Breaking Barriers: Media and Disability Advocacy

What does it take to shift from a visually-driven career in media to becoming a fervent advocate for disability rights? Meet Shruti Pushkarna, our inspiring guest who made this transition and is now a prominent voice in disability advocacy from Delhi, India. Shruti shares her enlightening journey from a mainstream media producer to working directly with individuals with blindness and vision impairment. She recounts the obstacles she faced and the critical need for mutual understanding between media professionals and the disability community. Through her narrative, Shruti emphasizes the collective effort required to push for true inclusion.

This episode also shines a spotlight on the role of media representation and the strategic importance of making content accessible for all, especially those using screen readers. Shruti explains how visual storytelling and social media can capture attention while conveying important messages about disability rights. Her insights reveal the power of presenting data in relatable ways, fostering collaboration across various advocacy groups. We underscore the importance of a united approach to disability inclusion, exploring how to communicate effectively about diverse experiences and perspectives.

Breaking societal stereotypes and understanding the technological advancements for students with disabilities are additional focal points of our conversation. Shruti discusses the cultural barriers in India, the fear associated with caregiving leave, and the misrepresentation of people with disabilities in media. Through compelling stories of individuals overcoming systemic obstacles, we illustrate the potential for a more inclusive society. The episode closes with a discussion on the significant role of radio and other media technologies, showcasing their potential to offer opportunities and drive continued dialogue and representation in both media and technology sectors. Tune in for an episode that promises to broaden your perspective on disability advocacy and media inclusion.

Transcript

Neil Milliken : 0:00

We'll take a pause. Hello and welcome to Access Chat. I'm delighted that we're joined today by Shruti Pushkana, who is a journalist and producer and disability advocate and we've been talking before coming on air, and Shruti has a really interesting background. But probably best that we allow Shruti to tell us about it herself. So welcome Shruti to tell us about it herself. So welcome Shruti. Can you tell us about yourself? How you came to be working in the field?

Shruti Pushkarna: 0:31

Hi, hi everyone, hello to everybody listening in. So I'm Shruti and I am from Delhi, india. It's very hot right now here, I must warn you guys. So I started off my initial part of the career was as a journalist. I've worked with some famous television news channels, english news channels.

Shruti Pushkarna: 0:52

I've also worked with in the internet journalism, digital journalism, and produced a lot of media events, worked on more mainstream side of news, worked on special programs, worked also in the business of media and then I came to a point where I needed to do more, something which is more, you know, satiating, and I thought I will switch from media to try and explore the social sector, the development sector, because media was losing its steam when it comes to editorial freedom, so it wasn't really working out for me.

Shruti Pushkarna: 1:28

So when I switched to the development sector, it so happened that disability became a natural choice, and I don't regret it at all. I'm so glad for that. It's been about a little over eight years and initially I started off working with persons with blindness and vision impairment. That was my first orientation into anything to do with disability. Words like inclusion, accessibility, assistive technology all of those were, like you know, completely those concepts were alien to me. But it turned out to be and I was lucky to be mentored so well into the issues of disabilities that just thought this was my calling. I just found it, my calling.

Neil Milliken : 2:17

And again, we were talking before you came on air that you worked in a very visual medium and then went into the area of vision loss, so that must have really caused you to think quite hard about how you then communicate. So what impact did that have on the way that you present your journalism and do your craft?

Shruti Pushkarna: 2:41

Honestly, I was at a complete loss and I was like I was shocked. I was like this is not something I know, and in the first few months of working in the space I was questioning myself whether this is my thing, whether I will be able to do it or not. But I realized that that's the beauty of being a communicator. As a journalist, you are a communicator, you have to communicate to a mass audience and I before this had never thought of persons with disabilities to be a group as part of that mass audience and that was my shortcoming. So I was like, ok, I need to learn what I know of the visual medium and I was very oriented towards showing graphically things using images, and even for our internal meetings with the group of people I worked with and a large part of them were blind, including the CEO I used to struggle explaining to them if I was creating some content.

