We tend to always look at a disability in a person rather than the ability. That's why I wanted a magazine that talks especially to the disabled. They are people first. They need to know their rights.

Determinedly overcoming the hurdles that a physical handicap caused her, Chennai-based Jayshree Raveendran launched the Ability Foundation to make India a better place to live in for the disabled, even as her magazine, Success And Ability, informs, inspires and integrates challenged individuals into mainstream society. VAANI ANAND chats with the gutsy lady who, with an inborn optimism and dedication, disdains any kind of sympathy or special treatment.

Jayshree Raveendran is indeed a rare woman, an individual from that breed, who looks at a glass of water and sees that it is half full, instead of half empty - the kind of person, who will concentrate on how things can be done, rather than why they cannot. After one and a half hours of 'chatting' with her, what amazed me the most was not her work, not her drive and enthusiasm that made her the founder of the Ability Foundation in Chennai. All that is truly commendable…but what took me completely by surprise after talking to her for almost 90 minutes, was the realisation that she is herself hearing impaired!

She was so completely at ease with the flow of the conversation that it was impossible for me, to detect her physical disability. Raveendran is an expert lip reader and a fabulous communicator; her accent and diction are impeccable.

After a blazing career as a lecturer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, a lecturer at the IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), a few years as a creative chief of Clarion Advertising, Bangalore and a corporate communications executive for a computer education firm, Raveendran decided to give it all up to launch a magazine for the disabled. "It was an idea that refused to leave me," she says.

Raveendran had specific reasons for starting the magazine for the physically challenged. "We tend to always look at a disability in a person rather than the ability. That's why I wanted a magazine that talks especially to the disabled. They are people first. They need to know their rights. In India, 95 per cent of the disabled are discouraged," says Raveendran, with melancholy in her voice. In a country with about between 80-90 million disabled people, Raveendran found that there was no significant interaction or exchange of information between them. There are magazines on every subject imaginable but none for the disabled. In December 1995, Raveendran succumbed to her long cherished desire to publish a magazine and called it Success And Ability.

For the rest of the article, pick up VERVE’s January-February, 2005 issue