Bridging the Digital Divide for Visually Impaired South Asians: Language, Technology and Inclusion

The internet has connected us widely, helping share knowledge and essential services. However, nearly 15% of the Asia Pacific population (700 million of 4.8 billion people) are excluded due to their disabilities. Persons with visual impairment who do not speak English and other non-Eurocolonial languages remain further excluded due to inaccessible formats, poor localisations and cost-prohibitive, closed technologies.

This is where the Accessibility, Language and Tech for the People (ALT) research-in-action process comes in. A community of researchers, disability rights activists, advocates and policymakers, many of whom are themselves people with visual impairments, ALT aims to increase engagement and improve the online experience for persons with visual impairments, both as users and producers of digital knowledge. With a focus on South Asia, ALT recognises the intersection of language justice and disability rights and seeks to bridge the gap between the two in this region.

In 2015, nearly 15% of the South Asian population (270 million then, 315 million now) reported having disabilities. Our ongoing initiative is centered on persons with visual impairment who use Bangla, Hindi and Urdu in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Why is this important?

While over 75% of internet users are from the Majority World, accessing and operating the internet in their native languages remains a challenge. This issue is further exacerbated for persons with visual impairments, who already face barriers in accessing technology. Bangla, Hindi and Urdu are the three most widely spoken languages in South Asia: Hindi, a co-official language of the central government with 528 million Indian speakers (macrolanguage including multiple languages known together as Hindi languages), while Bangla and Urdu, also used widely in India,  are both national languages of Bangladesh (total population of 177 million) and Pakistan (total population of 250 million), respectively.

Also read: The Right to Entertainment: It’s Time to Notify Accessibility Standards for Television Content

Yet the speakers of these three dominant languages, especially those with visual impairments, continue to experience barriers even in basic reading and writing interactions.

Exploring key barriers to digital access

We find that one significant barrier is the distinction between accessibility and usability. While technology may be technically accessible, it isn't always user-friendly, which can further complicate access for people with visual impairments.

Sneha P.P., a senior research manager at IIIT Hyderabad’s Open Knowledge Initiatives programme, who is not a person with visual impairment, said, “Accessibility of digital devices needs to be studied as a problem of its own. Just being accessible does not mean something is also very user-friendly, readily available, or free of training and adaptability requirements.”

The quality of local-language content also poses another major hurdle. Many technological solutions and platforms lack meaningful support for languages other than English, creating significant obstacles for non-English speakers. Khansa Maria, a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford and advocate for accessibility and inclusion in Pakistan, said, “Unlike other languages, we don’t have a lot of technological solutions, so English is primarily my language of tech usage.”

In fact, this is a key issue: for people with visual impairments, knowing English is necessary to engage with technology meaningfully. This leaves out large portions of the population, often those from rural regions, the working class and other marginalised backgrounds.

Language support is also affected by font issues. Vashkar Bhattacharjee, a consultant working in ICTs for development for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh, also highlighted the challenges with Bangla fonts. For fonts to be legible to people with visual impairments, they should follow a universal character encoding standard called Unicode. These days, Unicode fonts are more common and even mandated by digital device manufacturers and accessibility laws.

But challenges with non-Unicode legacy fonts persist. "Lack of accessible content is one of the biggest challenges in Bangla. Many  (developers) still use legacy fonts, predating the Unicode standard, which screen readers cannot read,” Vashkar said.

Like fonts, technical formats too often create accessibility barriers. Inaccessible PDFs, legacy fonts and graphical elements without alt text can interfere with screen reader functionality and users' ability to navigate and understand information effectively.

Arvind Sharma, accessibility trainer at Saksham Trust, points out, “When a PDF is not created in an accessible way, our screen reader software can't read it.”

Srinidhi Raghavan, a disabled feminist researcher, educator and writer from India explained that screen reader users cannot “skim” content but must navigate “line by line”, which affects how they process information. Not being able to access PDFs, for example, severely restricts people’s possibilities for education and employment. People have even changed their courses at university because they were unable to read certain course materials in PDF format.

