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Laxmi Rao
Author Laxmi Rao brings rich experience in mentoring children with Autism and Neurodiversity in education and psychology. She is presently working as a resource professional with Leadership for Equity, an agency work for the World Bank SALT project under the Government of Andhra Pradesh.
For decades, education for children with medical, sensory, or neurological conditions has been handled under the label of Special Education. While the intention was to support these children, the reality has often been very different. Instead of inclusion, the system created separation. Instead of equal opportunity, it offered sympathy. In today's digital world, it is time to rethink this approach.
The word disability itself raises an important question. Does the child lack ability, or does the system lack flexibility? Children are naturally diverse. They learn differently, think differently, and experience the world in different ways. When education fails to adapt to this diversity, the child is wrongly blamed.
Years of segregated schooling have shown worrying results. Nearly 99% of blind and deaf adults remain unemployed, and neurodivergent individuals face similar challenges. This raises a serious concern.
If Special Education truly worked! Why are so many students unable to transition into mainstream education and employment?
Some traditional methods, once revolutionary, have now become superfluous and redundant.
Braille, for example, played an important role in the past. However, today it creates barriers rather than opportunities. Most teachers cannot read it, it is time-consuming, and it does not support advanced learning in mathematics, science, or technology. In contrast, blind children who start using computers with screen-reading software such as NVDA from an early age often outperform their peers. Many secure admissions into top global universities and pursue high-paying technology careers.
A similar situation exists for deaf students. For years, they have been educated mainly through sign language in separate schools.
While sign language is valuable for communication, it has a limited vocabulary for higher education, where thousands of academic and technical terms are required. Expecting the entire world to learn sign language or Braille to create inclusion is unrealistic and ineffective.
Although assistive technology has existed since the late 90's, emotional attachment to traditional methods slowed its acceptance.
It took the COVID-19 pandemic to create a real shift. Online education and digital tools proved that learning can be accessible to all when technology is used wisely. In a digital environment, barriers are broken, and abilities shine. Technology does not label a child as disabled. It simply provides tools. In the digital world, everyone can learn, work, and participate with dignity.
True inclusion does not mean placing children in special classrooms. It means transforming regular classrooms to support all learners.
Teachers need a pragmatic thinking and mindset to work confidently with children who have different learning needs in this digital world. Schools must adopt flexible teaching methods that adjust to the child, not force the child to adjust to rigid systems.
Technology-based learning tools such as digital textbooks, learning contents, videos, and podcasts must be accessible instead of being recreated for different needs of users with global standards like the U.S. and Europe mandates WCAG 2.2 AA for state/local governments, while India's IS 17802 ICT standards align with WCAG, should become standard, not special arrangements.
In essence, WCAG serves as the universal technical foundation, enabling countries to create their own specific legal requirements for digital inclusion, which is made as a single content for an able-bodied student and the differently abled one, and born accessible from day one of planning any educational or public content.
Like Meghana, a blind student who is pursuing science and maths in grade 12, uses computers for her learning and examinations on her own. She dreams of becoming a data scientist, 1000s of students are dreaming for equity in job market..
Education for children with special needs is not about charity—it is about equality. Still, education authorities see these differently-abled students as disabled and work from a pity window rather than open doors.
India's textbook spending is a vast market, with the overall publishing industry valued at around ₹80,000 crore (over $9 billion) by 2024, heavily driven by education, especially K-12, where millions of books are printed annually by state boards and private publishers, though exact total government or private expenditure on production isn't a single figure, it's a massive segment of the economy, with some states printing tens of millions of textbooks yearly.
These contents in India are still (starting from NCERT to state SCERTs) produced using the 1999 discarded Page Maker software. The old TrueType fonts in PageMaker software were discontinued by Adobe in 1999. They introduced InDesign, a versatile modern PageMaker that uses Unicode fonts and enables the producers to make content that is digitally enabled across various platforms with one production from print, digital books, web, and it's programmable. But still Indian education industry is running with a pirated non licensed dead PageMaker and producing books of the last era for the present generation GenZ.
In modern times, people use synthesised digital voices to read books without seeing in their busy schedules or reading print barriers. TrueType fonts were made graphically, and Unicode fonts were created digitally, enabling coding, voicing, and navigation using search tools. In the era of AI, are our education pundits aware of this nuance?
Android Car Stereos are one of the biggest relief for the time crunch for anyone to read an accessible ebook on a reading without seeing mode..
The world today includes over 1.5 billion people with hearing loss, 43 million visually challenged individuals, and nearly 20% of the population identified as neurodivergent. This is not a minority. It is a large and valuable part of vibrant humanity.
For years, charity organisations repeated the message: Disability leads to poverty. It is time to change that narrative. Different ability is not a weakness. It is intelligence, creativity, and strength expressed differently.
When education becomes inclusive, we do not just help children succeed. We build a society that values every human being. After all, it is always easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults.