What does the future of mental health and disability inclusion in news media look like?
L Subramani's and Tanmoy Goswami's predictions on disability and mental health reporting in 2026; plus, media recommendations
Hi Folx,
Last week, the US State Department switched from Calibri 15 point to the Times New Roman 14 point font in its official documents. Calibri – a sans serif font designed for the computer screen – doesn’t have the decorative tops and tails at the ends of letters that serif fonts like Times New Roman do. Therefore, it is more legible and was recommended as an accessibility best practice during the Biden administration.
Kristen Shinohara of the Center for Accessibility and Inclusion Research at the Rochester Institute of Technology, told NPR’s Morning Edition that the impact of illegibility can be more severe for people with learning or reading disabilities like dyslexia or for people with low vision.”
A New York Times article explains how fonts can impact people with reduced vision:
“When reading long-form text, the eye shifts across written lines in rapid movements, pausing briefly at points of interest. The design of a typeface and the context in which it appears can speed or slow this process.”
“Calibri has generous letter spacing, which can help readers with reduced vision, while Times New Roman’s many serifs tend to intrude on its relatively tighter spacing.”
What a big loss of another DEI initiative!
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I always look forward to Nieman Lab’s annual journalism predictions from media leaders. But so far, there’s been nothing on disability inclusion, accessibility, or representation. Reframing Disability reached out to two lived experience journalism experts from India who predict what the news media in India and globally would do for inclusion in 2026.
The first prediction is from L. Subramani – a journalist with blindness at Deccan Herald (an English-language Indian daily), and the other from Tanmoy Goswami, user-survivor and creator of India’s first solo-run, independent mental health storytelling platform, Sanity.
[ID: Subramani, a clean-shaven man with black hair is wearing a purple polo T-shirt with white stripes, with his hands on his waist. Tanmoy, on the right, has dark hair, a beard, and glasses, is wearing a dark grey hoodie with red drawstrings with his left hand resting on his right shoulder.]
People with disabilities will be seen as credible and viable human capital
by L. Subramani
(As told to Priti Salian)
Media coverage of disability in India has gradually shifted over the past few decades from charity-driven, human-interest narratives to more rights-based and realistic perspectives.
Progressive legislation and the work of Organisations of People with Disabilities (OPDs) have largely contributed towards this shift in the narrative. Social media has enabled people with disabilities to challenge old tropes and present more positive self-representations. As lived-experience voices have gained visibility, the media’s understanding and framing of disability have begun to evolve.
AI as a surprising contributor
Artificial Intelligence has played a big role in shifting the narrative. In the last two or three years, the news media have highlighted how AI enables disabled people to live independently, helping coverage move towards stories of access, agency, and participation, while also opening conversations about inclusion, design, and equity.
I see this trend continuing in 2026.
For instance, as AI-based tools for navigation, object recognition, and scene description continue to improve and become more accessible, many blind people are likely to gain richer and more immediate ways of understanding their physical environment, potentially reducing some forms of dependence that previous generations experienced.
As the media capture this better, people with disabilities will increasingly be seen as credible and viable human capital. Although several corporations are already investing in PwD human capital, this trend will strengthen and intensify in 2026, and newsrooms will tell these stories more frequently.
What journalists, however, need to note in their reporting is that these technologies do not eliminate a person’s blindness or the social and infrastructural barriers associated with it.
Better PR needed from OPDs
Despite their work in many areas, OPDs often lack a media policy or strategy. They need better training and a stronger understanding of media relations so their issues are reported more widely.
Contrary to common belief, engaging the media is not costly. It requires regular interaction, invitations to events, ongoing efforts to identify opportunities to contribute to news stories and extending training opportunities to journalists.
Newsrooms will get more organised when reporting on the intersection of mental health and AI
by Tanmoy Goswami
[As told to Priti Salian]
This year – as was the case last year – mental health reporting was quite chaotic and there were quite a few doomsaying headlines.
But this coming year we’ll see green shoots of reporting on how AI is actually filling in important gaps while there will still be sustained reporting on the data privacy risks, and the mental health risks that apps and bots pose. There will be more focus on how AI can strengthen therapists’ hands; not cannibalise therapists’ practices, but actually become their aides. And how also that can present a safer experience for the end-user to balance out the doom-and-gloom around AI and mental health.
Newsrooms need to invite experts for education
Newsrooms are still struggling to make sense of the real dynamics of the mental health sector. A lot of stories end up being focused on individuals rather than structural issues and one can only get to the structural and systemic understanding by inviting voices from the industry and the sector. So, [newsrooms should] not just interview [experts] for stories or use them as talking heads, but actually invite them for [regular education and training], for example, about the economics of the sector, or the challenges that therapists face in their day-to-day business practices – the nuts and bolts of which the media doesn’t have a very good sense of.
This is going to be a [smaller] challenge now that mental health is a well established beat at least in some newsrooms because these stories are popular and in public interest. Whether the reporting is good or bad is a different question, but mental health writers are no longer having to really tell their editors why their story is important.
Media Recommendations
Read
Sanity’s curated list of 10 big numbers that reveal a lot about the mental health space, and Subramani’s story on the Indian blind women’s cricket team.
Listen
In an episode of When Science Finds A Way podcast, Dr Aimee Grant talks about her groundbreaking Inclusive research: autism from menstruation to menopause in which she is gathering data across the reproductive life cycle of autistic women and people assigned female at birth, to design tools that make healthcare more accessible and inclusive.
Watch
Apple’s new film “I’m not remarkable” smashes a trope that every disabled person deals with. There’s been some controversy about the lyrics, but essentially, the video tries to show that people with disabilities are as remarkable as anyone else. There is nothing “special” about them because they achieve “despite their disabity”. In an older issue of Reframing Disability, I challenge the “special needs” and “overcoming the disability” narrative.
Thanks for reading or listening to this edition (on the Substack app). More predictions coming up next time! If you’d like to share your prediction for your country’s news media, please press reply.
I’m also available on LinkedIn and Instagram. Reframing Disability has an Instagram account too - read the latest post in which we announce the translation of the piece on making comics accessible into Indian Sign Language.
Warmly,
Priti
Hi Priti Madam Ji, I have trying to reach you ! I am a Neuro-divergent Male With Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD