[WSIS CS-Plenary] communication gap

[Hiroshi Kawamura]

Dear all:

In capacity of the WSIS Disability Focal Point, I am writing to clarify the 
communication gap that caused some misunderstanding among Disability Caucus 
members.

In the plenary session last morning, as all attended were aware, there was 
no French to English interpretation.
Since I was wearing SI earphone on my left ear that works fine, my right ear 
which lost hearing at my childhood did not catch the human talk at all. In 
addition, I was preparing for the Disability Caucus meeting to follow the 
plenary immediately, I could not follow the conversation outside of my 
earphone. I noticed that Nenna volunteered to interpret someone's 
intervention made in French but I couldn't follow that actually.

At the CS Bureau meeting in the afternoon, I was informed that a new French 
Speaking Group dealing with Disability is set up and asked why I did not 
make any comment on that at the plenary.

When I met my colleague from Tunisia, I was told that a new group "Reunion 
du Caucus Francophone Handicap TIC" hosted by Sindbad Mediterranee will meet 
on 21st.

Of course anyone may set up a Caucus in line with the objectives of WSIS, 
however, I am afraid that some sense of exclusion due to language barrier 
might generate the set up of this new group.

Further more, I checked my e-mail record and official WSIS Disability Caucus 
e-mail list. I confirmed that Sindbad Mediterranee has been on the list 
since their first participation in PrepCom. I also found one return e-mail 
to Sindbad which had a subject in French which I couldn't understand at all. 
I replied to that e-mail instantly on July 26 following my standard 
procedures for e-mails written in languages that I cannot understand: "Dear 
Sir/Madam: I am sorry to say that I cannot read French at all. Please 
contact me either in English or Japanese." I even did not know it was a 
personal e-mail since I just filter hundreds of e-mails everyday by senders 
and delete a lot of spams. What I could do was to get a subject line which I 
could understand and select those e-mails need to be handled seriously.
What turned out yesterday afternoon by translation of that particular e-mail 
kindly done by my friend from Tunis, the mail was a personal one describing 
a sense of isolation from the Disability Caucus information channel written 
in French. If I knew that contents, I could respond it in quite different 
manner.
I could easily understand the frustration and share the feeling that the 
Parallel Event organization process was so complicated and we were left in 
difficult conditions until early September when we got the final list of 
events. Actually there was almost no fixed information on the parallel 
events until September. Communication gap could have increased the 
frustration.

This is all what happened.

My message to Reunion du Caucus Francophone Handicap TIC in capacity of WSIS 
Disability Focal Point, please discuss issues in language of your choice and 
collaborate with Disability Caucus for the fruitful outcome of WSIS in 
Tunis.
Taking all those happened into my account, I will request my colleagues in 
Disability Caucus with different language capacity to help us by raising the 
sensitivity of language and other communication barriers.

I noticed that many people in Palais des Nations expressed me their concerns 
on the fragmentation of activities on disability in WSIS context. But I 
believe that there will be a common ground to collaborate and eliminate 
further misunderstanding.

I am looking forward to the success of Reunion du Caucus Francophone 
Handicap TIC meeting today to work together for the fruitful outcome of WSIS 
in Tunis and beyond to bridge the digital divide of persons with 
disabilities in the world.

Best regards

Hiroshi Kawamura
WSIS CS Bureau Disability Focal Point