As a disabled person inhabiting a world designed for the able-bodied, one learns to put up with a lot of indignities that others would consider unacceptable. The person who chooses to ignore your existence in a situation because engaging with you will be difficult and awkward. The everyday pain of being excluded from a whole host of normal life activities. The challenge of having to constantly find ways of living with equal productivity and dignity as others which the able-bodied often simply do not have to think about.
Even so, sometimes, one is overcome by the hot, white anger of something so irredeemably unfair that it cannot be just treated as one of the thousand cuts the disabled face everyday. And yesterday was one such day for me. A battle I have been waging for some time now has been to make SCC Online, India's premier legal database used by practicing lawyers, accessible to persons with disabilities. I figured it would be a good idea to encourage a large number of people on Twitter to write to them to remedy the myriad accessibility barriers on their platform. To create a wave of messages that would be simply too significant to ignore. And so I did. Yesterday, in response to my plea, one Vineet Subramani said: "His [sic how] exactly can that make it more accessible? Set out your suggestions if you want traction. @ebcindia , @scconline_ and @sumeetmalik462 are busy helping us win cases." I found his tone patronizing, ableist and offensive. And told him as much. Why, I asked, must I gain traction to exercise my legally guaranteed rights? Why can't I ask SCC to help me win cases the way they help everyone else? His response: "Tough. Learn to be brief." "Is your super power self pity?" he asked me. Given that SCC is a private database, much like private property, he had the balls to say, no one has the right to ask that it be made accessible. By this point, I had realized that there was no point in dignifying his vicious and hateful Tweets with a reply. Mind you, this man is a product of the best law school in this country, and I was advised by a cherished mentor to consider working for him a few years ago. Everyone will acknowledge that this person is worthy of nothing but unequivocal condemnation. However, what is more troubling is the fact that Mr. Malik, the person who runs SCC, is a respected member of the legal fraternity. The only tweet he liked, amongst the hundreds of tweets that came his way, was Subramani's first tweet. Asking me not to distract a platform from serving its large base of ablebodied customers. Unless I could essentially point out, in 280 character long tweets, all the hundreds of inaccessible links on SCC's websites. Another individual, endorsing Mr. Subramani's tweet, essentially said: "finally, someone says it." Mr. Subramani is, frankly, an asshole, to be sure. However, he is not an aberration. He espoused views that are held, albeit perhaps in less virulent form, by many. The partner at India's leading litigation firm who told me that the disabled should not aspire to pursue litigation. The Supreme Court judges who found it fit to hold that the blind cannot become judges in this country. The people who refuse to promote blind lawyers in their organizations, under some or the other seemingly neutral pretext that is phrased in a way that appears to have no link with blindness. And yet is a function of nothing but one's blindness. And then they expect you not to be belligerent. To always have the patience, temprament and energy to engage, to change minds and hearts and to win people over. All I can say is, as I said to Mr. Subramani yesterday: "I'd like to see you continue spewing this bullshit if you lose your eyesight in an accident tomorrow." Sent from my iPhone -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to accessindia+unsubscr...@accessindia.org.in. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/81F8264C-2686-461B-BA6C-80942CD755B1%40gmail.com.
