By Juliet Umeh

TO make telecommunications services accessible to people living with disabilities and senior citizens in the country, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, telecoms service providers, telcos and other relevant stakeholders, yesterday engaged on the need to carry them along.

The stakeholders, who attended the 92nd edition Telecom Consumer Parliament, TCP, organized by NCC, agreed to declare a state of emergency for those living with disability in the telecoms sector, while urging NCC to drive the collaboration.

Speaking at the event held in Lagos, Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said: “The The world has come a long way in terms of accepting people from diverse backgrounds but there is still room for improvement, particularly in terms of accessibility.

“Technology has a mission to carve out a place for everyone, without exception. Disability-related advancements in science and technology have made it feasible for impaired individuals to live as independently as possible.”

“Current technologies include technical improvements specifically designed for communities whose lives are shaped by their experiences with disabilities and accessibility.”

After deliberations, the stakeholders agreed that, henceforth, “there should be increased inclusiveness of all the clusters of the disability in the telecom services.”

“Original equipment manufacturers, OEMs would modify their ideation process product development to consider the needs of subscribers living with disability in order to develop more affordable devices.”

“Network mobile operations, NMOs who have collected data, who actually do know your customer, kYC should use the information to improve access to PLWDs.

“NCC has provided an enabling environment where the providers can attend to PLWD through the ramps, but there’s a need for NCC to expand the scope of that direction that it has given to the operators.

“There’s a need to create more awareness both by NCC, operators and OEMs so that PLWDs can be aware of OEM services that can help them.”

There was also a call on telcos to employ persons with disability, so they could have firsthand experience and easily understand the problems of others as far as access to telecoms services were concerned.