 our esteemed speakers. With us today we have Mrs Akiko Ito who is the Chief of the United Nations Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is Akiko Ito. Thank you for joining us. Then with us we will have also Mrs Roksana with Mariliescu, Senior Coordinator in the Division of Digital Inclusion of the Telecommunication Development Bureau. Roksana, welcome. With us also we have Mr Umberto Insolera, Member of the Executive Committee of the European Disability Forum. Umberto, thank you very much for joining us. And last but of course not least important, Mrs Marina Vanzela, Vice President of the National Institute for Rehabilitation Portugal. Marina, thank you for jumping in and joining us at this panel. We look forward to hearing what you have to say. Okay, as for the participants, I would like to ask you kindly leave your comments or questions in the chat. We are planning to allocate some time considering that this is an interactive discussion, interactive panel, some time for your interventions, your questions. But without further ado, let's start with this panel. I would like to start with you, Ms Akiko Ito. And the first question I would like to ask you is could you just tell us what is the mandate of the UN Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and how does it refer to digital accessibility for persons of disabilities? Considering that yes, we all know that the convention is crucial and requires the digital inclusion requires a full implementation of the convention. But it would be very useful to know a little bit more about what you do. So the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much, Amela. It's a great pleasure for me to be part of this very important panel. Let me just start with the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities so that it's easier for the audience to understand what we do, just with the focus of what we do right now, especially as we proceed to our recovery under COVID-19 crisis and then building back better. The UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as you may know, addresses the risk of exclusion of persons with disabilities from participating equally in society. And it does so also by defining ICT accessibility as an integral part of rights to accessibility rights, on par with accessibility to the physical environment and transportation. And as you know, the convention provides the principle that persons with disabilities must be able to do that in fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with others. And it's a first international human rights treaty to require information and communication technologies and systems to be accessible as a necessary condition for persons with disabilities to enjoy their rights. And if you look at Article 9 of the convention, it sets out general obligations for states, parties to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to information and communication technologies and systems. Articles 21, 29 and 30 expanded this and refers to media communications and ICTs, serving as a platform for furthering the advancement of the rights of persons with disabilities. And then their freedom of expression of opinion, access to information, participation, and in political and public life, cultural life, and all skills of life, which we spoke. And so in other words, these articles call for content, communication, information, hardware, software, and interfaces to be accessible. It calls for that accessibility in not only just in a general sense, but it really means that in order for the fundamental rights and freedom of persons with disabilities to be realized, then of course, we then we need to look into each component of what it takes. So that is, that is the core message of the convention, the rights of persons with disabilities. And in the context of our global agenda now, as you know, the 2030 agenda recognizes that access to information and communication technologies and systems is a key enabler for achieving the opportunities, including for persons with disabilities by having, by ensuring universal and affordable access to the internet and then other technologies. So our mandate is basically, just to put it in a very simple way, is to mainstream the goals and objectives of those conventional rights of persons with disabilities in implementation of the global agenda. And in a context, it's very specifically in all STGs and other internationally agreed development goals, and then monitoring evaluation. I think we need to recognize here in our mandate that accessibility to ICT is part and possible every aspect of the implementation of the CRPD and the STG. So our work mandate comes from the CRPD and what the international, what the United Nations General Assembly actually, again, requests us to do, but just to put it in a general term, what we are trying, what we are mandate now is to advance the implementation of the CRPD in the context of the broad global agenda. And thank you, thank you for that. And you just finished with my favorite words, should I say the implementation, because we very often witness that the countries that even ratified the convention, but basically have an extremely low level when it comes to its implementation. And this is really something that what we advocate for at the level of study group one, question seven. And now I will move on to you, Roksana, and perhaps continue on this, because it's inevitable and what we've heard, I mean, from Ito is really something that we keep on hearing, you know, the basis for our work at question seven is actually the convention, but when it comes to challenges in its implementation, so we know that the members face a lot of difficulties. So in your opinion, and now what is, because you as our BDT focal point for ICT accessibility, our focal person, for focal contact for question seven, so which in your opinion are the main challenges faced by ICTs to ensure that these vital services were accessed by everyone and regardless of the time, and especially during COVID-19, because you do communicate with the members a lot, you work closely with the members, you know their strengths and weaknesses and opportunities are challenges. But what are the, what are the main challenges that are being faced? Thank you. Thank you very much, Amela. So I will begin to clarify a little bit for those who are a little bit less familiar with the ITU work with member states. So we are very attached to ensure that we work together with the member states in the implementation of this topic and in particular of the target that it was many times mentioned this morning in ensuring accessible environments in all countries and for all people by 2023. So the question seven and that it was mentioned, it is a study group question in ICT accessibility. And yes, it's no doubt that the major challenge was faced by all our members was how to ensure that everyone, it's aware and informed on the global pandemic situation and related measures to be taken in a context of social distance, lockdowns, and all this through a variety of digital platforms, which were mobile, radio, TV and websites, which were the main vehicle to communicate. For me, this challenge in a free translation is what it is digital accessibility and why it's so important. And I have to say that this clarification, it's still needed because some of us are still, let's say, make quite a mixed in the interpretation of what does it mean access, accessibility, accessible ICTs, ICT accessibility. So all this looks so complicated and in fact is not because as we say access is the broadband access, access to internet service, and then accessibility is linked to the usability of the devices of how we receive the information and how we can manage to communicate through this information that we receive through digital platforms. So I also believe that the global crisis of COVID-19 show to all of us the major dependency we have on ICTs. So during the COVID-19 lockdowns across the world, ICTs have actually given billions of people around the world the ability to continue their work, continue their studies, use vital online services for health, food and other basic services, including online financial to pay our bills. In addition to, of course, communicate with our families, loved ones, and so continue even in limited condition in a way our usual life activities. However, if the ICTs of information and communication technology were not accessible and the content of the information received was not provided inaccessible for us to enable everyone, including person with disabilities, understanding that means many people couldn't be made equally aware of the vital information of COVID-19 pandemic. Also mean that they couldn't either access this vital services, you know, to buy online food or medicine that they need that everyone else. And this was a challenge in particular for the governments who realized that they want to put at this puzzle to the service to the people, the digital services, but they didn't realize that in order to ensure that everyone has access to the services, there is this key component of the accessibility, which is linked to the usability of everyone. So to conclude, I think COVID-19 clearly show that one of the digital world challenge is not