Digital Accessibility Consultant

ESCWA, as a regional commission of the United Nations, implements a technical cooperation program in partnership with its member states. This program includes providing advisory services to public entities in the Arab region and conducting capacity-building workshops in partnership with these entities. In the field of digital accessibility, there is a need to develop national policies to identify the vision, objectives, and focus areas to enable all individuals, regardless of their capacity or location in the country, to using technology devices in their daily life and to ensure the surrounding environment deploys technology and innovation efficiently to ease their access. There is also a need to develop national plan to implement e-Accessibility in government websites, e-services, procured ICT tools and devices, and in media channels and TV, as well as the associated opportunities and digital skills for everyone, everywhere. These aspects are directly related to article 9 of UN-CRPD.
The expected outcome of such plan will be visible on national level: raised awareness among senior policymakers, launch of specific projects/initiatives to improve digital accessibility, development of world-class accessible government services and websites, and monitoring the progress in achieving the identified objectives/targets.
In addition, this national plan, once developed and adopted, will ensure the increase of participation of all persons including persons with disability and elderly people in socio-economic development, therefore increasing national GDP, improving education and health conditions, and hopefully this will contribute to poverty reduction.
In 2020, ESCWA launched the Arab Digital Inclusion Platform (ADIP) to support policymakers in developing and improving their national policies and guidelines for enhanced e-accessibility, so as to bridge the digital divide and enable all people to access and use ICT.
ESCWA developed two templates, namely the ESCWA template on national policy of e-accessibility for the Arab region: and the ESCWA template on technical guidelines of e-accessibility for the Arab region. These templates have been converted to interactive online tools, easily accessible by policy makers and interested users.
Recently and under the framework of the above ADIP project, the e-Government Unit at the Government Presidency (GP) in Tunisia requested the technical assistance of ESCWA to develop digital accessibility plan.
The provision of this advisory service is the subject of these terms of reference.


II. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The consultant shall propose to the designated ESCWA focal point a detailed version of the national digital accessibility plan in Tunisia. To produce the draft plan, the consultant is requested to conduct, among others, the main following tasks:
(1) Review the national documents and the existing policies and strategies in Tunisia related to digital transformation, innovation, digital technologies, and other related national development plans.
(2) Review and make use of the ESCWA e-accessibility templates and tools as well as selected regional and international best practices in the field of digital accessibility strategies and policies (at least 2 selected regional and 2 international cases).
(3) Identify main stakeholders, hold interviews and meetings with the main national stakeholders and realizing a summary of their remarks and observations.
(4) Suggest the needed digital accessibility plan based on best practices, gap analysis and national needs.
In addition, the consultant would also ensure the following activities:

(1) Present the draft plan in a national workshop (physically or remotely) and capture the main comments and findings of the discussions.
(2) Update the draft proposal according to all received feedback and comments during workshop, public consultation and the reviewing process by ESCWA and eGov Unit-PM.

ESCWA promotes gender equality and integration of youth through its publications and therefore the consultant should pay attention, with the help of ESCWA staff, to gender considerations and youth dimension throughout the research work and thereby ensure that the narrative language should be gender sensitive.

A master's degree in ICT, technology, engineering, computer science or a related field is required. A Ph.D. degree is desired.
All candidates must submit a copy of the required educational degree. Incomplete applications will not be reviewed.
A minimum of five years of experience and research in Technology related issues is required.
A concrete knowledge in the domain of planning, drafting, reviewing polices and strategies is desirable.