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Hi, my name is George Abraham and welcome to Eyeway Conversations. My guest today is Shakila Maharaj from Durban, South Africa. Shakila is a social entrepreneur, an innovator, an international disability trainer and strategist. Hi Shakila, welcome!
Hi, George, thank you very much for inviting me. And it's a pleasure to be part of this.
You've been doing a lot of work in the area of audio description. Now we have a little audio description that happens in India as well. But tell me what is the status of audio description in South Africa and what has been the journey?
So it's been a difficult journey. I started with audio description in South Africa more than 12 years ago, when I first realized that it was actually an established art form and an access tool. So I trained under Joel Snyder in the USA, came to South Africa and started to create awareness around it. The blindness sector as well as the film industry were totally unaware of it. And I was doing it alongside my main job. So it was more an interest at that stage. And I then set up a company and alongside my main consultancy, and then trained people in it. I invited Joel to South Africa and together, we traveled around the country, trained over 100 persons as well as did a high level awareness of captains industry session. And at the end of that, it almost became a household word, audio description. But still, the progress was pretty slow because the broadcasters were not very keen, and the film industry did not know much about it. And I stayed focused on my core career. Then around 2016, I had a lucky break with the SABC. That's our South African national broadcaster. And I was given a Zulu TV series. So it was 13 episodes, like a soapy. And it was also quite an amazing thing at that stage to train people in Zulu to do audio description. So it was first language speakers. And I changed people in Durban and in Johannesburg. And out of that group, I identified some individuals to do the work. So we did the series, and it was screened on open time on television for everyone to experience because South African television till today does not have to have the capacity to transmit audio description independently.
Are there a number of blind and visually impaired people who actually want to see films and be entertained?
Well, actually, when I first started out promoting audio description, most blind persons that I associated with didn't even know about it. And weren't curious about why would a blind person even want to watch television, or watch a movie. They largely, you know, spend their leisure time either reading or listening to the radio, audio books, or the radio. And over the years, this change has changed. What I've noticed is as blind persons became more aware of audio description, through the great sensitivity we've been doing in the country, and also through smart technology, and particularly during COVID, when Netflix became so popular, and the subscriptions became available in South Africa, then audio description became widely known. Again, those that are more techy, have more exposure to it. And I'm able to open source description from the internet and that, but my intervention has been to actually do audio development with blind persons. So I started an AD movie club, audio description movie club more than eight years ago, and I've kept it going. And once a month, I show an audio description movie. And the idea was not just to expose persons to the fact that we could watch a film independently and enjoy it and understand it fully, but also to enjoy the big screen so I got access to a private cinema, 50 seater state of the art cinema owned by the Gauteng Film Commission. And I've been really fortunate in that all these years, I've been able to continue with my audio description movie club once a month. I have visually impaired members that come with family and friends. It's like a night out. And we watch a film together. And often there's like an after party.
We were talking about the app that has been developed or which is in the process of being developed. And I believe your son Prashant has been involved closely with the developer. Maybe Prashant can tell us a little bit about this app if he's around.
Yes, he'd be happy to join.
So, Prashant. Hi, and welcome to Eyeway conversations. I was just speaking to your mom about the audio description. And she was telling me about an app that is going to be launched very soon in South Africa. And I believe you have been working closely with the developer. So would you like to tell us what this app is about? And what will be the features and what are the exciting things that visually impaired people can look forward to?
So the ShazaCin app initially was created to facilitate entertainment for a visually impaired market. So to contain all the audio description tracks, that we will do fulfill locally based South African films, and we placed them on the app, and then a blind person would be able to control their audio described experience when it came to film and television. But now we've gone a step further and we are basically defining ShazaCin as an accessibility ecosystem, where you have what we try to audio describe as much as we can, but spreading past the entertainment sector now. And we're going to embark on services like tourism, health and safety, education. I think we also have podcasts there as well. So we're spanning out into different visual mediums that would benefit from description. We're trying to bring in more content like that into the shadows in app.
