accessibility – Rooted in Rights

Braille and Leisure in India: 10 Years of White Print Magazine

Posted on December 15, 2023December 15, 2023 by Arundhati Nath

India is home to more than 18 million blind people; most of us face stigma and discrimination on a day-to-day basis. Apart from inaccessibility and lack of awareness and funds, most blind people find it hard to get a good education or employment opportunities.

Not many among India’s blind population have the means to buy laptops and smartphones; nor do many of us have access to technology like screen reading software and apps like Audible. While there have been some free audiobooks and textbooks in braille, there hasn’t been anything much in English braille that the blind could read for leisure.

Upasana Makati, a former PR professional, loved reading the newspaper every morning. One day in 2012, she suddenly wondered what the blind in India read for leisure. After months of research and conversations with blind people, she realized that there wasn’t any Braille lifestyle magazine in English in India and decided to start one in 2013. The question she pondered was why shouldn’t the blind have access to leisure reading for fun like the sighted do. This was the beginning of White Print magazine, which celebrated 10 years of publishing in May of this year.

“It feels surreal to have completed a decade. I started at the age of 23 and, during this ten-year-long journey, I have found people who have told me this will not work even for a couple of years. When I spoke to advertisers initially, many people told me it’s not going to work for you. From that point to completing ten years now without being able to get any sort of massive investment and so, being bootstrapped, it feels phenomenal,” Makati says.

Due to a lack of funding, she often wrote the content herself and printed the magazine at her own cost at the braille press of the National Association of the Blind, in Mumbai. Printing a Braille magazine is expensive, too. For White Print, the cost of printing has risen from Rs 0.50 ($0.006) per page to Rs 3.00 ($0.036) in the last few years.

Although White Print had a few innovative brand collaborations in the past, post-pandemic advertising revenue has dwindled. However, Makati is determined to keep publishing the magazine because of the readers, some of whom have been reading White Print since its inception and look forward to it every month.

“Funding is still challenging and printing a Braille magazine is expensive and we’re charging only Rs 360 ($4.34) for twelve issues a year from our individual subscribers. Although some blind people have access to audiobooks, I feel blind people too should have the option to choose between reading a braille copy today and listening to an audiobook tomorrow. Just as sighted people have the option to choose between print, e-books, or audio,” she says.

For a long time, people with disabilities in India have been either seen as sources of inspiration or sympathized with. There is a lack of empathy and understanding. Makati still gets asked why she runs a braille magazine in this age of digital media. She feels this idea comes from a very ableist point of view and would then ask why the sighted still buy books or magazines!

Dr. Divya Bijur is a physiotherapist from Mumbai; she’s been blind since birth. She has been subscribing to White Print for the last seven years and finds the magazine insightful. Bijur feels White Print has helped her keep her connection with Braille. “I love reading Braille and have studied in Braille since the age of six. White Print covers diverse topics: from music, travel, parenting, nutrition, food, and environment to serious issues facing the world, and I think the work is great because we get to read various reading styles. The quiz is also amazing,” she says.

Although White Print is a lifestyle magazine, Bijur feels it encompasses her life by giving her a peek into the happenings of the world. “Reading generally cheers me up, and I feel ecstatic when I’m reading braille. White Print has been a great companion and at times I feel like throwing off my earphones and just being in peace and reading without sound, and that’s where braille comes to my rescue,” she adds.

Satish Nikam is a 75-year-old blind retired senior from the state of Maharashtra. He couldn’t study beyond ninth grade owing to trouble in arranging for scribes for his examinations and inaccessibility in general. However, he had always loved reading and learning new things. After working as a telephone operator at a sugar mill for many years, he retired in 2008.

“I have been reading White Print since it started publishing in 2013. I receive a monthly pension of Rs 900 ($10.81) only and do odd jobs even at this age to sustain myself and my wife. I often couldn’t pay for other materials in braille because printing in braille is expensive. I subscribe to White Print magazine and requested Ms. Makati to let me pay the subscription in installments or consider a concessional rate. Knowing the situation, Ms. Makati hasn’t charged me anything for all these years. The magazine carries articles on a variety of topics and opens up the world for a blind person like me. Although my English is not very great, I have learned a lot from White Print. There are articles on gardening, travel and culture, and so much more. And it gives us, the readers, a different kind of energy and joy,” he says.

