SOCIETY FOR THE EMPOWERMENT OF THE DEAF-BLIND

You are aware that the Society For The Empowerment Of The Deaf-Blind (SEDB) is registered as a non-profit organization, the first trust run by deafblind people in India, which aims to empower deafblind people with better educational training to access assistive technologies and employment opportunities. We are also advocating to protect our rights to fight any discrimination in the country.  The SEDB was established on 20th October 2015, so we have completed 7 years and hence celebrating 7th year anniversary. Good news is that Mr. Sunil Abbas, the General Secretary and I, Zamir Dhale, the founder of the SEDB, who are both deafblind travellers, are going to travel independently to Nairobi, Kenya in Africa on 20th of October 2022. Sunil will fly from Chennai independently and I will be flying from Mumbai airport. We will be landing in Delhi airport and from there we will fly together to Nairobi. We are going to attend the World Federation of The Deaf-Blind (WFDB) conference from 23rd...

Society For The Empowerment Of The Deaf-Blind – Report for 2021-22 Throughout the period under report, work from home has continued, due to the restrictions created by the Covid-19 pandemic. This poses huge challenges for the deafblind community, and particularly for the operations of the Society, as the severe lack of strong digital accessibility tools imposes limitations on independent participation. We know that not enough is being done about making the Rights of Persons With Disabilities ACT (RPWDA) 2016 bring about useful change for the deaf-blind in India, apart from others. The extent to which the law technically addresses some of the issues faced by persons with disabilities, is not the same as actually bringing about real change. Deaf-blindness is mentioned under the category of Multiple Disabilities, and not specified as a separate disability. Why does GOI, for instance, not employ the deaf-blind in government jobs? And why is there no reservation for deaf-blind? Only educati...

Dear Madam/Sir, We request the support for an infrastructure - one office/training center space in Mumbai. We need  place for 3 years with min. 2 class rooms, toilet kitchen/pantry area of at least 1000 sq ft. for running training projects for the youth with deafblindness for wage & self-employment programs for persons with deafblindness.  This would be home office where SEDB founder & other deafblind staff will reside in night and run office in day time. So residential or semi residential premises would help us.   WE APPEAL YOU, to support us; due to the pandemic we are currently operating the projects from home office here in Pune. We are not in position to pay heavy commercial rates as rent for our training center as we don't have any grant or funding options. We need some support for funding training activities. Hence we seek support for infrastructure for our training project either free or at nominal rent. We are also planning employability training for...

I am inspired by Ratan Tata’ good  at heart. We have several industrialists and business tycoons in India. Everyone else is known for their wealth, while Ratan Tata even though he is rich he is known for his kind heart and simplicity. Ratan Tata is the Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons that means that he has retired as the Chairman of Tata Sons but is still considered as the Honorary Chairman. Tata has made many famous cars but one of the best releases is Tata, Tata Nano car, which was priced at ₹ 1 lakh and allowed many middle class Indians to fulfill their dream of owning a car. Now, Ratan Tata arrived at the Taj Hotel Mumbai in a Tata Nano. He arrived without any of his bodyguards or security forces. The car was driven by his close friend Shantanu Naidu. People on the internet were very inspired by his humble attitude.    Replying to the post, several people have expressed their respect and admiration for Ratan Tata. One person commented, “What a great person!” Someone el...

Dear deaf-blind, disabled and non disabled friends and colleagues, Thank you for your lovely wishes on my birthday today. I wanted to share some thoughts' is that I don't want to be show off, I don't want to misuse or take advantage of anyone like you; I am simple person, who don’t believe in buying a house, car and anything for myself. If my daughter' Zoya is asking for whatever she want than I can think good for her, let her enjoy in her own life. My wife' Nasrin and I are responsible for her better education. Nasrin and I struggled to encourage Zoya to concentrate on her studies. Surprisingly Zoya can read all books from library at school. She is able to understand some things' but never share her feedback comments and I want to know what did she knows. She is now a big girl 13 years old. She is busy in her studies. That is why we wanted to make her busy' because she denied to listen us her parents. She often want to see movie. I stopped her but she start...

On 7 th  May 2022, I, Zamir Dhale’ the founder of the Society For The Empowerment Of The Deaf-Blind(SEDB) India was invited along with Ms. Bushra Merchant’ the first Board Member of the SEDB’ to attend Deaf Chats event organized by Deaf Association of The Mumbai(DAM) at Mulund’ Mumbai as special Guest, as the first deafblind person to meet many and more than 400 deaf participants from all across Maharashtra and interacted with them. Some people already knew me sometime before. But’ some  people who are not aware about deafblind person. They are learnt through the experience of meeting me. Ms. Bushra is also a deaf-low vision(DLV).   Meanwhile’ Ms. Sangeeta Gala’ the Vice President of the SEDB (rights of the women and child)  was also with us at the dais, special guests who were deaf were talking about technologies rights of the deaf people’ meant is that deaf people should learn and study and also do hard work such as reading the gaining knowledge and informati...

We would like to share two incidences of discrimination caused by  #REDBUS & MakeMyTrip. Hope these service providers make notice of these discriminations on travelers with disabilities.   Sunil Abbas - General Secretary of SEDB and Zamir Dhale -The founder President of #SEDB India, the trust run by deafblind people in the country. They travelled in AC #redbus from Pune to Nasik. The bus driver was very rash and drove very fast. There was a slow moving lorry ahead of us. The lorry suddenly stopped and the bus driver tried to apply brakes but because of the speed with which the bus was moving, it hit the lorry and stopped with a jolt.The windshield cracked and the headlights got damaged. Our foreheads were hit and we were all in a state of shock. We got down and waited on the road of the expressway for another bus. Unfortunately the alternate bus wasn’t working. We somehow managed to reach Nasik later in the evening safely.   We finished our work in SBI bank in Nasik f...