So there would be audio description for movies, there would be audio descriptions for historical sites, there would be audio description at museums...
Yes, it's got a tourism section where we have audio describe tours, then it's not illustrated books. So the defining factor regarding books is illustrated books. So from educational to entertainment. And then the other section is dealing with commerce, moving on to shopping platforms, and that.
So we are including advertising feature. So that's going to be placed on the app in an intelligent way as to not be an obstacle to the experience. But it will also facilitate the larger companies that want to support audio description and want to make their own product ranges, their own businesses accessible to blind people. So the... but I actually didn't mention the most significant feature of the app itself is the "Listen" function that was developed for. When you're playing something in the background, like a movie or TV show, if we have the audio description track on the ShazaCin database, then once you click on the Listen function, that it's a button in the bottom center of the screen, the app itself will start listening to what's playing on the TV on cinema. And if we have a description track for it, it'll synchronize the AD track to that timestamp in the production that's playing in the background and it'll sync it up to the correct time and a blind person doesn't have to, they don't have to ask a sighted person for help when it comes to controlling the audio described experience. It'll start playing from that point. And if the blind person wants to hear the track come in before or after what's playing on screen, they can control that too.
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You also have done a lot of work in the area of tourism, you yourself travel a lot. And I've read that you've done a fair bit of work in terms of travel and tourism, making it inclusive.
I love traveling, I love visiting new places, getting exposed to new cultures and people. And when I go, I mainly travel alone. And the reason I do that is because I feel, then people are forced to interact with me and then understand how I function. And it's an opportunity then for me to sensitize them as to how I function. I've been like blessed because I've had good experiences all the way. So I use myself first as a point of awareness raising and education, just to show people what my needs are. And it's along the whole value chain of travel. So from the time you book a trip, and you're dealing with a travel agent, to actually the airlines, to then the hotel accommodation or tour operators, to the you know, to the various destinations you may visit, to other people that you just may meet along the way on a street, in a restaurant. So, I feel I'm the first point of reference in their education around inclusive tourism, and firsthand experiences is usually the most influencing. And thereafter I started to you know, when I realized that I was acquiring a wealth of information by doing this, I started to look more and more and what was the laws around this and realized that the laws themselves needed addressing and started getting more involved then and looking at tourism legislation in this country, and becoming part of the structures that could influence it. So for example, then when we created the the grading scheme, the accessible grading scheme. They are grading schemes already in place, to grade establishments, in line with different standards. So we added the accessibility standard to it. But unfortunately, it's not compulsory, it's nice to have for the industry. Whereas the standards that they got to meet to get ratings like star ratings for non disabled travelers, that is a requirement. So I really hope in time and we need to push with us is that accessibility grading needs to be linked also to star rating, because that's what will make the difference.
Shakila, we met maybe a decade and a half ago, in New Delhi, when you had come to Delhi with a Windmills training program. It was sensitizing the corporates and probably even people with disability. So tell me a little bit about your experience of taking Windmills around the world.
So Windmills was an amazing program, and still even though, at that time, it was pioneering since then there are numerous awareness raising and attitudinal change programs. But I still maintain because that program was designed in a very unique way. It was designed around a set of games, 11 modules, which there were 11 games, you play the game, and you unwittingly disclosed what your real feelings were in your attitude. And then it was tackled in the game. And then you know, the attitudinal change was worked out. So what that did for me, it actually enhanced my own skills and my own attitude and how to deal with myself, and in turn how to deal with people. And actually ended up with a following because as I traveled the world and presented this training, I found that those individuals themselves became like disciples of Windmills. And today, there's quite a number around the world doing it. And it's also been a source from which other types of interventions have emerged. In fact, the single modules have become like full training courses for some people, because they've extended its application. So yeah, the Windmills has been quite a groundbreaking initiative. I feel and I still think it can add tremendous value in changing people's attitude and behavior.
Shakila, your primary area of work is corporate and government policy and strategy. And can you tell us a little bit about what exactly you do and what are the different areas in which you've had interventions and what have you been involved with?
