Blind former British Home Secretary backs new cell phone initiative.

A blind former British Home Secretary, drafter of progressive disability laws and international advocate of equal rights for the disabled, David Blunkett, wants to champion a South African cell phone initiative giving disabled people internet access. However, while most South Africans now carry cell phones, the two leading networks, MTN and Vodacom, say the cost of phones sophisticated enough to widely empower, for example, deaf and blind people, is too high for any major social responsibility initiative. An estimated 6% of South Africans are moderately to severely disabled. Blunkett piloted Britain's Disability Amendment Act which massively extended rights for the disabled by honing in on, and making illegal, a host of discriminatory practices. He brought disability centre stage in Britain through high-profile media appearances and debate. Addressing the Cape Town Press Club in April this year, he said the United Nations' Millennium Goals of universal education, gender equality, empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS were noble. However, while issues such as gender and race needed addressing, disability tended to 'fall off the end'. 'The real issue is that 82% of disabled people in the developing world are below the poverty line, meaning that 650 million people with absolute disabilities are struggling to get off the most basic poverty line and develop their talents so they are able to succeed.' Disability had a greater impact on access to education than gender, household income or the rural/urban split and was magnified greatly when it came to children who, in a country like South Africa, were often further disadvantaged by the lack of transport. A key task would be for the world's 80 million primary school children, a third of whom were disabled, to gain initial access to education. 'Whether we'll make it by 2015 (the Millennium Goal date) is an extremely moot point, but we have to try,' he added. He described education for disabled children as 'the foothold on the ladder of using their talent'. 'I gather that a lot of people (South Africans), even in the most impoverished areas, have access to mobile phones and collective ways of recharging them. If we could just connect them to the worldwide web we could enable them to earn a living by using their talents without having to be somewhere else to make this possible.' Blunkett warned that with the rampant HIV prevalence and high unemployment in sub-Saharan …