Literacy for a Billion in India!

Dear Friends, 

Mr Bajaj, a blind advocate, made the case for media accessibility in cinema halls, in the Delhi High Court while two ISL interpreters made the proceedings accessible to Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) persons.  Under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, 2016, Bajaj is battling the entertainment ecosystem to make reasonable accommodations.

India’s disability rights groups are asking for the Inclusion of Accessible Features, SLC (SLS implied), AD, translated English captions/subtitles, and ISL video interpretation for picture-in-picture display and if MIB and CBFC simply require that SLS/SLC and AD files are deposited for every film, it will nudge the entire entertainment system to honour media accessibility.

Planetread and the Billion Readers Initiative(BIRD) have shown that features like Same Language Subtitles or Captions (SLS/SLC) will advance the reading literacy and language skills of one billion TV viewers. Hearing viewers often use SLS in noisy environments for improved media access. 

The Indian Express, one of India's leading national newspapers, carried an op-ed on our study. You can read the article here.

In other news, I am happy to share that we have made significant progress in making our latest Khamti story “How the Tiger Got its Stripes”. We have a new illustrator on board, Ms.Karmakar, who is from Guwahati, Assam, North-East India. 

Planning and sketching of the storyboard is complete and the artist has started to work on the illustrations. The production team at PlanetRead has started working on the story and is hoping to finish it very soon, we will keep you posted about the story’s progress.

Warmly, 

Parthibhan 

Dear Friends, 

We recently conducted a survey of more than 2,500 movies/shows produced in 2022-23 that are on India’s top five OTT (streaming) platforms – Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, and Sony Liv. Almost all English language content on OTTs is available with English subtitles. In contrast, SLS is missing from most Indian language content 

Same Language Subtitling on all Indian language content is an opportunity to make meaningful contributions to reading literacy and language learning. 

We estimate that of the billion “literate” people in the country, 600 million are weak readers. The survey, conducted in four Hindi-speaking States, measured literacy using the census method, which relies on self-reporting, and another, which required people to read a Grade 2-level text.

The Hindu, one of India's leading national newspapers carried an op-ed on our study. You can read the article here. 

The Free Press Journal also recently covered our Billion Readers (BIRD) initiative. Their reporter Ms. Chatterjee spoke to Dr. Kothari, Founder and Director, PlanetRead. Click here to read the article. 

In other news, I am happy to share that we have successfully completed the project "The impact of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) on reading engagement and reading skills in girls & women: An eye-tracking study." supported by Echidna Giving.

Our aim was to find out how SLS can be leveraged to improve reading literacy among girls, from low-income families. Specifically, we examined: 1) Is the extent and nature of reading engagement enhanced by watching entertainment content with SLS? 2) Does regular exposure to SLS over a period of time have an impact on reading skills? 

We learnt a lot while working on this project and we have some interesting insights to share. We are preparing the final report and will share the key insights with you all in our next update. 

Warm regards,

Parthibhan