Covering Disability: Journalist Commissioned To Change Stereotypes around Disability, Challenge Development Actions



Participants in session


Some media practitioners in the North West Region have been upskilled in Disability inclusion and media. The workshop had as an objective to remind media practitioners of the role they can play in educating audiences about disabilities while effectively changing the perception of development actors/stakeholders in the region to include persons with disabilities in their community-based development actions to prevent exclusion.


There are hundreds of persons with Disabilities in the region, many experience stigma and discrimination or are completely left out of media coverage. Persons with disabilities are supposed to be recognized as right holders and not objects of pity and care as some media houses portray through their manner of reporting. According to one of the facilitators, Lohshie Eugene, friendly language and media representation plays an important role in influencing public opinions and challenging stereotypes around disability and every journalist is expected to follow those steps.


In an attempt to push for inclusive community-based development at all levels,  it is pivotal for media men and women to challenge barriers to disability inclusion which consist of policy, attitudes, physical structures, rehabilitation services, assistive devices, and disaggregated data by questioning the development efforts of stakeholders. 


"Journalists and the media could play a key role in ensuring that there is a paradigm shift in the way persons with disabilities are seen in their communities and most importantly question development actors; are they councils, health providers, education stakeholders? Question what efforts they are making to ensure that people who live with one form of impairment/disability in their communities are not left out of their development efforts"  Lohshie Eugene intimated.


Media practitioners from different organs who were in attendance promised to factor disability-inclusive content more in their reports and programs moving forward.

I'm more committed to promoting disability inclusion in my manner of reporting and equally sorting out angles or programs relating to disability, I must find a way to factor in disability to hold stakeholders to account for how they are promoting inclusion"  Wanchia Cynthia noted.




Starting point……

The starting point in creating awareness, changing stereotypes around disability, and questioning stakeholder development initiatives begins by pinpointing the difference between impairment which is an injury, illness, or condition that causes a loss or difference of function to an individual, and disability which refers to the limitation or loss of opportunities to participate equally in society because of social and environmental barriers as the result of an impairment.


The two-day capacity-building workshop was organized by the Community Based Inclusive Development (CBID) Project Phase II of the Socio Economic Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (SEEPD) Program Umbrella of CBC Health Sevices. The Workshop took place at the CBC Health Services Main hall on 30th and 31st March 2023.


 ðŸ“· ; Lieshi Rita


By Laurata Pechuqui 

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