 Tiruvananthapuram Branch Webinar - Brightening Lives of Specially Abled

Roshni  January - March 2021

Webinar 7 in the series Looking beyond COVID-19 was organised by AIWC on the topic “Brightening the lives of specially abled” on 19 Dec. 2020.

The endeavour aimed to understand challenges faced by differently abled persons, especially during the pandemic. It also sought to identify good practices if any, that could be continued beyond this period. The resource person was Smt. Tiffany Brar, an Indian activist who is herself visually challenged, a community service worker, and founder of Jyotirgamaya Foundation, an NGO that helps visually challenged people in all spheres of life. She is recipient of several awards, both national and international.

Smt. Tiffany Brar gave an elaborate speech.She spoke about her childhood and education. She gave a brief account of the work carried out by Jyotirgamaya Foundation. She also discussed the crises specially abled people face in life and the added challenges of COVID-19. She mentioned problems such as inability to move around freely, lack of access to special facilities and even normal requirements like acquiring sanitary pads,disability pension etc. She also raised her concern about lack of proper supervision and intervention by the Government for example, apps like AryogyaSetu app that do not follow web content accessibility guidelines. She also discussed domestic violence which has become aggravated during the pandemic for specially challenged persons forced to stay at home. Her organisation was facing problems in locating suitable persons for preparing audio recordings of textbooks for visually challenged students in colleges. Tiffany stated that developing user friendly technology for specially abled people is the need of the hour. She also hoped that the good practices related to cleanliness and hygiene that we have been forced to adopt during COVID-19 (such as maintaining personal hygiene, wearing face masks while going out, managing garbage safely and efficiently etc.) would be continued even afterwards so that our towns and villages remain clean and healthy. The interactive session was lively with members of AIWC and others sharing their views and ideas. Smt. Kuljit Kaur, Smt. Rama Anantram, Smt. Bhuvaneshwari Ravindran, Smt. Rehana Begum and several others shared their views. Members of AIWC from branches across the country volunteered to extend help to Jyotirgamaya Foundation for recording textbooks and other material. Smt. Tiffany said that the immediate requirement was for recording of Malayalam books.

Smt.Usha Nair, Zonal Organiser, AIWC South Zone-B welcomed the participants and moderated the session. Dr. Kamini extendedthe Vote of Thanks. She expressed gratitude to Smt. Tiffany Brar for attending the webinar and giving an informative talk. She thanked everyone for participating in the session.

59