When we hear ‘Pride Month, our mind often goes to the LGBTQIA+ community but there is a different kind of Pride Month which is equally important.
The history of Disability Pride Month began on March 12, 1990, when thousands of people marched to the White House to demand the government pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. In an act of civil demonstration and to show how ‘able-normative’ the world is, many activists stepped out of their wheelchairs and crawled the steps of the White House, resulting in 104 activists being arrested. This moment has been immortalized as the ‘Capitol Crawl’.
However, their efforts bore fruit on July 26, 1990, when the American President, George H. W. Bush, signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against disabled people. Since then, each July is celebrated as Disability Pride Month.
Disability Pride Month is inspired by similar movements like the LGBT Pride and Black Pride. It is a month to celebrate the contributions of disabled activists and shed light on the issues of disabled people and the social stigma they face.
Disability Pride Month is often celebrated by parades. Unfortunately, India doesn’t have a massive movement related to disability. Hence, it isn’t celebrated on a large scale. However, we can make some changes in our daily habits that can make this world a better place for disabled people.
Technology has been extremely helpful for disabled people. Many visually impaired people can use phones without relying on any additional help, due to settings like ‘talk-back’ and ‘double click’. Various media have incorporated accessibility options, examples include The Last of Us Part II which was successfully completed by a sightless gamer. Netflix films also come with an additional audio option called ‘Audio Description’, which perfectly describes the ongoing events in the film helping entertainment reach disabled people.
If you are a content creator, you too can help in making this world a better place for disabled people. Make sure to add subtitles or captions in your videos which will help the deaf to personally understand the video. What’s great about this is that it also helps many able-bodied people if they want to watch a video in public and don’t have headphones. This not only creates a better world for the disabled but for everyone.
During the COVID pandemic, many companies shifted to a ‘work-from-home’ model. This new working style helped many disabled people. In fact, it has been reported that 30% more disabled people were getting employed thanks to the new working model. Many more companies need to give an option for ‘work-from-home’ as it allows disabled people to live an independent lifestyle. Just like with closed caption benefitting able-bodied people, the shift to work from home model will also help many more besides the disabled.
For example, many girls opt out of work because they feel unsafe in a heavily male-dominated environment, making them feel uncomfortable and they also fear that taking care of a child would be difficult while working. So work-from-home model can be beneficial to them and a shift towards it would also see a rise in women’s employment. This can also potentially improve the work-life balance, that many suffer from, even men.
Shifting towards physical changes that can help disabled people, many buildings are not designed with disabled people in mind. Ramps are almost non-existent and elevators are absent in buildings not larger than three stories. This creates a hindrance to wheelchair users and old people in general. While most governmental buildings do come with a braille script, many private properties don’t have text written in braille making it difficult for blind people to read the instructions.
Child Help Foundation supports a better world for disabled individuals. Child Help Foundation provided jerseys and uniforms to the Wheelchair Fencing Federation of India in Tamil Nadu.
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