A typical classroom in the Indore Deaf Bilingual Academy, September 2022
Only Connect!
Empowering Public Schools for the Disabled in Indore to engage in a participatory and inclusive online public sphere.
A US Alumni Micro-grants Project
More than 1 million disabled people reside in the city of Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The city is also home to a diverse range of public schools for the disabled. Unfortunately, however, the schools for the disabled do not always have a reliable online presence. Consequently, there is much disinformation about the facilities available in these institutions. Often, the only source of information available is through hearsay.
Only Connect! seeks to remedy this situation by providing a comprehensive online resource. This website provides reliable and updated contact information on all public schools for deaf, mute and blind children in the age group of 6-18 years in the city. The aim is to dispel any misinformation in relation to the schools. The project is unique as it has no prior precedent in either Indore or even in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
Only Connect! also hosts updated photographs of public schools for the disabled in Indore, logos, architecture, classroom facilities and related infrastructure. Unless otherwise mentioned, all photographs in this website have been taken by me, during the course of fieldtrips and surveys. All textual information is sourced from detailed interviews with stakeholders: school principals and parents. This project is by Swechha supported by the American Centre and US Embassy India.
-Dr. Ananya Ghoshal
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor of English Literature
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore
How Only Connect! was conceptualised: from the ground-up
Step 1
Primary survey of public education in Indore through extensive field trips.
The photograph here is a representative image. It is not however generic. This is a learning aid used in most disabled schools.
Step 2
Cataloguing the complete list of deaf, blind and mute schools in the city.
The record displayed in this photograph is from the Helen Keller Academy.
Step 3
Cataloguing the everyday life of students, principals and teachers in disabled schools.
This photograph was shared by Ms. Neeti Billori, the school principal of Rotary Paul Harris School.
Step 4
The collected visual and textual data now form the building blocks of a new, trustworthy disabled-friendly website.
The photograph of the classroom depicted here is of the Shaskiya Dhrishti Evam Shravan Badhit Higher Secondary School.