Okay, so, being an organizational psychologist and working in the field of HR and in leadership roles. I've had the opportunity then to gain a lot of work experience in this context, and so when, you know, the opportunity came to start getting involved in strategy, development, and strategy leads to policy, then you know, I actually grasped that opportunity because it allowed me then to shape documentation that in turn would end up shaping people. And so the policies and strategies that I've been involved in started first in the company that I worked for, which was the National Railways in South Africa. And I started at a time when democracy had just come about. So I was right at the cutting edge of the new laws that was coming about. So even prior to the Employment Equity Act coming out, we already in that company, we're looking at the changes that needed to happen in terms of workforce representation, inclusion, those sorts of things. But of course, disability was not in focus at all. At that point, it was all around the racial issue, and later on gender. So I also started that way, my focus was on the race issue, then the gender issue. And then my own disability made me realized that I needed to do this equally, because people were responding to me in a way that I needed to take cognizance of and start documenting this. And so I started the Disability Forum in our company at that time, it was over 100 something 1000 employees nationally. And I became aware of the discrimination towards disabled people then because it was a company that would disabled people on a daily basis because of the high risk of certain occupations on the shunting yards and so forth. And the typical example would be medically boarding, as long as you were healthy was so called healthy, you could retain your job, the moment you acquired a condition, you are now considered a reject in the system. And so they would medically board you and remove you from your active job even though your talents remain intact, your expertise remained intact. So I, been in HR, I would see this firsthand, and it started to horrify me, when I would be interviewing these people to let them go. And then I realized, but my God, we could keep you and retain you, all we got to do is change the way you approach things, and change the way the environment is structured, not realizing that in time, that's going to be called reasonable accommodation. And in time, that's going to become actually a law and a policy, which it did in time. And so I was very, very blessed and fortunate to have had that kind of exposure, and to be able to use that exposure to start guiding the development of policy and strategy. And from there, then I got involved in many other government departments, different ministries, from education, to health, to sports, in South Africa, at different stages along the way, I had the opportunity to participate in the shaping of those very important documentation and the codes that came out were codes that spoke directly to the process, you would follow, like a workflow process. Then the corporate sector kicked in. When I left that company, I was headhunted in a way by Price Waterhouse. And so I became a consultant to them for several years, which then gave me exposure to the corporate clients. And this is when I had again, the opportunity to write policies, strategies and policies for the banking sector, for the even in academics for most of the large universities.
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Shakila, you were not born blind. You developed your eye condition somewhere in your early teens. Tell us how you lost your sight and and what were the kind of changes that you had to bring in to move on in life?
Okay, so thanks for asking that, George. So I had an injury earlier in my childhood, and it was a nasty fall. I was apparently very tomboyish and scamp and I had go kart, and then I took it down a flight of steps and then I bumped my head and apparently that led to damage of the optic nerve, but it didn't surface till much later. And in my teenage years. It was when I started to lose my sight and then I underwent you know, a lot of operations and nothing much helped. And eventually in my 20s, I became totally blind.
But did it have any serious impact in the way the kind of direction your life took?
Absolutely, because when I was losing my sight, when the injury happened, it was at the height of apartheid in South Africa. The first thing that my eye condition did was it uprooted our family because my parents were very concerned that I would not get equal treatment in this country. They sold up everything, the only home, they knew, even though we are third generation Indian. They sold up everything here. And we moved to Ireland where my sister was studying medicine. And we started all over again in that country, just so that I could get appropriate treatment. And my parents couldn't survive in that country, the weather and so forth, they came back. I stayed on then with my sister. So my whole life changed around me socially, in every way, environmentally, and physically within myself. So I went to a different school in Ireland. And then I had to go to school for the blind for a short while, because then I found it very hard to adjust, because I had partial sight, and I was still quite independent. And I struggled to adapt to school for the blind. Then I stayed at home for six years in Ireland and not wanting to go to school. And I forgot to tell you but my mom actually came back to South African and passed away and I was just 12 at the time in Ireland when that happened. So I didn't see her again, the last time I saw her was at the airport in Dublin. And my dad remarried because, you know, he was a young man, and it was an arranged marriage and all of that. So everything changed. Our whole course of life for the family and myself. And in terms of me adjusting to the blindness. Actually, that part was the least difficult I think, because I was a child, I was a teenager. It was as natural as growing up losing my sight. If I woke up one day and found my sight was a little bit more blurred, I would think it would clear in the day, and then I'd realize it's not going to clear. And I would just accept and move on. And I think when you going through those formative years, you're far more accepting of what happens to you in life, just as I was adapting to a different country, adapting to not having parents around me and fending for myself basically, and learning to, you know, to become independent very quickly. So yeah, those were the big changes that I went through.