White Print currently has a reader base of 10,000 blind people. Makati feels braille literacy is important for the blind even though many of them are increasingly learning the use of screen readers. “Sighted children are still taught with physical books and taught how to write in cursive or write using pencil and paper,” she adds.

Before the pandemic, Makati had collaborated with several brands to create interesting braille advertisements for the magazine. As advertising is mostly visual and depends a lot on color schemes, design, photography, and infographics, it was something completely new and creative for the brands to think of advertising in Braille.

“Raymond was the first company that we collaborated with. In October 2013, we had Coca-Cola advertise with us. They inserted an audio ad in the magazine which played a jingle as the magazine was opened. This musical card-like ad was very exciting for the readers as well because they felt a brand had done something specifically for them,” Makati says.

Sandesh Bhingarde is the founder of a Mumbai-based nonprofit organization called Team Vision Foundation. This voluntary organization works towards empowering visually impaired students in different ways and conducts blindness sensitization workshops.

“We have been subscribing to White Print magazine for more than a year and a half now. I feel the braille magazine is important because while working with the visually impaired, we’ve found they are missing out on reading and writing. We encourage the students to read in braille because, in many instances, blind students don’t know the spellings of words because they absolutely miss out on reading,” Bhingarde says.

While there are a few braille magazines in other Indian languages, there was a lack of Braille magazines in English. Students who use screen readers or use text-to-speech and autocorrect are improving their spelling by reading White Print, Bhingarde feels.

As White Print has entered its eleventh year of publication this year, Makati wants to spread the pleasure of leisure reading through braille literacy among a bigger number of blind Indians.

Just as every sighted child begins their schooling with pen and paper, braille as a script does the same for the blind. If a blind person does not have access to leisure reading via braille literature, their education and growth remain incomplete. Although screen readers like JAWS or NVDA have made it possible for the visually impaired to read, write and access the internet, braille remains the first step towards literacy for the blind. White Print has been trying to bridge the huge gap in the availability and accessibility in braille literature in India for more than ten years; I feel this is an important step towards enriching the lives of the blind in India.

Arundhati Nath (she/her) is a visually impaired independent journalist, content writer, and children’s author from Guwahati, India. Her work has been published in The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera, CSMonitor, and many others. She can be reached at natharundhati@gmail.com and her published work can be viewed on her website.

Lewis Capaldi is Taking a Break. Why Can’t I?

Posted on November 16, 2023November 16, 2023 by Gretchen Gales

On June 27th, 2023 Lewis Capaldi officially announced his hiatus from touring, citing “the impact of Tourette Syndrome” as part of his decision, one discussed in his award-winning documentary How I’m Feeling Now. He did not take this decision lightly, empathizing with fans about how disappointing it is to look forward to a tour that’s been postponed—and the costs associated with it.

There’s no doubt that Capaldi loves touring, his fans, and the ability to play music in front of thousands each night. As a fellow Touretter, I’m thrilled that there is both representation of Tourette’s and the need for rest from such an international star. But I most resonate with the final part of his Instagram statement, which apologizes for rest while simultaneously justifying it: “I’m so incredibly sorry to everyone who had planned to come to a show before the end of the year but I need to feel well to perform at the standard you all deserve.”

While I’ve hardly achieved the same elevated status as fellow Touretters like Capaldi, Billie Eilish, Howie Mandel, Steve Wallace, and others, I’ve achieved a lot in my life. I’ve been Key Club President, a foster for kittens, a published writer, musician, and so much more. This confuses people when I do desire rest.

There are days when I can indulge in spontaneous plans. On other days, I need to reschedule advanced ones. It’s all up to my body, which cannot be tamed on a whim. During times of stress it can flare up, waxing and waning as it pleases.

But you were fine yesterday; you’ve pushed through it before, I think, an echo of others’ sentiments when I cancel or postpone plans. It also shapes others’ decisions about whether or not to include me at all. Their explanation is usually, “I didn’t think you’d want to come” or “It would be too stressful for you.”

