Well done Rahul. The fight should not end here. Need to scale it up.
Best,
Satguru.
On 03-09-2020 08:14 am, George Abraham wrote:
There are more odds stacked up against us than we know. Well the realities
cannot be ignored. The fight has to continue. I liked your final tweet.
-----Original Message-----
From: accessindia@accessindia.org.in [mailto:accessindia@accessindia.org.in] On
Behalf Of Rahul Bajaj
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2020 1:42 AM
To: accessindia@accessindia.org.in
Subject: [AI] A very negative experience
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
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