You know, from what you said, you grew up, and were educated in different places, you did a little bit of studying in South Africa, you did some studying in Ireland, and later on, I think you went to the University of Columbia at New York. As a blind person, what was the kind of ecosystem that you found yourself in, in these different, different countries?
So South Africa, was my first university environment because here, they were not equipped for persons with disabilities. And then it was still the apartheid till the 80s. So you had segregated university so I was at university for Indians. And I found my fellow students very supportive. So I had to develop different kinds of schemes. So even technology was not advanced. I used a standard portable typewriter and I used a tape recorder. And you did even have portable tape recorders, but not rechargeable batteries, right. So I used to actually carry a cable, a tape recorder and my portable typewriter and head to lecture. But I also had to work on schemes on how I would arrange for fellow students, motivate them to assist me. So people were kind and helpful, but to sustain their kindness, I would have to do a give and take sharing sort of arrangement. So I would buy textbooks, I would allow students to use them free of charge and not have to buy their own textbooks. I would do to them because I had access to my lectures that were recorded. And so I had the benefit of listening to them several times I would know, my content inside out as well as I'd have my books on audio, that had be taped. So I used to find that I was working so hard to do well, that I was like at an advantage, I knew my material quite well, so as to offer a few free tuition and free textbooks to the students in return, I would have a shedule put up outside my room address on my door, and students would book half an hour to time to come and read to me so as to get a lot of books read that way. And when I started dating, then I mean that's Naresh and I ended up marrying Naresh. So, we used to spend our days going out to pensioners giving them cassettes, and study materials. So those were the methods I used. The USA, it was very different. When I arrived in the USA, they were at Columbia University, it was just the beginnings of establishing a disability unit. In fact, the year that I was there, they did that. And I had to share with them what my needs were, and they provided it. But it was similar in the sense that I also approached the students to read to me, I approached the local churches around me where the university was, and they would arrange readings, and manage and then in the US also, what was different was many of the books that I needed at university was already available. And at that stage, I was doing my Masters, so I could get a lot of material already available to me. And the lecturers were far more accommodating. They already had a, what was it.. the system in place that they would give you additional 15 minutes on the hour to write exams. The building was very accessible, I was able to get around independently, they expected it. In South Africa, you get you get a lot of sighted assistance. In South Africa, when visually impaired persons become totally blind and need to be mobile. They either employ someone to take them around, or they get a guide job or a family member or something. But they can't do without you know, human aid. In America, if you do that you consider it inadequate. Blind persons just do it on their own, they mobile with the canes, and they move. And I learned very quickly to become that way. I realized Manhattan was one of the most accessible environments to be in. The grid pattern helped me to understand exactly how to locate myself wherever I was. Also buildings had you know, very clearly defined staircases, ramps, curb pavements, traffic lights, so I found a such a sense of freedom in moving around. I developed a lot of courage there to hop on and off buses, even making my way into subway stations. And at that stage that in itself became a huge learning and sense of freedom for me. So it was an amazing few years living in Manhattan.
Lovely. So Shakila, wonderful talking to you and thank you for giving the time and it's always a pleasure meeting up with you and catching up. All the best.
Thank you very much George. It was a great opportunity. I enjoyed it.
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