If You Can Read This Text

MEDIA FOR THE PEOPLE: HEARING IMPAIRED I f y o u c a n r e a d t h i s t e x t , you are one of those 99.6% lucky peoples who are neither blind nor deaf. You can enjoy the beauty of nature, your life, your relationships, and the most important part, your communication with the rest of the world. As you are living in the age of quick communication and information explosion, you must be thankful that you are blessed with your beautiful EYES that makes your vision and helps you to respond accordingly, your listening power that plays a big role in your communication, making you update with the responses around.

We get the best to our moods and needs with switching a large variety of channels. ln the population of 167 million Pakistanis (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/pk.html July 2008 est.), there are people like us who regularly interact with the media. We wake up every morning with a tea and newspaper or a news headline on television, in daytime get updates on an important news that is sensed, for ensuring safety for our family at home and for our security to reach back home from the office or university. After a hard day in the evening, we entertain ourselves via television prime time shows with the beloved family and gatherings. Even on weekends when we really want to sit back and relax in our leisure, special shows and programs help us to do so. Every body wants to be updated in relation to his knowledge. So it is the medium that helps keep us informed and updated every moment, with the latest and breaking news about the world and people around us making us manage our lifestyle and survival in accordance to it. Even at times of depression, we try to overcome it through entertainment. Some of us have also participated in discussions, where we contributed our views and vision on certain issues. In fact we get the best to our moods and needs with switching a large variety of channels.

It seems like an age ago when the burgeoning reach of the Pakistani media seemed like a distant dream; but now, with access to more TV channels and Radio channels than you can shake your remote at; it has become an obvious reality. It is within this reality, that the Pakistani media has begun to find its feet and evolve itself into a position of further strength by looking to eventually gain the ability to be trusted in terms of the information that it internally communicate to us, and to also be able to externally brand Pakistan.

The media ever noticed? That there are more than 3.5 Million Pakistanis are disabled, 0.3 million blinds, 0.25 million deaf..?? In this fast developing world where there are people like us who are enjoying and making their best to survive happily, there exist some number of people who are DISABLED, cannot communicate their ideas but can THINK with excellence, sometimes even better then us. As it’s my view that if they are provided with perfect tools that make them understand the world around them, and asked to manipulate and express their ideas, they can definitely come up with as natural and innovative ideas as we are or may be even BETTER than us. It is vital though, that the media remembers that it must not simply ‘grow’. It is fundamental to have a responsible media, and then the onus comes on the very barons that run the media to ensure that their responsibility is carried out to the fullest. Where they benefit young and old, literate and low educated or illiterate, they are expanding the target viewers reaching and focusing on every community and people. One community that is being forsaken is special people. And the most effecting from the tunnel vision of the media are the hearing impaired. It is the matter of fact that they can also read a newspaper or the headline that appears 24 hours on a news channels. But is it not what they are limited to by us? What if they ask for their right to be treated equally for

entertainment side, information side, and education side of television channels? The television media is equally important for them as well. We, rather than asking them to get alternate options and wait for newspaper till next morning for the today's news, cannot have a single channel for them??? Or we think that THEY DON'T NEED MEDIA? They also come across multiple situations, they also want to move forward with us and be updated, but are we providing them with solutions to their needs? In fact their needs are somehow more than us. In order to support their deficiency, they rely more on other senses to communicate with the world around. It is not just the matter of realization for media concerns, but it is the matter of concern to the people like us who can bring CHANGE. Like Shehzad Roy who says "NO DIFFERENCES CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE". Let’s just imagine yourself a deaf for a moment. You are in a world where you cannot hear what’s going on around you; you can just make a raw idea or sense that this may be the situation. There is no one to entertain you or to update you. You can watch television but cannot listen that what is being communicated. Can you imagine a life like this??? How difficult for you to survive in the world where you just rely on lip reading and hand movements of others to be able to communicate, although you have to understand that message what is not made for you, not in accordance to your deficiency but it is essential for you to understand it. Imagine a world where you can not even understand what the president of your country is saying when he addresses the nation. Quite simply imagine a world which does not accept you as part of itself, simply because it refuses to communicate with you. This is where the responsibility of the media comes in, to create awareness and acceptance for these communities, and to show them that they are an important part of the country and that they are just as much patriotic as you or I are.

What have we provided??

I remember once upon a time there used to be a show on PTV called "BOLTAY HATH" in which sign language is used to communicate with hearing impaired, but now you would be hardly find something like this that the hearing impaired finds for them and can communicated for them.

An end responsible note: What we have to realize? The key thing is to understand that these individuals can play important roles in shaping the future of our country: a future of acceptance and understanding. This understanding needs to be clear to the media firstly, and then it needs to seep to the society through the media. This message is for the many channels that are often struggling to find quality programming, open your eyes and see what riches our country has.

The Media has to be FOR the people A hope, that this responsibility will be realized by every citizen of our country. The media will realize their negligence and accept their responsibility to provide equal importance to these 0.25 millions of Pakistanis. And the citizen will join hands with disabled and allow them to move forward with us. (Written by Arif Altaf Rajani, CBM ID:2008-306-8414)

A Comment by a reader: “They have also right to get updated with the current situation of country and other things, whenever any thing happens, all the channels, radio stations, newspapers publishes and releases it as early as possible, but do the media persons thinks that how can we make the disable people update or make them aware with the situation? We should make a Change”