Digital Futures Lab organised a ‘Tech and Society Dialogues’ conversation on ‘Disability and Access to the Public Digital Health Services’ on May 4 2022. Srinidhi Raghavan, Co-Leads Programmes, joined the panel alongside Gesu India (PhD student at Swansea University), Tony Kurian (PhD in sociology at IIT Bombay), and Smitha Sadasivan (Regional trainer for South Asia Women’s Institute on Leadership & Disability (WILD) program).
Srinidhi spoke about the process of researching the Rising Flame and Sightsavers India report ‘Neglected and Forgotten: Women with Disabilities during Covid Crisis in India’, saying that one of the things that came up in cross-disability experiences of women was that access to essential medical information was extremely low. Such information was mediated through family, who had access to this information.
Cases where digital healthcare was not accessible or helpful for women with disabilities also came to the forefront during the conversation as the digital divide between men and women with disabilities remains quite high. There were also issues of privacy, especially around sexual and reproductive rights.