This leads to shame, guilt, and feeling excluded, just for being in an unruly body; requests to forgo my comfort and embrace pain for the sake of others’ needs are seen as the “right” thing to do. While there are many times wherein I believe in pushing through (if possible), like an important celebration or funeral, it can be stressful on the body if the brain decides it’s a “tic-ier” day. It often results in having to take muscle relaxers, sedatives, and pain relievers to get back to a manageable spot.

Yet I still feel the need to apologize.

Many with Tourette Syndrome are encouraged to push past these difficulties, which is why you don’t often see people disclose their Tourette’s. As a child, my neurologist focused on controlling and eliminating the tics he believed were temporary…and my fault. He blamed chocolate, video games, SpongeBob, anything but a disability. So the masking began—and worked—and continued throughout my childhood and teen years. I was an honor roll student, involved in many service clubs and honor societies. I hung out with friends, pushing through the discomfort for the most part and making up an elaborate excuse when I couldn’t.

I believed my tics were a personal failure…until my late diagnosis at 22, long after my tics “should” have left. I had to confront the fact that rest was not a privilege, yet the guilt of canceling or modifying plans remained.

Like many others in the world, doomscrolling TikTok is a favorite pastime. User Vermin and the Rats (with a green pixie cut I wish I could pull off) confronts me with truths: “Is it possible you tie your sense of self-worth to your productivity and your ability to help others, and that’s why you feel so guilty when you’re not able to be productive and you have to rest? That you’ve been masking your disabilities for so long, that you genuinely don’t know how to gauge what your needs are?”

It’s Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability by Kelly Davio is an essay collection chronicling the author’s experience as a disabled person in the 21st century. She writes, “If you are going to disclose your illness, our culture tells us, you had better do it in a way as to make other people feel gratitude for their own good health, to take advantage of their robust bodies….” My addition? If you disclose your illness, you better be a superhuman of sorts. A gold-winning athlete. A wildly successful musical artist. Even then, you’ll still need to apologize for the need to rest. After all, your exceptionalism is waning, which is unacceptable.

In many programs across the United States, services for disabled students are referred to as ”Exceptional Education.” If you happen to be “gifted” AND disabled, you’re labeled as “Twice Exceptional.” Disability, as mainstream culture understands it, cannot inherently be associated with anything good at all; it must be paired with something to “make” it okay. In this case, being exceptional is the only acceptable way to exist in a disabled body. Don’t believe me? Just look at inspiration porn, or the objectification of disabled people to make able-bodied people feel better about their own lives.

When people respond to me with “That’s okay” or “You’re still such a capable woman” after explaining how my Tourette’s works, I get frustrated. Of course it’s okay. I never said anything about my capabilities. I never apologized for my existence.

It’s hard to correct them outright. I’ve even had to correct myself when I’ve thought or said something similar to people with other disabilities. It’s hardwired into so many brains that disability cannot coincide with anything neutral or good, even if you’ve lived it. The only way out of it is to rest boldly. After all, one of the primary tenets of disability justice is rest. No maybes, buts, ifs, or sorries. Just rest.

To practice, I’ve been typing out and removing apologies from my requests to postpone or skip events. I often still leave them out of fear or guilt, but I’m slowly improving my self-advocacy, simply taking the rest I’m allowed to take. I can no longer feel the need to “make up” for the way I exist “proving” exceptionality.

Gretchen Gales (she/her) writes…a lot. After realizing becoming a veterinarian meant being good at math, she pursued writing and teaching as a career instead. You can find more of her written and artsy stuff at www.writinggales.com.

Monsters in the Closet: Facing Fears of Inaccessibility

Posted on October 19, 2023October 19, 2023 by Fifer Charlie Loftus

The portrayal of disability in horror films is often very problematic—think of mental illnesses such as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in the 2016 movie “Split.” Yet, horror movies hold a special allure to me. This could be because my mother has always been opposed to horror, gore, and movie violence in any form—except for distinct comedic effect. However, I think horror movies can hold a certain allure for disabled viewers due to their relatability. Being disabled can be incredibly anxiety-inducing. I find myself constantly in a state of what-if when dealing with aspects of my disability in an inaccessible world:

“What if TSA confiscates my medication? What if the environment there drives me to sensory overload and there’s no way to leave? What if I don’t “look” disabled enough to receive the accommodations I asked for?”

