By Ayodele Abere
The Executive Director of Disability Not a Barrier Initiative (DINABI) Nigeria, Mr. Olajide Funso Benjamin has called for a change in the way people with disabilities are being addressed by the media practitioners through their patronages.
Mr. Olajide made the call during a one-day workshop organised by DINABI in conjunction with funding from Disability Rights Fund (DRF) tagged; Disability Inclusion and Media Accessibility, held in Ado-Ekiti, the State capital.
While speaking with journalists, the Executive Director of DINABI said they have noticed that the way the reportage in this part of the world is done was usually derogatory to persons with disabilities.
“We don’t entirely blame the Journalists for this because it’s what the society had created right from the onset, but we on our own part are trying to change the narrative to ensure that media practitioners know the right terminologies to use when addressing the person’s with disabilities and then to also make their platforms accessible to persons with disabilities especially, the visually impaired ones and people from the deaf community.
“That’s what we are trying to do in order to strengthen the capacity of the media practitioners in the State to be able to understand what persons with disabilities want, how they want to be treated and addressed”. Olajide maintained.
According to him, when people with disabilities are called imbecile, lame or crippled, it dampens their morale and at the end of the day, they won’t be productive, and when they are not productive, they will begin to engage in nefarious activities that are not good for the society. That’s why you still find some people going on arms begging. Said he.
He opined that with the workshop, it is believed that media personnel will be able to go out there and help them to change the narrative by pushing out those positive narrative about persons with disabilities and also sensitise the general public on the terminologies to be used that will not be derogatory to persons with disabilities.
Speaking further, Olajide noted that the Governor of Ekiti State Mr. Biodun Oyebanji gave the person’s with disabilities six sign language interpreters last year out of which two were posted to the Broadcasting Service of Ekiti State.
He urged the State government to prevail on the management of the station to ensure that they make use of the sign language interpreters.
In his word, “we are not asking for two much. We are asking that the news at 7:00 O’clock every evening be fully interpreted using the sign language interpreter and if at all they require further facilities to do this, I believe that the State government is more than ready to provide those facilities so that they can use it and then we can have sign language interpreters in our TV station in Ekiti. I trust government in getting it done for us.
Mr. Funso Olajide also requested other electronic media houses in the State to create slot for the disability communities in Ekiti where programmes that are related to disability matters and issues can be discussed in their various organizations which he said he believes will equally go a long way in enlightening the general public on disability rights and issues in the State.
A resource person at the workshop who is also a disability rights advocate and IT expert, Mr. Waheed Oguntade who noted that media is a gate to the world, said persons with disabilities do make use of technology
According to Oguntade, “when you are talking of technology, we are talking of access to information and if the contents that the media practitioners are rolling out are not accessible enough, definitely, persons with disabilities will be denied the opportunity to have access to quality information
He explained that the derogatory words being used by the media is an habit that has been cultivated over a long period of time saying it’s high time, “we persons with disabilities do something about it, start creating an awareness around media accessibility
“We believe the media actually have a lot of impact to influence and educate the society to change their orientation when it comes to persons with disabilities. Oguntade concluded.