Including Disability In Children’s Storytelling Universe
Issue Thirteen
Hola! Welcome, new subscribers! I’m Priti Salian, the author of Reframing Disability, your fortnightly dispatch simplifying disability inclusion for content creators.
In this 13th issue, hear from Shivani Dhillon about including disability perspectives in storytelling for children, camelCase/PascalCase hashtags, WBFO’s Disabilities Beat, a mental health summit for journalists, the inaugural Reframing Disability meet-up in Bengaluru and an invitation to contribute.
Shivani Dhillon tells stories from her heart. Her stories stem from a place of love. They are inclusive and considerate of the differences of their listeners.
Formerly a BBC journalist, Shivani is also a therapeutic storyteller, founder of Samvid-Stories & Beyond and co-founder of Smiling Dandelion Foundation. Ever since I met her about a year and a half ago in Bengaluru, I wanted to have a long conversation with her about her inclusive storytelling fuelled by her experience as a mum to 13-year-old Shreya who has Down Syndrome. Extra! is a children’s book inspired by Shreya’s life.
Shivani and I recently got a chance to chinwag on Zoom. Read on for her solid advice on including disability in children’s storytelling.
Image Description: Dressed in a teal and magenta saree, Shivani is seated with folded legs on a blue and white patterned mat. She is an Indian woman with short black hair and her bindi, bangles, and watch are red. She is looking to her left, narrating a story to a group of kids, who are not in the frame. Shivani’s hands, lifted with fingers gently folded, mimic a lion ready to spring upon its prey.
What’s missing about disability in children’s storytelling in India?
In the recent past, I've started to see a lot of disabled characters being included in children's storybooks. But the narrative that is coming out is the one that I have an objection to. It is more about pity and sympathy.
For example, neurodiverse characters are portrayed to be “less” than the neurotypical characters. I didn’t understand, a children’s book about a little girl with Down Syndrome, shows that she doesn't understand anything that goes around her. When children bully her, she doesn't understand. When someone takes her things and tries to act funny and trick her, she still doesn't understand. She is always smiling and happy. The book tries to show that the girl is always very happy because she doesn't understand anything.
If a child cannot speak, it does not mean she cannot understand anything. And all children with Down Syndrome don't always stay happy. I have been trying to bust these myths around disability and neurodiversity for years.
I was told that the story was based on one child the author had worked with. However, authors have a moral responsibility to not generalise any disability or neurodiversity. I realised that while stories are based on disabled characters, the narrative and the storyline are so skewed.
I feel it’s important to drive home the message that the need to be loved, appreciated and the desire for friends is universal and every child should be seen as a unique individual, not just someone who has a disability.
What are some of the most important stories on disability and neurodiversity that need to be told?
We need to talk about how important diversity is for human life, for our community, and I do believe that we need to start with young minds because they're impressionable. And this is where we need to show them that it's alright to be different, behave differently and have different likes and dislikes. In today's world, we are not accepting of other people's views. We have become polarised. Friendships and familial relationships are falling apart because of our different views. There’s a need to show children that when there is another child who may behave differently, who may not speak like you, let’s not judge that child on the basis of their challenges. Let's try and find what is good in that child, or what are the strengths of that child. For example, a neurotypical person may be good at maths, but not so good at spelling, or music. It's exactly the same with our children. They need maybe just a little bit of extra support. Just like neurotypical children not good at tables may need to learn them many more times than their other classmates. Highlighting that children with disabilities can achieve much more than others think they can, is vital.
What are some good ways to tell stories about disability to children?
First, a lot of research is required. There are books available, and stories on YouTube. Use characters and things that are common to every listener or reader from any part of the country. You don't really have to talk blatantly about disability or differences, but you very smoothly get it into their thought process. For example, if there was only one colour in this world, how boring it would be? Ask questions in storytelling sessions, to work on their cognitive ability and problem solving. Another thing is actually getting them into the shoes of someone. So maybe blindfold some children and ask them to walk around. With that kids might realise how life would be for someone who cannot see.
To help kids understand that some children have speech issues, I tell them: Stuff your mouth with a cloth. And now try to tell me what you're saying. And try harder and harder. At some point when I won’t understand, what will you do? You’ll probably bang your fist on the table. Or you’ll probably throw something because you're so angry. This is exactly what somebody feels when they're not able to communicate their feelings to you or you're not able to understand their feelings. So it's important that while you do tell them a story about diversity and disability you also try to do some activities with them.
And what are the best formats and tricks to use in children’s books?
Depends on the age group. For 7- to 10-year-olds, it could be a story like we did with Extra, which is an adventure mystery where we very easily incorporated the idea of disability without really focusing on the disability.
Five-year-olds would like picture books with less text. Maybe more to do with animals. I love the story of Elmer - The Patchwork Elephant, who is not the usual colour of an elephant. He is a patchwork elephant and is completely different from the rest of the herd, so he feels out of place. Younger children relate to animals very easily. There's a lot of sound and movement that you can do with children, and then you help them draw the elephant. For 13- to 14- year-olds, real-life stories work well, because they are old enough to understand, can relate to them and dig out more details about it.
