Article 19 Eastern Africa group, a regional lobby group, has raised concern over the devolution of the government printers, saying disabled people have not been considered at the national level.
The group has claimed the government had failed to make the various documents they produced disability friendly, yet they were already working on modalities to devolve the government printers to counties.
They were speaking in Kisumu during an inter-county consultative forum with persons with disability (PWDs), on the centrality of access to information to empower the PWDs to participate in governance and also to realize other rights
Article 19 Regional Director Henry Maina accused the government of having failed in printing documents in disability friendly formats that can be accessed with PWDs.
Maina said most county governments lack information on their websites, while those that have, had them in bulk and cannot be accessed by the PWDs.
He said that some television stations and county governments’ organs such as the county assembly still lack sign language interpreters yet it is a basic requirement that all counties have them.
Maina said the judiciary also employed not more than 10 sign language interpreters, and all of them left in less than one year because either they were expected to work voluntarily, or were not well paid.
He challenged resident magistrates to ensure that there are sign language interpreters in courts, and if they are not permanent, they should be hired temporarily but with a reasonable pay.