Shruti Pushkarna: 3:45

Then I had to learn those bits, I had to talk in a language that they would understand and oftentimes you know that's the worry that people come with and not to defend the media people here but they just don't know what to say, what not to say, where to stop or where to seek help. That is something I learned, and I had the benefit of learning that, you know, and I will start very patiently. But yeah, I mean, you know one of the things. I, of course, realized that screen reader is a real thing. You know, I don't need to explain everything. I can just shoot an email and that'll just communicate. But when it came to verbally communicating certain terms, I learned how not to use, and if it was images, I learned to something called image description, which I'd never known about before this.

Antonio Santos: 4:37

Okay, I think that there's also another angle of that I think it's important for us to talk about is you are also bringing your experience to them. What aspects you felt that they also know from their side that they had to improve in order to communicate, because sometimes organizations that support people with disabilities, they are very good talking within themselves, within their groups, but how do they reach larger audiences?

Debra Ruh: 5:07

Yes, and also Trudy. Trudy, before you answer it, can I just add a little bit more? Because, just going with what Antonio is saying, what we have seen in a couple of countries, we've seen, when we have strategists like you that have been in the field of journalists, really understanding what do the other journalists need, what do the media groups need, to really understand how to meaningfully include us. Just building upon what Antonio is saying. So, thank you.

Shruti Pushkarna: 5:40

Sure, there are two sides to that and I will go first for Antonio. Sure, there are two sides to that and I will go first for Antonio. So when I was unlearning and learning new things about this group, I also realized that this group needs to talk to the wider audience, like you said, and people like me should not find it so awkward or difficult to learn about them. If I give the example of a blind person, they are not very good on photos. They don't see photo as something that captures attention. So I actually tried communicating that to these people, right To this group, that it's important to be seen, for the sighted world to connect, because everybody, like we, say about visibility that there's a different way of working, there's a different language that they understand. It's true for the other side as well. So there are two sides to the equation and we have to bring them together and I thought that you know I was in a space where I could do that. So as much as I was learning about them, I started pushing them into stepping out of their comfort zone also, and it's very important because the burden of inclusion is on no one's side really. It's a collective. It's a collective that we have to attempt towards right. And the other part is that because they are not seen, the world doesn't know. And media is part of that world.

Shruti Pushkarna: 7:14

Right, I mean, I am a sensitive person. I thought I'm an empath. I've been a caregiver all my life, from a very early age. But I, as a journalist, did not know this because nobody was talking to me and they were not talking in a language that I understand. Because now, obviously, as a person associated with a group, media group, you're driven by certain editorial guidelines, certain business you know interests, but as an independent journalist, of course you have the liberty to talk more about specific issues, to understand the disability side of things. But, yes, the only representation so far that exists is from a large kind of a stereotyping that you know there is a blind person who's always crossing the road or singing on the streets, right, I mean, and when I stepped into this office that was the last thing I could imagine. So one has to experience it, and to experience it I think both sides have to come together.

Debra Ruh: 8:23

Yes, but I think it's got to be professionals that are already in the mix, because if we just come in and say, hey, why are y'all not? We don't understand all of the nuances. No, no, no no, I was.

Shruti Pushkarna: 8:42

I mean, I was coming from a newsroom environment where people yell a lot. You know I'm sorry, you know I was in live television news. There was no room for error in that space. There was no room for error, and if you made an error you know you're in the line of fire. So, like, what do you do? So I mean, having done that for 10 years, you're wired like that. You're talking that language, you're screaming, and then you go to a group, whether it's persons on the spectrum, whether it's blind people who are sensitive to tonality, right, and I I don't mean badly, but that's something I had to learn that somebody is carefully watching the tone and also interpreting in a way that I may not be, you know, intending it to come out. So there were small, small things like that. Yeah.

Neil Milliken : 9:41

So I think it's really interesting thinking about the tonality and the impact of the environment that you're in.

Neil Milliken : 9:52

In my job I worked a lot in providing AT in media, so I've been in quite a lot of like news environments and they are really noisy.