Horror movies often portray disabled people as the horror, but the true horror is the inaccessible world. I remember I hated tag, the default game of every elementary schooler, because I was always caught first. Years later, when watching horror movies I remembered the fear of being the farthest behind like the characters being picked off first by the monster.

In a haunted house horror, the family is tormented by fears and horrors while inside the house; outside of it, their anxiety over what lies inside tends to devour their lives. As long as the environment around us remains inaccessible, people with disabilities are constantly stuck inside the haunted house. Assuming that our home environments are accessible to us, that consolation can be our one reprieve. However, not everyone is that lucky.

Recently, one of my what-if scenarios happened. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve done everything I can to prevent getting COVID-19. I have asthma and a history of lung disease. For many disabled people with similar concerns, the COVID-19 pandemic elicits a seemingly never-ending fear: what if I get COVID? Although vaccinations and new antiviral medications tampered these fears, the reality of a positive COVID test was still a shock.

By December of 2022, I’d made it through almost two full years of negative results. Each time my reactive airway and lungs flared up at an everyday cold, I’d take a test only to be negative. At this point, I did not expect to test positive, yet that second pink line appeared thick and clear. It was undeniable. Although I coughed and wheezed and my chest tightened, ultimately I didn’t need to be hospitalized. This was a feat I owe to vaccinations and modern medicine.

The real horror movie began after COVID, when suddenly my asthma was significantly worse. My pulse oximeter showed my oxygen levels dropping regularly to low 90s, a never-ending cough developed, and I was overtaken by a level of fatigue that I’d never experienced before.

Again, the horror for me was not my symptoms but the inaccessibility I encountered in everyday situations. The steep stairs to my apartment became the equivalent of a long, dark hallway from a suspenseful horror film. I started using a cane to combat the fatigue so that I could make it through my work day. My slow pace and inability to run created an even tighter time crunch, worsened by my ADHD. Everyday household tasks, such as laundry, became impossible as I no longer had the energy or strength to haul it to the laundromat without bending into a coughing fit or asthma attack.

Eventually, I was prescribed cough medicine and a new inhaler that managed to restore my asthma to a controlled state after a few more weeks. However, my asthma did not disappear and COVID-19 lingers.

A coping method I’ve been taught for anxiety is to play out a worse-case scenario. This way you see that even the worst situation your anxiety can throw at you is not world-ending. One therapist explained it to me as “…seeing monsters in the closet makes them less scary. It’s the idea of the unknown that is the most terrifying.” I played out my COVID-19 scenario in real time and, despite the real struggles I faced dealing with the aftermath of the virus, I found ways to accommodate myself, even when facing inaccessibility.

Horror movies push monsters out of the closet. Most horror movies, especially the haunted-house subgenre, end in a tense resolution of the protagonists leaving the haunted area, often with the monster lingering in the background. In “The Shining,” the mother and son manage to get away unharmed, but Jack is left at the hotel, mad and murderous. The threat of fear lingers on, just as the threat of inaccessibility never fully dissipates.

People can develop a disability at any point in their life, even people who already label themselves disabled have fluctuating support needs. These are all themes that linger in the back of horror, often cloaked in offensive stereotypes. I often wonder what horror stories and movies written by disabled people could look like. How would we portray the everyday horrors of inaccessibility? Inspiration porn pities us and stereotypical horror films label us monsters.

However, we are just as human as any nondisabled characters, with flaws and triumphs that make us neither distinctly hero nor villain. Let’s take possession of the real monsters—the world’s accessibility barriers—and bring them out into the harsh daylight alongside the ghosts and demons on television.

Fifer Charlie Loftus (they/he), who goes by Charlie, is a queer disabled writer who lives in New York. He works in a library and enjoys reading, writing, and playing board games in his free time.