While India and Indians world over are celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights, of triumph of good over evil, I retrospect over the last 8 years of my life as a person with disabilities. Yes, we all celebrate the small and big triumphs of PwDs, but do we really spend a moment thinking the triumph came with a price tag attached !! The major chunk of this cost is the #EmotionalCost which no #AI model can calculate nor can the human mind that builds these models. Take a small example, my dear colleague and friend Sourabh Yadav often expresses sadness that he cannot see the expression on the faces of his kids due to vision impairment. Now you will say, yes we have technology like Picstry AI that can very well audio describe an image that too in multiple languages. This is great!!! And I have started using this too as I have vision impairment as well. But how does one measure the cost of the emotion at not being able to perform a task due to a disability ??? It cannot be quantified. Yes there are great advocates and ally’s who work to build technology that helps bridge this gap, however the cost is incurred till a PwD finds an assistive device or tech. So food for thought for all abled people- when praising the triumphs of PwDs, spend a moment thinking about the cost incurred to get the triumphs.
Contributed by Aritra Bandyopadhyay
DEI activist and enthusiast
Member, APNA
It’s a wonderful blog—so thoughtfully written. Aritra, you’ve beautifully captured the extra burden that persons with disabilities silently carry. That invisible weight, that slow burn, is something many of us know too well.