The silent exclusion: When technology speaks every language but ours |
Technology loves to promise miracles. For people like me, it is often marketed as a great equaliser; an assurance that with the right device, disability is not a barrier. Access is just a download away, we are told.
But growing up, I realised that this flashy narrative, wrapped in lofty guarantees, was merely a mirage — out of reach for me.
For a family like mine, buying tech was expensive. My mother worked tirelessly to purchase devices she hoped would level the field for my visually impaired brother and me. But even when she managed to get them, a more invisible barrier persisted: hardly any technology could speak our tongue.
While I could listen to English books through screen readers, reading or writing in Urdu — the language of home, of emotion, and of identity — remained a distant dream. I longed to read novels on my own, to write my own stories, to revise schoolwork without leaning on someone else’s eyes.
That dream became especially far out of reach during O-levels, when I was barred from sitting the Urdu exam simply because no accessible technology existed to support the process.
Urdu is compulsory for university admissions in Pakistan, and, like many visually impaired students, I found myself locked out of a gateway to higher education. Not because I lacked talent, but because the tools did not exist.
Today, decades later, much has improved, and for that I am grateful. But the truth is that progress has been slow, inconsistent, and unfairly distributed. My research with visually impaired communities across Pakistan reveals that the very barriers I encountered at that time continue to persist to date.
Many participants described a profound disconnect from technology, particularly those without English proficiency. We often assume that access to a smartphone equals access to the world. For some of us, that assumption remains painfully untrue.
Across Pakistan, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi, Saraiki, and dozens of other languages are spoken every day. The country is home to........