The awareness team organized a great workshop on accessibility today and managed to persuade 21 people to attend – 21 very hard to persuade people at that! These were engineers from the PWD, people from the Ministry of Social Welfare and Empowerment, the Mayor’s office, schools, NGOs and our friendly lawyer, Ravi Bhatia.

The team from Svayam was wonderful – Subhash Chandra Vashishth and Kavita Agrawal were both knowledgeable and passionate. They had some excellent slides as well as perfect diplomacy to deal with some of the people in the group!

One of the best parts of the day was when they got participants into wheelchairs to do an impromptu audit of the room we were in. It got very low marks, starting with the mat at the entrance which Anjali just couldn’t get her chair over. Then she tried to get through the bathroom door, but that wasn’t happening either. It was a graphic illustration of what the presentation just previous had been saying in words and the lesson was much appreciated by all those in attendance. It was a bit depressing thinking about all that needs to be done to make the country accessible for people with disabilities. We tend to think primarily of wheelchairs, but Svayam educated us about the needs of people with visual problems and hearing problems as well. People with mental handicaps can also benefit from the kind of logical, thoughtful design they described.

Logic and thought! That’s really all that’s required. Anybody have any they can spare?