How do narratives on disability benefit children and their families?
Our education system is such that we teach children basically to grow up and earn money. We don't educate them for the heart. We're educating them for the mind. And I think when we use these stories on disability and diversity, we're educating their heart and soul. Tomorrow when these children become teenagers, social media will have an impact on image building and how they feel about themselves. These stories will help them to accept themselves as they are. When they grow up, they will be able to build an inclusive society.
Stories make a topic more acceptable. You start with a story and you go on to talk about the etiquette of disability. You also bust the myths around disability. We have conversations about how you could approach a child with a disability in a park, or what would you say to their mother.
When I talk about disability in schools, I tell the school management that you’re not doing me a favour by letting me come and talk to your children about disability just because I have a daughter with a disability. I'm actually doing your neurotypical children a favour, because I am helping them to grow up to be better human beings. They'll be more compassionate and empathetic towards people who are different and be able to accept themselves for who they are.
Shivani’s recommendations
Online children’s book libraries for ideas
Storyweaver, Pratham, Storyline, Tulika, Not That Different, Bookosmia’s publishing segment on neurodiversity.
List of Inclusive Books by Aditi Sowmyanarayan, an 18-year-old non-speaking autistic girl and the author of two books including Small Stories, Big Thoughts.
Authors to follow
K Srilata, Sujatha Padmanabhan, Shikhandin, Zai Whitaker, Shruthi Rao and Menaka Raman.
Accessibility tip of the fortnight
What are camelCase and PascalCase hashtags?
I wrote about this in Reframing Disability’s first issue, but it’s a good time to revisit it now, because despite being the simplest accessibility tip, I find even organisations and advocates working on disability rights forgetting to follow this.
camelCase is a way of writing words in a compound phrase so that the first letter of each word, excluding the first word, is capitalised. When you use camelCase in your hashtag, it becomes easier to distinguish between words. For example, #callMeLater, instead of #callmelater. Which one reads better?
PascalCase is another way in which the first letter of each word, including the first word, is capitalised, this way: #CallMeLater.
People who are blind and have low vision use a screen reader, an assistive software that reads text out loud on their phones, tablets and computers. Without camelCase or PascalCase, screen readers are often unable to recognise phrases with hashtags and cannot read them. Using camelCase or PascalCase hashtags is perhaps the simplest step for social media accessibility. It will not only make your social media posts accessible to screen reader users, but also to people with dyslexia who struggle with forming and recognising words, people with low language literacy, and cognitive impairments, and anyone who likes a smooth reading experience. Well, who doesn’t?
One problem that occurs, especially on LinkedIn is that the hashtag suggestions the platform makes are all in lowercase and even tries to auto-correct PascalCase hashtags. If you’re in a hurry, you might just forget to change it. But now you know, so don’t let LinkedIn or any other social media platform dictate your work.
Disability Media
WBFO (part of Buffalo Toronto Public Media) in February launched a new weekly segment on the Disabilities Beat. Every Wednesday morning they feature an 8-minute piece on disability during the Morning Edition and All Things Considered. New accessibility features have been introduced for the segment, including the UserWay widget so that users can customise their experience by adjusting displays including font size, text spacing, contrast, saturation, a dyslexia-friendly font, etc. Plain-language descriptions and transcripts written by humans are also available. Among other rights and equity topics, lead disability reporter, Emyle Watkins has covered topics such as making the education and experience of the recent total solar eclipse accessible to persons with disabilities.
Sign up for this Summit
The Mental Health Journalism Summit will be conducted online from October 8 - 10, 2024. Register to attend or deliver a session.
Invitation to the inaugural Reframing Disability meet-up in Bengaluru
Do you live in Bengaluru? I’m organising a meet-up at Matteo, Church Street, on Sunday, 12th May. Join me and other friends of Reframing Disability between 11:30 am and 1:00 pm. We’ll chat, get to know each other, and have a structured session with five-minute contributions from a few attendees. If you’d like to talk about your own work or someone else’s, read something, or perform, please hit reply and let me know. Your contributions don’t necessarily have to be about disability inclusion. I look forward to hearing from you and meeting you soon!
Would you like to share your best practices with Reframing Disability?
Are you a disabled journalist? An accessibility consultant? Perhaps an academic who has researched disability in the media? If you are someone who has any kind of expertise in disability-inclusive content creation, and would like to share it with the readers of Reframing Disability, please write to me at pritisalian@gmail.com or reply to this email.
That’s it for today. Reply to this email with your thoughts on today’s content and let me know if you’ll be attending the Reframing Disability meet-up next month. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter!
Warmly,
Priti
A good whole lot can be achieved for the disability movement by a conscientious practice of including disability in the world of children stories... When the mind is most impressionable. Certainly an area to give more thoughtful attention.
Thank you for this very educative one