Comment on the need to improve disabled people’s access to entertainment. How can this be achieved?

Persons with disabilities face a lot of difficulties in getting involved with mainstream socio-economic and cultural activities, due to lack of mobility and transportation, inaccessible physical environments, unavailability of assistive devices and technologies, and inaccessible websites and services.

Making entertainment disabled friendly:

• The entertainment content in India is not disabled friendly hence they can watch it and enjoy it.
• Audio description and subtitling are the two important tools to help make entertainment content disabled-friendly. However, the potential of both has largely remained untapped in India.
• Audio description refers to description of the visual in the form of audio to benefit the visually impaired.
• Subtitling refers to displaying of the audio component in the textual form to benefit the deaf.

Provisions for PwD under the law:

• The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act provides guidance towards making entertainment content disabled friendly.
• Section 29(h) of the Act provides that the government should take measures to ensure that persons with hearing impairment can have access to television programmes with sign language interpretation or sub-titles.
• Section 42(ii) provides that the government should take measures to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to electronic media by providing audio description, sign language interpretation and close captioning.

Government’s initiatives:

• The I&B ministry has issued a letter to the Central Board for Film Certification requesting to make audio description part of the production and distribution of a film.
• Under a joint collaboration between IFFI, Saksham Bharat, and UNESCO, three films were screened at the 50th International Film Festivals of India for those with special needs, under the ‘Accessible India-Accessible Films’ program.

Way Forward:

Making the facilities and services found in the communities accessible for the persons with disabilities is imperative for their proper inclusion in the mainstream. The information and broadcast ministry can play a bigger role in ensuring that the disabled population of the country is able to enjoy entertainment content