Challenging the Myths. Establishing realities

Often the biggest roadblock that people with disability face is a disabling attitude from the people around them. This attitude is because people lack knowledge and information and not necessarily due to cruelty.

Awareness generation is a critical area of work for the XRCVC. We wish to not only help people see things in a different way but to help break the novelty, and therefore the apprehension related to people with disability. We strongly believe that only when each of us becomes more open and aware will we make our society equally open.

Our current efforts in this area include:

1. Antarchakshu - the Eye Within:

An event developed and conceptualized by our students, Antarchakshu - the Eye within is a simulation workshop aimed at creating a sneak preview for the sighted into the worlds of the visually challenged and other persons with disabilities. It’s a simulated environment where blind folded participants walk through an obstacle course and perform a series of daily activity tasks.

This simulation is then followed by an interactive session and/or presentation depending on the nature of the audience.

We have expanded the event to include other disabilities across different venues. Over last two years the XRCVC had conducted Antarchakshu at various venues. It has become and event to look forward to annually during Malhar- the Intercollegiate festival of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. This year as well at Malhar 2008 we had over 700 participants go through the Antarchakshu experience.

2. Presentations at Seminars

For groups and events where we cannot replicate Antarchakshu, depending on the need of the groups the XRCVC runs various small group workshops and presentations
Some of the groups we engage with are:

• Accessible Design for the visually challenged (aimed at architecture students and/or       professionals in the field)
• Getting to know the world of the visually challenged and persons with disability (aimed at potential employers, school children, any other group)
• Copyright access and the visually challenged
• Step towards Inclusive Education (aimed at teachers and teacher educators)
• Technology advancements and their applications in Education of the Visually Challenged (aimed at special educators or helping professionals)

A short ad-film “Antarchakshu” can be seen here