Turning Disability Into Ability

As he looked to the top, he saw his destination. 

He knew where he was going, but for him, the question was- how? 

Dependent as he was, he glanced nervously for a helping hand. 

But today, gone are those days. 

Today, he doesn't just move, he steps forward and proves, 

That being independent, gives him a sense of self-respect.

Stairs, one that once seemed like a mammoth task, 

Those obstacles don't seem so intimidating anymore. 

Shine of his teeth replaced the smear 

Of hopelessness that he was oh so familiar with.

Snapping out of his train of thought, 

He pushed forward on his wheelchair, a moment of gratitude 

For the sense of independence instilled in him.

For Persons with Disabilities (PwDs), universal accessibility is critical for enabling them to gain access to equal opportunity and live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life in an inclusive society.

In an ambitious move that aims to empower such persons, the government recently launched the “Accessible India Campaign” (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) which seeks to make at least 50 percent of all government buildings in the national capital and all state capitals “fully accessible” for the disabled by July 2018. Similar deadlines have been set to make airports and railway stations accessible to the disabled. The initiative is also in line with the Article 9 of UNCRPD (UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) to which India is a signatory from 2007.

This can be seen as a huge step in a country wherein the people have been rendered "disabled". It informs the masses that the disabled people deserve it – it is a play of karma, a retribution for their past actions. It was seen as a justified penalty imposed by the supernatural forces on the disabled people. The disabled where shamed, excluded and seen as vile. They were covered with a shroud through vicious negative social sanctions which made them invisible – they were othered, and all of this seemingly was warranted by the cultural apparatus made up of disrespectful gestures and words such as langra, andha – their identity as a disabled person eclipsed every other aspect of their existence.

When we were equipped with the ideological faculties of the 21^st century, we looked at disability through a very different lens – one which wasn’t as distorting. In case of India most of the efforts to redress the situation have come from the disabled people itself – who have relentlessly made demands to the government by coming up with additional clauses and evasions in the policy frameworks. These people are marginalised, even the institutions of soft power verify this fact as we have two different streams on for the disabled and one for the rest in  

Furthermore, disability and poverty are thoroughly connected. There is a high incidence of disability in poor households, which adds up to the economic strain too.

We are all physically disabled at some time in our lives.  A person with a broken leg, a helpless child, a mother with a pram, an elderly person etc.- we are all disabled in some way. These disabilities often create disparities amongst us and we often expect quite a lot from the world around us. Needs of the disabled coincide with the needs of majority, and all people are at ease with them.  As such, designing the facilities for the majority implies designing and planning for people with varying abilities and disabilities.

An important aim of society is to integrate persons them so that they can actively participate in society and lead a normal life.  Ideally, a disabled person should be able to commute between home, work place and other destinations with independence, convenience and safety. The more persons with disabilities are able to access physical facilities, the more they will be part of the social mainstream.

The Accessible India Campaign is a very promising start, but we need to realise that the problem is not as narrow as the doors, that can be easily widened. In order to include the disabled, we need to ensure that these people are properly represented by the media so as to make them a part of the wider discourse, to make sure that disrespectful words are not synonymous to the word disable, we need to go beyond the biological understanding of disability and see it as socially constructed, we need to make sure that a differently abled person doesn’t transpose his/ her disability with their self-perception so that there isn’t any form of victimisation. We need to reimagine the meaning and implications of disability so as to let the hues of shame and isolation fade.

Written by Anuj Dehmiwal, Nidhi Sangli and Ilakshi.
Edited by Abhishek Naulakha