Disability is not Inability

Media should avoid discrimination…

In developing countries disability sensitive media products are limited and largely discriminate the community. While in the last five years, inclusion has increased in Kenya for example, discrimination persists. Inclusion has increased within the misconception that the government is the only one responsible to ‘fix’ disability. There is this theory awash in the media that empowerment of the disability community is only the role of the government and the disability community itself. This theory says the media’s role is only to either highlight desperate situations or superhuman achievements despite a ‘handicap’.

This theory has been built on the premise of the widespread disability approaches propagated worldwide that deny the social responsibility that society has in empowering an individual overcome the impact an impairment has on his/her ability to actualize potential within. If society cannot train teachers to equally teach deaf and hearing children or provide health services to blind children or employment to adults with disabilities then society is that society democratic or is the media in such society, free?.

The media’s influence in relation to building inclusion without discrimination begins with its expression of disability as a freedom among the freedoms defining a democratic society. Positive and respectful portrayals of disability are the beginning of equalization of rights in relation to the media. This spans from agencies working with the media in developing its products to the media organisations themselves.