All HC websites now have captchas, accessible to disabled people: Govt

All websites of the high courts now have captchas that are accessible to people with disabilities, the law ministry said on Sunday.

The task of making the digital infrastructure of the Indian judicial system more accessible to people with disabilities has been a core component of the work of the e-Committee of the Supreme Court in the last few months, it said in a statement.

"A significant milestone that the e-Committee's efforts towards this objective have yielded has been to ensure that all high court websites now have captchas which are accessible to Persons with Disabilities (PwDs)," it said.

Captcha is a programme that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programmes cannot.

These captchas serve as entry points to access several essential facets of a court website, such as judgments and orders, cause-lists and checking the status of cases, the statement pointed out.

Many high court websites were exclusively using visual captchas inaccessible to the visually challenged, making it impossible for them to access such content independently.

In coordination with all the high courts, the e-Committee has now ensured that visual captchas are accompanied by text or audio captchas making the website content accessible to the visually challenged, the statement said.

The e-Committee of the Supreme Court is headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud.

Another significant initiative undertaken by the e-Committee in collaboration with the NIC is creating a judgment search portal (https://judgments.ecourts.gov.in) accessible to people with disabilities.

The portal contains judgments and final orders passed by all high courts and uses a free text search engine.

In addition, it provides the facility of using an audio captcha, along with a text captcha. It also uses accessible combo boxes, making it easier for the visually disabled to navigate the website.

There are 25 high courts in the country.