Retina India and WWW2011India

WWW2011 Conference (20th International World Wide Web Conference) was held at HICC (Hyderabad International Convention Centre), Hyderabad, India 28th of March - 1st of April. Chathuri and myself from WSO2 attended the conference as delegates. It was a remarkable trip to Bangalore (26th & 27th, March 2011) and Hyderabad (28th March - 2nd of April 2011).

We attended the 2nd International Workshop on RESTful Design (WS-REST 2011 - 28th March: Proceedings), the 1st International Workshop on Social Media Engagement (SoME 2011 - 29th March), Dev Track – [Mostly Cloud Computing] (30th and 31st, March), and a paper presentation on a few Research Papers on the final day (Information Credibility, Web Applications, and Monetization). Key note speeches were given by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Scientist and ex-president of India), Sir Tim Berners-Lee (The inventor of the world wide web), and Christos H. Papadimitriou (Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley).

There were booths, posters, and exhibits as well. Google, Yahoo!, InfoSys, Tata Consultancy Services, ApnaCircle, Zoho, IET, and some other companies/organizations had their booths during the conference days. But one booth grabbed special attention from most of us. It was the booth from Retina India.

"Retina India is an umbrella organization of people with retinal disorders, their families and friends, which brings them on a common platform with experts such as physicians, researchers, counselors, low vision and mobility experts, and other specialists, such that there is a cohesive focus towards increasing awareness of retinal diseases in society as well as about the people who get affected by them, and inducing innovative research and treatment efforts for such diseases."

It was so impressing and motivating to listen to Mr.L.Subramani, who is a differently abled journalist also a trustee for the organization. He did a small presentation after the social event - a Kuchipudi (తెలుగు : కూచిపూడి) dance (The cultural dance of Andhra Pradesh in India) series from Yamini Reddy and team. We were also able to talk to him in person at the booth of RetinaIndia. His message was clear. It asked the *normal* people to open their eyes. It also had the strong power and message. He invited the developers of the web sites and applications to consider the accessibility aspect of the programs. He pointed out that many applications consider the accessibility by differently abled persons (specially people with vision problems, partial or full blindness), but not many web sites. His suggestion is to involve the differently abled people in the development of the sites and the applications, such that they will be able to take part in shaping up the accessibility of the products.

Retina India became the highlight of the event obviously. I strongly believe their vision will be successful not just in India, but all over the globe. May God bless the good hearts.

As a point to note: WWW2012 will be held at Lyon, France.