Shot in Gurugram, awareness video inspiring India’s hearing impaired

Tribune News Service

Sumedha Sharma

Gurugram, March 29

In a bid to make electoral process more inclusive, the Gurugram administration in a first-of-its-kind initiative has incorporated sign language in its voter awareness programmes.

The city has 2,698 hearing impaired voters and in a bid to make them aware of the voting process, the administration has tied up with the Hearing and Speech Disabled People’s Welfare Centre in Gurugram and produced a special video in the Digital Sign Language Lab. The the 9-minute video is being streamed on www.youtube.com/@DEPwDAccessibleIndiaCampaign, a site run by the Central Government. In the video, detailed information is given through sign language about what is democracy, decision of mandate, formation of government, voting rights and duties of voters.

Many do not turn up

With the help of the sign language, the importance of democracy and responsibilities of voters is explained in detail in the video. Though the hearing impaired voters do register themselves, a majority of them do not turn up at the polling stations. Many feel out of place and diffident. This is a first-of-its-kind initiative, which will be make the entire electoral process more inclusive. — Nishant Yadav, DC

First in the country

The lab is used for making various inclusive videos for the hearing impaired and this is the latest feather in our cap. We are the first in the country to do so. The video is already getting a very encouraging response. — Dr Seema, Asst Director, Welfare Centre for Persons with Speech & Hearing Impairment, Gurugram

“With the help of the sign language, the importance of democracy and responsibilities of voters is explained in detail in the video. Though the hearing impaired voters do register themselves, a majority of them do not turn up at the polling stations. Many feel out of place and diffident. This is a first- of-its -kind initiative, which will be make the entire electoral process more inclusive,” said DC Nishant Yadav. He further said it was yet another effort as part of their ongoing campaign to boost polling percentage in Gurugram, which was the biggest constituency. “We want to ensure that we just don’t have the highest number of voters but also highest polling percentage,” said Yadav.

The administration was also working on setting up special sign language boards at the polling centres to guide the voters. This would be done at the polling booths which had maximum concentration of such voters. Dr Seema, Assistant Director, Welfare Centre for Persons with Speech and Hearing Impairment, Gurugram, said the video had been made by young students of the centre.

“The lab is used for making various inclusive videos for hearing impaired and this is the latest feather in our cap. We are the first in country to do so. This video is already getting a very encouraging response,” said Dr Seema.

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