Vidhya Y Shares About The Need For Making Stem Accessible for People With Disability

“15% of the world’s population lives with some or the other form of disability”

shares Vidhya Y in the panel discussion conducted by World Summit on Information and Society (WSIS) Forum 2022 on 28th April to celebrate Girls in ICT Day.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2022 represents the world’s largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for Development’ community. The Forum provides structured opportunities to network, learn and participate in multi-stakeholder discussions and consultations on WSIS implementation.

WSIS in collaboration with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) organised a talk on ‘Girls in ICT Global Dialogue’ on 28th April which featured inspiring young role models who shared their experiences and testimonies on access and safety in STEM/ICT, alongside active stakeholders sharing their perspectives, as well as their best practices on access and safety.

Vidhya Y, the co-founder of Vision Empower was one of the 13 panellists who answered the question on the “importance of accessibility in STEM subjects and how STEM/ICT related studies and workplaces can become more accessible and inclusive”.

Vidhya shared her personal experience recalling how in her school days the teacher would draw science diagrams on the blackboard which would leave her thinking about what the teacher had drawn. Being a person with visual impairment she would often find STEM subjects inaccessible in and outside the classrooms.

Vidhya highlighted the need to make classrooms, books and STEM studies accessible for people with disabilities so they get a fair chance of choosing STEM careers like their peers without disability.

The dialogue which was divided into 4 fireside chats focused on Equal Access, Accessibility, Gender Stereotypes and Online Safety as the main topics of discussion.

Needless to say, discussions like these bring to light the need for accessible and inclusive education globally.

Watch the video to know the insights shared by the panellists!