{"id":210,"date":"2011-08-28T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-27T18:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcurocks.wordpress.com\/?p=210"},"modified":"2011-08-28T00:00:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-27T18:30:43","slug":"different-inabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/28\/different-inabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Different Inabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/tn_wheel_chair_symbol.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-211\" title=\"tn_wheel_chair_symbol\" src=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/tn_wheel_chair_symbol.jpg?w=144\" alt=\"\" width=\"144\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>The conference on Mathematics Education on the 19th of August was instructive in more ways than initially imagined. One of the invitees was the distinguished mathematician, <strong>V S Sunder<\/strong> from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Matscience) in Chennai. In recent years, Sunder has increasingly needed support in walking, and now requires wheelchair assistance essentially on a full time basis. The conference to which he was invited, and which he kindly agreed to come to, was scheduled to be held in the Raman Auditorium in our Science Complex.<br \/>\nWe were very poorly prepared. In the event, we made a ramp that made it possible for Prof. Sunder to make it to the front of the auditorium, but not onto the stage&#8230; The building was made at a time when our sensibilities were less developed and we simply had not thought of such things.<br \/>\nCoincidentally, Sunder wrote a piece that appeared in his column on the 20th of August in the Chennai Times of India entitled<strong> DIFFERENT STROKES for DIFFERENT FOLKS<\/strong> which ran something like this:<br \/>\n<em>How many times have you:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Seen an elevator with no braille\u00a0signs marked next to the door buttons?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Even noticed that the elevator you\u00a0use in your office or apartment complex every day has or does not have\u00a0Braille markings?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Noticed whether the edges of steps\u00a0are made of a different texture than\u00a0the rest of the step (so that a blind\u00a0person will know the step is coming\u00a0to an end there)?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Wondered how hearing impaired students cope with our\u00a0system of education?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Heard people tell somebody with\u00a0mobility problems that a distance of\u00a0hundred metres \u201cis very close by\u201d or\u00a0that \u201cthere are only a few steps\u201d when\u00a0there is no ramp for easy wheelchair\u00a0access?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Seen a lecturer in a classroom draw\u00a0something on the board to explain\u00a0something, and wondered how a blind\u00a0student would follow?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Been to a party on a roof-top which\u00a0necessitates that anyone coming\u00a0there should climb some twenty steps\u00a0even after having taken an elevator\u00a0to the \u2018top floor\u2019, and wondered if the\u00a0plight of the mobility-impaired are\u00a0even considered before either the party or the elevator was planned?<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Seen doors that are not wide enough\u00a0for a wheelchair to pass through?<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>The answer, my friend, is blowin\u2019 in\u00a0the wind&#8230;<\/em><\/strong><br \/>\nIt was not just that the conference venue was not fully prepared for Prof. Sunder, there was no way he could come into the Administration Block or drop in at the VC&#8217;s office if he wanted to. Which means that there are several others in the UoH family who are similarly denied access&#8230; And that also includes the elderly- pensioners, or parents of staff, students and faculty.<br \/>\nMany of our buildings are now equipped with ramps, but we are a very far way from being what is euphemistically called &#8220;friendly&#8221; to the disabled. And the lack of sensitivity to a range of disabilities is endemic. Not that the attitude of most of us is crude in any way, it has more to do with what we think about- or more to the point, what we do not think about&#8230;<br \/>\nOur neighbour in the Council for Social Development, <strong>Kalpana Kannabiran<\/strong> is someone who has long been concerned about such issues, and from a legal point of view. In an article entitled\u00a0<strong>Looking at disability through the constitutional lens, <\/strong>she writes: <em>The most important right guaranteed to all persons by the constitution is the right to life and personal liberty.\u00a0\u00a0The right to life may be enjoyed fully only when we also enjoy personal liberty.\u00a0\u00a0There can be no disagreement that a life in custody or confinement, a life without freedom is not a fulfilling life by any standards.\u00a0\u00a0What does the right to personal liberty mean for a physically challenged person?\u00a0\u00a0Very simply it means that all physical spaces \u2013 private and public &#8212; must be barrier free and must facilitate equally the mobility of a challenged person and a non disabled person.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>The constitution of India in Article 15(2) says: No citizen shall be subject to any disability, liability, restriction or condition with regard to \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Access to shops, public restaurants, hotels and places of public entertainment or\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>The use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads and places of public resort\u00a0<\/em><em>maintained wholly or in part out of state funds or dedicated to the use of the general public.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This provision provides protection on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex and place of birth.\u00a0\u00a0But today we find persons with disabilities are routinely denied access on all of these grounds by the state and private actors alike, through the absence of barrier free access.\u00a0\u00a0Looked at in the context of Article 15(2), therefore, it constitutes a very serious form of discrimination. What then are the meanings of personal liberty for persons with disabilities in perpetual unlawful custody resulting from the denial of routine everyday access to every part of the public domain and critical fields in the \u201cprivate\u201d domain as well?\u00a0<\/em><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/1307671334-40.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-213\" title=\"1307671334-40\" src=\"http:\/\/hcurocks.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/1307671334-40.gif?w=150\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"109\" \/><\/a>Clearly we need to be sensitive to these issues, and without merely paying lip service to the cause. Our campus needs a &#8220;disability audit&#8221;, and while we are doing a fair amount already, there is much more that needs to be done. And we require to be informed as to what some of \u00a0these needs are, formally and, especially, informally.<br \/>\nAs the saying goes, there are none so deaf as those who will not hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The conference on Mathematics Education on the 19th of August was instructive in more ways than initially imagined. One of the invitees was the distinguished mathematician, V S Sunder from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (Matscience) in Chennai. In recent years, Sunder has increasingly needed support in walking, and now requires wheelchair assistance essentially on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[109,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-campus","category-vc","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paG6mN-3o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramramaswamy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}