Neil Milliken : 10:01

And one of our favourites and regulars, gareth Ford Williams, who used to be in charge of external accessibility at the BBC, used to give an example of the newsroom as a situational disability, because if you're in the newsroom, like in the in the BBC, everything's blaring out on full volume and everyone has captions, because it's the only way that they can understand what what's going on. So I think that that those sort of the context in which you operate in and the situational disability idea is something that I think helps bridge the divide between people who have a permanent disability, who experience barriers all the time, and people who can't conceptualize disability until you put them into a context like this so I think that that, um, that it's a valuable learning curve to understand that these situations are, you know, disabling too, um, and a way of sort of closing the gap and finding ways to also communicate to large organizations that actually, you know, it's huge numbers, it's not small numbers, that would benefit from making changes.

Neil Milliken : 11:25

I'm also fascinated by the sort- of the teaching of sort of cross-communication skills.

Neil Milliken : 11:36

So teaching the visually impaired community the value of sort of cross-communication skills. So teaching the visually impaired community the value of imagery. Yes, so this is something that we're playing around with at the moment One of my colleagues who's a screen reader user. We're getting him to try and work with presentations right, and partly because we want to document this as possible for screen reader users to make a nice presentation and actually it's pretty hard right Just using a screen reader to be able to format stuff but also because we want to, if we're talking about removing barriers it shouldn't just be the technical barriers to being able to consume information, but also create it.

Neil Milliken : 12:28

And so, if you think about what most people like to consume in a presentation, you talked about how people consume media. Well, they like their presentations with pictures. You know, if you and I've received plenty of presentations from colleagues who are blind and visually impaired, it's a there's a bunch of lines of text, yeah right, totally accessible for them. But you know, um a cure for the audience.

Shruti Pushkarna: 13:01

Yeah, undesirable yeah so.

Neil Milliken : 13:05

So I think that you know how. So how, how do you, do you do any of this work to teach people how to sort of communicate visually, not only just represent themselves, which I think is also important, but communicate, you know, in the visual medium?

Shruti Pushkarna: 13:22

yeah, to to bridge that, that communication scale, because that opens up doors yes, because, um, a lot of people who are now in the space of advocacy and they are persons with speech impairment, vision impairment, different, different groups.

Shruti Pushkarna: 13:39

They are using social media as a vehicle and I do consult with a lot of people telling them how to use social media in a more effective way rewriting some posts, insisting on using photos and videos, because there is a lot to say when you're associated passionately with an issue and also you've lived it all your life.

Shruti Pushkarna: 14:06

But for general media consumption, for general clickbait attention, you need to talk, just the you know, the top two things or three things to get attention, because you have to generate interest. A lot of times I've seen with persons with disabilities and also largely NGOs, is that they do such good work. You know, it's amazing the amount of energy and passion that drives them, but they fail to communicate to the media and that's why there is such lack of interest. Also Because the stories are so, so powerful. But if you are going to come from a space of I have witnessed this all my life and there are some 10 things that I want to talk about it's not going to matter, it does not interest the other person I may sound, I mean on the. You know I may sound insensitive, but that's not what.

Debra Ruh: 15:05

I'm intending Right, it's just true, and something that I noticed whenever I first started this work. And I am a person with a disability. I am neurodiverse, like some of my co-hosts here, and neurodiversity, adhd, autism, dyslexia all of that is considered part of the disability community. But when I first started talking about this stuff I started here in the United States I found that I had a better. I got into the doors, I got into the boardrooms, I got into the meetings to talk about disability inclusion and accessibility in ways that my peers that had more visible disabilities could not. And I had a good friend of mine who has a pretty significant disability say excuse me, deborah, when you get on stage to talk about these issues, you have to tell everyone that disability inclusion is on. That's what we're going to talk about. He said when I get up on the stage, everybody knows that in some way, disability is part of this conversation. Because of his, he has a very distinctive disability and so I remember I had to almost, you know, barrel through the doors.

Debra Ruh: 16:27

I came from at the time corporate America and an executive role in banking. I knew what corporate America wanted and what the realities were. The reality is that you think they're a billion dollar brand and they have gold everywhere. No, they don't. What I was as an executive, a vice president of a bank, was I was constantly being told cut your budget, cut your budget, cut your budget, cut your budget all the time. And that was many years ago.

