Courses of study should be reformed from within to include students with disabilities, says IIT professor

While prominent methods such as ramps, wheelchairs and assistive devices make educational institutions accessible to the disabled, the “other side of the coin” — introducing reforms within various fields of study to accommodate students with disabilities — is largely untapped, according to Hemachandran Karah, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Madras.

It is this other side of the coin that made Dr. Hemachandran and his two colleagues, Saji K. Mathew of the Department of Management Studies and Nilesh J. Vasu of the Department of Engineering Design to establish “The Accessibility Research Centre” on campus.

ARC, as it is popularly called, was inaugurated about a year ago and was born out of an innate need to help and assist the 200-odd differently-abled students on campus. “Disciplines should be able to reform from within,” he says as he shares his vision for the road ahead.

Although an English literature student, he earned a PhD in Disability Studies after his tutor at Cambridge University impressed upon him that his own visual impairment would give him insight and a deep understanding of people with disabilities.

“Every discipline has some challenge or barrier artificially created because the disciplines are not aware of disability,” he points out. “If I’m a blind student and I want to study astronomy or ancient history, universities will say I can’t explore archaeological sites or I can’t see light and my perception will be distorted. Clearly, this is an attitudinal barrier built into the disciplinary systems themselves,” he says.

One way to break down these barriers was to seek out disabled people who have influenced change in the industry. All disciplines are made up of common components such as supervision system, teaching, field work, workshops, canon formation, syllabus creation, curriculum fine-tuning and so on.

“Just like what the gender people did a while ago, why not tweak the disciplines from the inside out so they can become disability friendly? That was the thought process and we call it D and D, Disability and Disciplines,” explains Dr. Hemachandran.

ARC has side-by-side developed five courses that are accessible to people with disabilities, including Accessible Foundational STEM Education, Accessible Computer Science for the Hearing Impaired at the undergraduate level, Introduction to Disability Studies and Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, the latter of which it claims has never been attempted by any other institution in India.

Currently, the center is developing a course called Accessible Journalism for the Vision Impaired in collaboration with the Chennai Institute of Journalism, which attempts to incorporate aspects of theater in developing modules that teach students how to cover disasters and elections. Other upcoming courses include Audio Description and Media Advocacy.

Dr. Hemachandran envisions the ARC expanding to include professors from various fields such as chemistry, physics, philosophy or even folklore. The Center is partnering with civil society in its monthly Accessibility Without Boundaries (AWB) series to provide a platform for individuals and groups working to make a difference on the ground.

“We give them an IIT platform and make them perform, lecture, converse and transform an idea once a month,” he says. Real transformation lies in creating barrier-free technical education and fostering conversations between the humanities and sciences as equals, he adds.

Published – 27 Aug 2026 22:58 IST