IT Park participated in the first «Inclusive Business Forum»

On November 23, 2021, the first Inclusive Business Forum was held at the «Wyndham Tashkent» hotel in order to promote the practices of inclusive employment of persons with disabilities in Uzbekistan.

According to the World Health Organization, around 1 billion people, or 15% of the world’s population, have some form of disability.  In 2020, 781,3 thousand people with disabilities were officially registered in Uzbekistan.  But only about 2% of them are officially employed.

The «Inclusive Business Forum» event aims to unite the efforts of public organizations of people with disabilities and local businesses to create equal conditions and a barrier-free working environment for able-bodied people with various forms of disabilities.

The forum was held in a hybrid format – offline and online.  Local and international representatives of large, medium and small businesses were able to share their experience of successful inclusive employment.

Participants also had the opportunity to discuss the problems and difficulties they face in the process of recruiting people with different types of disabilities.  Local and international experts from the UK, Russia and Kazakhstan shared their experiences of inclusion and shared their skills and best practices.

Deputy Director of IT Park Abdulakhad Kuchkarov spoke at this forum and spoke about the «One Million Uzbek Coders» project, which covers a wide range of people, including people with disabilities.



One Million Uzbek Coders is an online platform in which anyone  interested in IT can take a course in 4 areas: frontend development, fullstack, mobile application development, and data analytics.

One of the main advantages of the project is that the courses are absolutely free and can be taken online, from home.  That’s why, it enables people with disabilities, without leaving their homes, to learn relevant IT skills.

It should be emphasized that especially for people with disabilities, and in particular for the hearing impaired, the «Fullstack» course has been completely translated into sign language, that is, there is sign language translation within the framework of this course.  In the future, it is planned to translate the rest of the courses within the framework of the «One Million Uzbek Coders» project.

It should be noted that today the total number of registered deaf and  people who have hearing disabilities  in Uzbekistan is 22,381. There are more than 4,000 people with hearing problems in Tashkent.  Currently, there are 20 specialized schools in Uzbekistan, after which some of the students enter specialized colleges.

According to statistics for 2020, the number of hearing impaired and deaf children enrolled in specialized colleges was 68 students.  Only 32 students study at universities throughout the republic.  The main problem many of these children do not  receive a higher education.

To address this problem, the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications Development, together with IT Park and with the support of the National Information Society Agency (NIA), opened an information technology training center for hearing-impaired children.  In this center, children will be trained in relevant and demanded IT professions.  At the moment, the center has launched two courses: «Graphic design» and «Computer literacy and web technologies».

Finally, it should be added that the comprehensive field of information technology is the direction in which people with disabilities can express themselves, reveal their potential and become in-demand specialists in the market.  The IT sphere is accessible to everyone.