Nirmita Narasimhan, an independent policy advocate and researcher in digital accessibility and disability-related technology use, noted that she had difficulty accessing Tamil content as a student. While studying music, she was unable to access songs, manuscripts and notations in Indian languages such as Tamil and Sanskrit, and had to rely solely on knowledge available in English books. She noted that despite translation apps being available, Indian-language content remains inequitably accessible because translations are poor, fonts are illegible, and technical support is lacking.

Many apps and services read out local languages in robotic voices fraught with mispronunciations. People who are encountering this on apps like e-Speak, a text-to-speech synthesiser, find it challenging. Robotic speech is often unnatural-sounding and English-accented. Continuously listening to robotic voices puts a huge cognitive burden on people with visual disabilities. And for people with no English knowledge, this presents another major deterrent to using technology.

Nirmita also stresses that where good tech is available, there is a need for training and ongoing support to ensure that people can effectively use technology and navigate digital spaces, highlighting accessible solutions for everyday life. “Installing NVDA language packs on a computer or phone can be a very powerful solution for persons with vision disabilities who want to access the internet, digital content, and services in their native languages.” But people need consistent access to training to use this kind of tech.

Unlike free and open source tech like NVDA screen readers, technology can also be expensive. People with visual disabilities often pay a “disability tax on tech”, spending more money and time on additional tech solutions to make even everyday devices like phones and computers actually accessible to them.

Such high costs combined with the unavailability of local languages link accessible assistive technology directly to social privilege, completely excluding many people with visual impairment from the marginalised class, caste, gender and other social locations from technological benefits.

Beyond technical access: a design for human dignity

The path forward, as envisioned by our community members, is not just about technical fixes – it is about leveraging technology to foster genuine independence. When built correctly, assistive technology allows incredible independence and empowerment. As Arvind notes, “Our screen reader tells us everything… it is an invention liberating our lives.”

For many, the ability to access Hindi or Bangla content through a screen reader is not just a feature; it is an act of reclaiming power over one’s own life.

Consider also that while AI continues to present significant risks for many people, including those with disabilities, it has brought about increased access to0. Srinidhi points to rapid improvements in Optical Character Recognition (OCR). “There’s so much better OCR now than there was even three years ago,” she observes, noting that AI-generated image descriptions are becoming increasingly nuanced. These tools do more than read text; they allow users to recognise objects and navigate their daily lives with newfound autonomy.

However, true accessibility online requires us to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. And this starts with design. Many of the technological challenges encountered are the direct result of technology shaped by the West without any understanding of local context, values or needs. People with visual disabilities from the majority world should be involved in the design of assistive technologies made for them in their home regions instead of being treated as people on whom products are imposed.

Also read: Half of People With Disabilities Globally Don't Have Access to Assistive Products: Report

Sneha suggests that, in fact, we should treat digital spaces with the same intentionality as physical ones – incorporating accessibility needs like multilingual support, image descriptions and high colour contrast as standard infrastructure rather than afterthoughts.

The most significant opportunity for accessible tech lies not in a single solution but in a collective effort. Khansa Maria believes in creating community spaces for solidarity: “When tech is frustrating, we need to come together and lobby together.” By sharing resources and advocacy strategies, we can ensure that we are not just passive users of technology but active architects of its future.

This work is not just about technology; it's about redistributing power and bringing disability justice – ensuring that people with visual impairment can participate fully in the digital world.

Subhashish Panigrahi is a nonprofit leader with a background in social entrepreneurship, digital rights, community-building, and language technology. Maari Maitreyi is a researcher and coordinator working for knowledge and epistemic justice online at Whose Knowledge? Claudia Pozo is a researcher and coordinator at Whose Knowledge? focused on knowledge and epistemic justice online.

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