For the third episode of the ‘(Un)learning with Professors’ series, Anchor talked to Shilpaa Anand, an Associate Professor at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus. She has over a decade of experience teaching different modules on literary and cultural studies, with a focus on disability studies.
Commenting on the various common assumptions surrounding people with disabilities, Prof. Shilpaa explained that one of the overarching stereotypes is that disabled people are not productive members of society. She added that numerous people believe that one can understand disability only through medical or psychiatric knowledge systems and not through the experiences of people with disabilities. This assumption has led to disability being equated with illness—something that requires a cure and no other form of engagement. One of the major factors contributing towards the stigma surrounding disability is the ease with which people create boundaries between able-bodiedness and disability, and segregate non-disabled and disabled people.
Encouraging people to think about disability in a new perspective, Prof. Shilpaa said that disability and able-bodiedness can be thought of as part of the same continuum or as two points in a circle. She added that disability can be considered a fluid category within which one’s existence is not fixed. She explained that anybody identifying as being able-bodied or non-disabled is also in a temporary situation of able-bodiedness. Such individuals are associated with the label “TAB” or temporarily able-bodied.
Furthermore, Prof. Shilpaa talked about how gender and disability are deeply intertwined. The experience of the same impairment across different genders is often completely different. According to her, a woman with an orthopaedic or a mobility disability will experience a life that is different from a man with a similar kind of impairment. She mentioned that there is some notion of ability that is always built into ideas of how one ‘performs masculinity and performs femininity’. ‘A person’s status in relation to caste, gender, as well as class, will inform their position as a disabled member of society.’ she added.
Prof. Shilpaa further talked about how understanding ableism as a concept allows us to think about how structures are made for able-bodied people. These structures not only include physical architecture that we witness and experience on a daily basis, but also intangible structures built into educational systems and other institutions. An example of an ableist practice, according to her, could be a teacher assuming that there is no deaf student in their class and, hence, not enabling closed captions when teaching via Google Meet. It is, therefore, important to think about how existing structures have normalised ableism.
On the topic of language, she explained the two trends that have emerged in the terminology used for people with disabilities. One is called ‘identity first language’ wherein the phrase “disabled people” is used putting “disabled” at the beginning, instead of covering it up with a term like “differently abled”. “Differently abled” has been identified as a problematic term by people with disabilities, who have called it out for being too euphemistic. The second language trend is ‘people-first language’ wherein the phrase “people with disabilities” is used and the individuals are identified as people before they are termed as disabled. The primary takeaway from this discussion was that while there is no fixed way to address people with disabilities and that different preferences exist, there is definitely a need to identify harmful terminology. For example, “cripple” is a word that has been robustly rejected by people all over the world. However the word “crip” has been reclaimed—just as the word “queer” was reclaimed—and is used as a non-binary term wherein one doesn’t have to identify either as disabled or non-disabled. It is just a word that implies a certain kind of complexity—a recognition of accessibility needs and also the embracing of a more playful kind of identity that recognises various differences.
Regarding steps that can be taken to support people with disabilities, Prof. Shilpaa mentioned that any policy decision about disability has to include the opinions of people with disabilities. She talked about how we need to consider setting up an ‘office of disability services’ that would take care of all accessibility needs. She went on to mention that a lot of other institutions in the country and abroad have these offices that provide different kinds of support to students, faculty, and non-teaching staff with disabilities. The idea of an office of disability services takes into consideration the fact that disability is not always congenital, but that it can be acquired. She added that we need to find ways of creating structures within campus that support people with different kinds of needs. For this, according to Prof. Shilpaa, one needs to understand that only the person with the disability will possess complete knowledge on that particular disability. Once this recognition has been made, it would be easier to know what kind of knowledge basis to explore in order to normalise the existence of disability. ‘Disabilities need to be thought of as regular human conditions that all of us may have, already have, or at least live with friends and family members who are people with disabilities.’ she added.
According to Prof. Shilpaa, we need to open up the discourse on the intersection between gender and disability in multiple ways so that we are able to think of specific impairment groups in relation to gender. The talk concluded with Prof. Shilpaa emphasising the need to identify whether we are participating in ableist structures and hence recognise our own ableism within these systems.