's Results Report 2023-2025, OGP's Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) found that this commitment, alongside a related commitment on civil-society access to information, produced supporting documents but showed "limited evidence of their operationalization by the end of the implementation period." The IRM attributed this to a challenging political and administrative context, a focus on internal technical activities rather than public-facing delivery, and a lack of high-level government validation of key reform elements.
Separately, civil-society monitoring (ARTICLE 19) documents continuing gaps: government websites that are not fully compatible with screen-reading software, limited sign-language or subtitle provision for Deaf citizens, and blind users who must disclose personal information to third parties simply to complete routine digital transactions. In March 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities separately commended Tunisia for progress in distributing some accessible technology while still raising questions about broader service access.
This practice is included as a cautionary case rather than a proven success: it shows the value of an independent evaluation mechanism (OGP-IRM) in surfacing the gap between a well-intentioned digital-accessibility commitment and its actual implementation.

Read the full analysis: https://www.article19.org/resources/tunisia-ensure-digital-transformation-supports-access-to-information-for-people-with-disabilities/