Accessible College Education- Inclusivity for all abilities.

On the 3rd of March Viklangshiksha held their inaugural panel discussion- Accessible  College Education- Inclusivity for all abilities.

We were honored to have  Ms Maithili Gaikwad and Ms Priya Shrivastava two esteemed individuals who shared their experience as individuals with disabilities at college.

Following our induction session, we identified the need to create a safe space to talk about the challenges people with disabilities face at college !

This session gave our audience a chance to understand the challenges students with disabilities face and actions they could take to make our society more inclusive. In line with Viklangshiksha’s aim to raise awareness and increase access to higher education, this panel discussion proved as a great inaugural event with over 40 people in attendance.

The event was facilitated by our founder Ms Aarushi Gambhir who began by sharing the importance of accessible education and Viklangshiksha’s aim. While Ms Maithili shared how her experience at college inspired her to start ‘WeCan’ a club to empower and educate people with disabilities, Ms Priya spoke about how she overcame the barriers of inaccessibility to work as a successful lawyer. Throughout the panel discussion we saw an open, honest and empowering dialogue between the panelist and the audience. Important topics such as the reservation system, infrastructural inaccessibility and ableist mindset amongst peers were discussed and highlighted!

We also had many of our audience share their experiences as carers and people with disabilities accessing higher education as well.

Through this event we aimed to start a space for discussing and understanding the need for an accessible college education and successful achieved it! Along with our panelist and large audience we set our to raise awarenesses and build a world that embraces equality and equity !

Shreeja Srikant