Jahanvi Agarwal
Through the use of accessibility text-to-speech software, the Delhi High Court launched its “web accessibility complaint cause list” and “digital platform for sharing trial court records” for visually impaired lawyers, litigants, and the public from 15th August 2023.
The projects were inaugurated by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Rajiv Shakdher, Chairman of the Information Technology Committee, and other members including Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, Justice Sanjeev Narula, and Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav.
Other High Court judges, the Registrar General, the Registrar (Vigilance), the Principal District & Sessions Judge, the Family Court and Commercial Court judges, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma, the Standing Counsel (Civil & Criminal) of the Delhi Government, the Principal Secretary of Law, Justice, and Legislative Affairs, the President and Secretary of the Delhi High Court Bar Association, NIC officials, and other dignitaries were present at the event.
The Secure, Scalable, Sugamya Website as a Service (S3WaaS) technology has been used to create ten new websites for all of the Delhi District Courts. The websites save all of their materials in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) format so that those with vision impairments may easily view them. Additionally, the data from earlier websites has been transferred to the new platform.
District courts can easily exchange the Trial Court Records (TCR) with the High Court using a platform based on a Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN), thanks to the recently developed Digital Platform for Sharing of Trial Court Records.
The initiative will also assist in reducing the expense incurred by the District Courts in acquiring several CDs. After receiving feedback from stakeholders and with the help of Rahul Bajaj and Amar Jain, who are visually impaired lawyers, the High Court’s Accessibility Committee, which is chaired by Justice Rajiv Shakdher, has created the Web Accessibility Compliant Cause List.