Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jeremy Hunt. I'm shadow Minister for Disabled people. It is a great pleasure and privilege to welcome all of you here today to this very important launch of the eInclusion Charter.
Computer programmers and the whole way that technology has taken over our lives is something that is quite easy to parody. Some of you might have seen a recent programme on Channel 4 called "The IT Crowd" which parodies the way we have all become servants to central IT departments, and how life begins to dissolve into hopelessness when our PC breaks down.
I used to be in the technology industry myself and I used to hear a lot of very corny jokes about computing people and I was trying to think what the corniest one of all was that I might be able to share with you today. The question is: why do computer programmers spend so long in the shower? Can anyone think what that might be? The answer is: the instructions on the shampoo bottle which say "lather, rinse, repeat".
Now in terms of my own portfolio, which is the disability portfolio, we have the paradox that technology has totally transformed the lives of millions of disabled people, but at the same time it is also beyond the reach of many people who could benefit from that transformation.
I remember one of the first things I did as shadow Minister for Disabled people, was go to a reception by Sense, the organisation that campaigns for deafblind people. And I remember talking to someone who was deafblind through hands-on sign language. At the end of it the interpreter said to me: You can of course always communicate with him by email. That was a remarkable revelation to me about the power of computers to make communication possible when it might not be.
But at the same we have this question of the so-called digital divide. That phrase was invented by Larry Irvine, a technology advisor to the Clinton Administration. When it was first talked about it was a financial thing which was about the fact that some people couldn't afford a PC, access to the Internet and therefore couldn't benefit from what those developments in technology could mean. But it has come to mean another type of digital divide which is the lack of accessibility of a number of the facets of the IT revolution that have become standard for many of us, but are out of the grasp of many people who could benefit from them most. So this eInclusion Charter is really trying to take the bull by the horns and create a large amount of momentum to get the changes that need to be made to happen.
And it is a wake-up call, first of all to business, saying to business: don't ignore the commercial opportunities of the 50% of the population who are over the age of 46. I have another 6 years to go before I'm in the 50%, but that is a huge market. Don't ignore the commercial opportunity in 10 million disabled people. I was hearing today that Commercial Union reduced the support costs of their website from 300,000 pounds annually to 100,000 pounds, just by making their website more accessible.
So business needs to understand, and the government needs to understand it: the IT revolution is a vital part and the voluntary sector needs to harness the changes in the IT world to make that independent living possible for the many people that they help and look after.
So I want to thank the Alliance for Digital Inclusion for their very very important work on this Charter. I particularly want to thank the three organisations who were responsible for the eInclusion Charter: Scientific Generics, the Disabled Living Foundation and the RNID, who I have been working closely with on another campaign to make the Parliament channel more accessible, and we thought we had had some success because we had a meeting with Jeff Hoon but it turned out to be one day before he was moved on so we are now back to square one with Jack Straw.
But I want to thank you for your important work in making this possible, and I would like to hand over to Guido Gybels, who is the Director of New Technologies at the RNID, to talk in a little more detail about the work and the eInclusion Charter.
Speech given by Jeremy Hunt MP at the Houses of Parliament on 15 May 2006 at the occasion of the launch of the eInclusion charter.