Disability is not Inability

:: Disability and regulating the media:

Is it necessary to regulate how the media portrays disability? Of what importance is this regulation if any and should a disability organization be in a statutory board regulating the media? These is the questions cannot be answered without a view of the background relations between the media and disability the world over. Yet the as debate on the Debate on the Media Bill 2007 rages, the voice of disability yet again is no where to be heard.

As the fourth estate, public and private media engage with the society depending on their potential as media consumers. In the developed world where the population of persons with disability is a large market in its own right, media portrayal of disability is widely negotiated among the players with equal stakes.

The Persons with Disability Act 2004 defines discrimination as to accord different treatment to different persons solely or mainly as a result of their disabilities and includes using words, gestures or caricatures that demean scandalise or embarrass a person with a disability.

In developing countries where private media driven by profit motive many a times finds it hard to engage with disability plagued with poverty and therefore unable to consume its products. While in the west the media in its entirety from television, radio, film to advertising and print have had to make adjustments in the way they portray disability as dictated by the community.

:: media perpetuating discrimination.

:: access at whatever cost.

:: disability engaging the media

:: disability and media regulation




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