Debra Ruh: 16:57

And so I think that one thing I want to make sure the audience understands about your work is, once again, india. We haven't said it on the show, but y'all heard this before. There's over a billion 500 million people in India, just to use an example. Here in the United States, just to use an example, here in the united states, we have 330 million people. Okay, so if we could convince the people, the billion 500 million people in india, to really take this seriously in a different way and there's a lot of powerful work happening in india, but it is still in pockets, as you're saying, and so you still need to really be in these conversations to open the door and to make sure that we're presenting the data in the way that could, like you're saying, even be heard, even be heard and at the same time, I see people with disabilities in India. There's so many amazing things happening, but it is still really all it's pockets, it's pockets and it's brilliance, but I don't see it right coming all together which it's in silos.

Shruti Pushkarna: 18:04

People are operating in silos, right, and you know. Just extending to adding to what you were talking about is that when a person with disability gets on stage to talk about that and let's say they have a type of disability, their lived experiences are bound to their own disability. Often we are not talking about accessibility for all for all, inclusion for all. So there is a critical need for professionals more professionals to get into that space, understand disability from a very close angle and then unite these forces, because when you're so impacted by something, we will end up only looking at it from a very zoomed-in version. You need to pull out and have a more bird's-eye view on it.

Antonio Santos: 19:03

I think it's extremely powerful when organizations that work in different aspects and with different groups of disabilities are able to come together and communicate in an articulate way instead of just being there separately on their own. I think that's much more powerful and able to have a good storytelling. In some cases, this is very true. Many organizations supporting people with a certain disability need to understand the needs of the other groups with other disabilities.

Shruti Pushkarna: 19:33

Very important. You know I was trying to learn more about accessibility, digital accessibility, right Now. Clearly, much more is known about digital accessibility from a blindness perspective and as you go down the list of disabilities the information thins down. Unless you have some real special interest, you will not be able to easily dig out that information. That could be for varied reasons. It could be because there is a more vociferous, articulate group in certain pockets of the country and it is in my experience it has been that vision impairment is the most articulate group. They are in white collar jobs, they are in a space to use assistive technology. They have access. They are from that economic background. I'm talking about the Indian context here now, right, right, right, it's very different for other disabilities.

Debra Ruh: 20:33

I just want to yeah, I guess I'm sorry. No, excuse me, my Wi-Fi is terrible, but I didn't mean to step on you. But I think you bring up such a good point because, as the audience knows, I'm building billions strong and I've been recently talking to a lot of the blind organizations around the world about convening in a way that we've never seen before. And what's so interesting about it is that I was talking to some very, very tough leaders in this space and I said you know, y'all do it better than any of the rest of the community the blind the. You know the blind community. They are probably the ones that are getting the most attention.

Debra Ruh: 21:18

The blind community. They are probably the ones that are getting the most attention, but it's still, even though they're the best at us all being terrible, they're still not being included in really big ways. And even though we've been working on this in the United States we've been doing this, we have had laws on our books since 1990 and actually even further back. So, even though the blind community does better than other parts of our community, none of us are doing good. And it's because we're not and I told them too why are you not supporting the deaf community? Why are you not out there supporting cerebral palsy? Why? This is ridiculous. Let's get together. If we all came together I mean, you're in a country that's like China it's got a million, 500 million people If we could get it right in India.

Shruti Pushkarna: 22:10

If we could get it right in India, yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying, and you know, interestingly speaking, of how, in my experience and in, I think, all of our experience together, there is so much potential when it comes to a person with low vision or blindness. You know, because there's so much technology, Inclusion gaps are much lesser now and yet the stereotyping in India is the worst at the corporate end. I also consult with corporates and try to push this talent into the mainstream for higher up jobs. On to certain disabilities, because, again, of media representation, right, it's right that you know.

Shruti Pushkarna: 23:00

Uh, there is a different kind of boxing that's happening on jobs. You know that if it's to do with blindness, it's to do with a voice role. If it's to do with deafness, it's to do with some image assistance or something. It's, it's, it's, it's just so we all like to, you know, stick to homogeneity because we're comfortable that way. We don't want to deal with it and, sadly, even when we're going so big on diversity, equity, inclusion, you know, belonging, et cetera, the corporates, in my experience so far and of course there are exceptions, and there are great exceptions that they are still looking at it from the lens of exclusion, the lens of homogeneity, because the corporate structure is very homogeneous, very bureaucratic. So you cannot come close to talking about diversity if you don't disrupt this, if you don't go with a completely destructive approach I mean, I, I was at an event just the other day where I was with some execs.

