On March 11, 2010 the UN Information Centre in Moscow hosted a regular meeting of informal "the Group of Friends of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities" aiming at assistance to the information society establishment in Russia taking into consideration interests of disabled people.  

The meeting was devoted to summarizing outcomes of events conducted with assistance of "the Group of Friends" and problems of information society development relating to the agenda for ICT use by people with disabilities. 

The event was opened by Director of the UN Information Centre in Moscow Alexander Gorelik. He pointed out that realization of rights of disabled people in the Russian Federation, first of all accessibility of ICT, remains a priority trend in the activities of "the Group of Friends of the UN Convention". 

In the course of discussion of the previous meeting recommendations implementation an exchange of opinions took place regarding what has been done. Tatiana Ershova, Director General of the Institute of the Information Society, editor in chief of "Information Society" journal, reported on completion of work on special issue of the journal devoted to disabled people and ICT accessibility. She noted high quality of articles, whose authors are in majority members of "the Group of Friends", and expressed gratitude to staff of the UN Information Centre for assistance in work on the issue.  An interview with Axel Leblois, Head of Organization "The Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs (G3ict)", which gave this publication an international aspect, became an important contribution to the issue.  

This special issue of the "Inforamtion Society" journal is in great demand and already required extra editions. Tatiana Ershova advised participants of the meeting that there already exists a decision of the editorial board to introduce a new regular column devoted to problems of ICT accessibility to disabled people.

Besides in the course of the meeting of "the Group of Friends of the UN Convention" the results of Paris meeting devoted to ICT accessibility to disabled people, progress of project "Translation of International Standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines/WCAG 2.0 to Russian", use of term "discrimination of disabled people" in law, and different campaigns devoted to accessibility issues were discussed. 

The next meeting is scheduled for June 2010.