"Since she is still a lunatic, we have not sent a report"

The Indian Express has published a story of 73-year old Sarla, who has spent the last 43 years of her life at the Varanasi mental asylum, awaiting trial for murder until she was deemed fit to be presented in court.

Sarla, abandoned by her husband a few years after marriage, came to Allahabad to train as a nurse in 1961. She was arrested for the murder of a batchmate but was acquitted of the charge by a district court 2 years later. The district court at the time had held her mental health to be "precarious." However the state government challenged the verdict and insisted that Sarla be retried when "fit." Sent to the Varanasi asylum on being rearrested, a report on her mental health was due from the medical superintendant to the Allahabad High Court. That report has not reached the High Court for the last 43 years...

The reason given, "The HC wanted a report when she became normal. Since she is still a lunatic, we have not sent a report."

From a human rights perspective, I believe this is no longer an issue of whether the murder was even committed or not! This is a criminal violation of a person's basic human rights, on the excuse that they are considered mentally unstable. Every citizen should have an equal shot at justice, no matter what their disability or situation in life is. India has a very long way to go in recognizing people with mental health problems as individuals with rights equal to the rest of the population, as is witnessed in several acts including the Persons with Disabilities Act.

This is compounded by the justice system in the country, which needs some major reforms and philosophical rethink on several issues. Cases linger on for years, people sent to mental asylums frequently fall through the cracks and are forgotten, people are imprisoned for years before their case can even come up for hearing...so guilty or not, your freedom is snatched away.

Both the issues at stake are very important aspects of a country's protection of its citizens. There are many issues that come within these big umbrella concerns, the issue of guardianship, of legal counsel, of mental asylum functioning, among many others.

Sarla's case has been taken up by Ramesh Upadhyay, who's moved the National Human Rights Commission on her behalf. And despite the verdict, the 43 years that she has lost being labelled, restricted, and punished, will be gone forever.

How difficult is it to put "alt" tags?

The US District Court for the Northern District of California has allowed a lawsuit filed against Target's inaccessible website by a UC Berkeley student, who is blind, to go forward. This lawsuit is filed against Target by Bruce Sexton Jr. together with the National Federation of the Blind as a class action lawsuit.

Target's stand, that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is relevant only to their physical spaces has been rightly overuled by the presiding Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, who pointed out that the ADA prohibits discrimination for all "services and goods" provided by a public entity.

Being someone who has worked with accessibility issues, I understand that many websites designed to be as accessible as possible also come across roadblocks...but alt tags??? That's the issue of contention here...Target's website does not use alt tags properly throughout the website. They are missing at times, and incorrectly designated at others. Alt tags are one of the simplest, and most effective tools, to make a site navigable and understandable for people who cannot/do not see images. They are converted into suitable output by the assistive technology used by the concerned individual.

How difficult is it to employ alt tags in your website...and take those extra 3 seconds to make sure they read correctly? Not at all, this is plain indifference and negligence. Above all, Target's claim that their website doesn't need to be accessible shows just how much it values its customers with disabilities, or understands the real reasons behind accessibility.

To read a news article on this check out

Changing mindsets through exposure

An email informed me of this website...it hosts a large collection of adapted athletics videos, very likely the only such resource freely available:
http://www.newdisability.com/interviewaaron.htm

Without advancing the idea of the "super-crip," I believe such videos can provide excellent material to break the standard stereotypes of "broken body, feeble mind, sub humans" variety. They challenge the very beliefs that people hold about disabilities, primarily about disability being the unsurmountable barrier that stops you from enjoying all the things "normal" people can enjoy.

It questions the images you conjure in your mind about a person with a disability and begs you to reconsider your notion of "those poor souls robbed of humanly pleasures." And most importantly it advises you to not limit the options people with disabilities have because of what "you think" they can and cannot do.

Awareness and exposure can go a long way in changing social beliefs, as many times we cannot think differently until we do see something that is different.