Neil Milliken : 24:10

it was in a, you know, a corporate setting and there were execs, high-level execs, from a number of different organizations and they were execs, high-level execs, from a number of different organizations and they were talking about the different, um you know challenges that they were, they were facing and actually the you know there was a concern that people really didn't know how to sort of deal with career progression for um, different disability groups and and and self-id came up a lot because, again, you know clearly the point that deborah made about visible disabilities and visibly obvious disabilities means that people you know count towards the statistics by default, um, but then people are not thinking about the people that haven't come out and haven't declared, and so that whole sort of thinking about how do we help people progress and the mindset that it is natural for people with disabilities to want to progress and have the opportunities to, is still quite an immature topic within large organisations.

Debra Ruh: 25:25

Yes.

Neil Milliken : 25:25

There are people with disabilities in really, really senior roles, but there are very few people with disabilities in senior roles that actually admit to having a disability as well, in senior roles that actually admit to having a disability as well.

Neil Milliken : 25:40

And so then and we went one step further there, thinking about actually the impediments and the reasons why people, the higher up you get in an organisation, the more risk you take in terms of starting to talk about your disability, if you haven't beforehand.

Neil Milliken : 26:03

Because the sort of implication is that you've got to that place because you're infallible and you're brilliant and everything else, and then suddenly you're telling people that you're human, that you have things that you can't do, that you find difficult, and that goes against the perception of you as this infallible leader. So and and you think, well, you know, is this going to impact my next promotion? Or, if they're making a choice about cuts and redundancies, does that mean that my name automatically goes on the list? Now, everybody thinks about those at every stage of their career process, but the opportunities for that next step of progression get smaller and smaller the higher up the pyramid that you go. So the sort of risk benefit of coming out and talking about it is really, you know, a significant consideration, and yet we need those leaders to set the tone. So if you're there communicating how you know and you're giving the advice, and you're talking about this with corporates, how do you persuade them to take that risk?

Antonio Santos: 27:21

But let me just comment on one thing, neil Don't you think that when they don't feel that level of confidence to say, to express themselves, and don't feel that that's also a problem that we have today with the word belong, where if they say, well, if I have this disability, maybe people see me as someone that doesn't belong here? Right, quite possibly.

Debra Ruh: 27:49

Right.

Neil Milliken : 27:50

Right, yeah, but we need to change that. So how do we make sure that people do belong? Well, that's a cultural thing, and if you're a leader, hopefully you can change the culture. But how do you persuade the leaders that their peers won't judge them differently?

Shruti Pushkarna: 28:11

Yeah, and can you? You know there is no right answer to this, but still, I mean, look at one side, you're a leader and you are in a position of power, right, and there is. I mean, even if there is a level of judgment, it takes a while to reach you, to put you in that vulnerable spot, right? So once you declare and you associate yourself as part of a vulnerability, you'll be surprised how many people will reach out to you, right? So I encourage that, because when that force gets, it multiplies and it gets stronger, then the fear of losing what you were talking about also kind of comes down. It's just, the first step is very hard, because you don't know what, uh, what turn the road is taking next.

Shruti Pushkarna: 29:03

But if I uh, I mean and, and not just with, uh, their own disability, one way of looking at this is somebody in the family, somebody in the community, somebody who's a friend or could have a disability. That's the starting point of a conversation, just testing waters how people react to that, because in large corporates there will be a lot of people who will be caregivers, parents to persons with disabilities. Even they don't talk about it, right, and that's got nothing to do with the position. It's just that you know it's a fear that if I go on leave today and then I have to go on leave again three days later and people know that I am a parent to a child with disability, they will just put two and two together, even if it's not the place to. I mean as a woman. I, you know, I got turned down from interviews saying are you going to get married?

Shruti Pushkarna: 30:07

Right Do you want to have a child.

Debra Ruh: 30:09

Kids are you Right?

