After the persistent advocacy by Disabled Rights Group (DRG) and National Association of the Deaf (NAD), Ministry of Information & Broadcasting finally agreed to have Sign Language interpretation on DD News, DD Bharti and DD Urdu. We had demanded that it should also be available on DD National, which is the main producer of the coverage and from which ALL channels (national/international/web based) take the feed. Unfortunately, they did not agree. But when DRG & NAD persisted and hundreds came out on the streets, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting finally relented and issued an advisory for all private channels to take the feed from DD News, with the Sign Language interpretation. Today is Indias 65th Republic Day. We checked coverage across various channels to see how many had paid heed to the advisory. The results are very mixed. It is a good beginning, but we MUST NOT let go of this momentum to give Indian Sign Language the recognition that is long overdue.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 06:15:21 +0000