Shruti Pushkarna: 30:12

Who is behind you? Is that distraction in the family, like? I mean? There are all kinds of things. The thing is that once we do pass this and build this army of strong leaders, of open leaders, the cultural context changes. It's a very gradual change, it's a high risk initiative, but I don't think there's an alternative to this. I don't think we have. We can't do anything but this today and also in the, you know I mean disability is. I mean we talk about disability inclusion, we talk about accommodation, we talk about accommodation, we talk about empathy. Those are key terms to understand if you want to, even as a media representative, understand and talk about it.

Shruti Pushkarna: 30:58

The problem, specifically in the Indian context, is that the current and the historic cultural context of this country is so complex. Yes, I mean, we talked about the high population. We have low resources. We are too many of us. We have corruption, we have discrimination of varied kinds right, that is what we're up against, which has made us aggressive, frustrated, because we are constantly. Everyday living is a battle, right, and then you ask us us that you know, be empathetic to another's need, right. Right, the definition of another will change when we will start talking about so many of us. You know, that's where empathy will naturally then happen. Great, when we will start talking about so many of us.

Antonio Santos: 31:52

That's where empathy will naturally then happen. So we are about at the end of the chat, but I wanted to talk about something that is about representation in the media. If you look how people with disabilities are represented in the media in India, what can you tell us about that and what positive impact could something like that have in the topic that we're talking before about people who are leaders are able to be more confident talking about the subject.

Shruti Pushkarna: 32:19

Yes, I mean, media representation is very poor, barring a few recent, I guess, exceptions. Whether it comes to film, it comes to news, it comes to, you know, literature, anything it's typically been very stereotypical and very stigmatized, and that's the result. And because of that, for the longest time, up until probably the last decade, we were thinking that disability is a karmic issue. You know Right.

Debra Ruh: 32:54

It's bad karma. Right, it's bad karma. You shouldn't have stole that horse in your last life.

Neil Milliken : 33:01

Yeah.

Debra Ruh: 33:01

Wow, wow.

Shruti Pushkarna: 33:05

And a lot of films and a lot of news reports that comes out of India is about either putting them on a pedestal because they're exceptionally intelligent, right, or it's very pitiful. And you know, recently there was a news piece that two girls actually made news in India. One is a deaf girl, I think. One is a deaf-blind girl yes, deaf-blind girl who managed to study and score a very good percentage in her school exams and she was never exposed to any resource center. Wow, she never had any help but from her parents and, of course, the refreshable Braille Orbit device that she used. And you know she could manage that. Then there was another girl who was also visually impaired and she did very well again using technology. And she in India. You don't let.

Shruti Pushkarna: 34:09

The system doesn't allow visually impaired people to opt for STEM subjects. There is, I mean, there's no rule against it. The law says otherwise. But how will we teach, right? Because we are. We think that everything is so inaccessible. It's very, you know, discomforting. So she actually won. That battle went ahead and now she's preparing for her IITs. Now, I tried putting that news out into the media through some of our friends in the media, mainstream media, I mean. Fortunately, one television group picked it up, and yet the angle with which it was reported was a very wow piece.

Shruti Pushkarna: 34:53

Okay, inspirational porn it was nothing about the kind of technology, because we are sitting in the day of artificial intelligence, that this is what we talk about day in and day out, and yet there was no emphasis on the technology that is enabling students with disabilities. So that understanding is not there, because the person sitting in the newsroom in the media doesn't understand assistive technology. I was fortunate because I worked with these people. So representation can change only with the understanding I agree.

Antonio Santos: 35:27

So representation will change only with the understanding Right. Difficult to grow and it takes conversations and maybe if we have more people with disabilities working in STEM and technology, technology will improve yeah.

Shruti Pushkarna: 35:38

Yeah, I mean, radio is such a good option. I did not know before coming into disability that people blind people, you know they religiously follow radio and there are so many openings for them. I look at the production space and then I realize that I mean, you know, there are so many functions that they can do now, so it has to feed back into the system.

Neil Milliken : 36:02

Absolutely. It's been a fascinating conversation. I know we could go on for much longer. I'm afraid we do need to close, so that means I need to thank Amazon and MyClearText for keeping us online and captioned and accessible, and I really look forward to you joining us on social media and continuing the conversation. Shruti, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Shruti Pushkarna: 36:28

It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.