Hi, I'm Ummul Khair.

I'm alumni of Vidya Sagar and I am a person with cerebral palsy, wheelchair user and my, I, I have completed uh BA and B, BL degree.

Um, and currently I'm working as a coordinator in disability legislation department at Vidya Sagar.

Disability Legislation Unit, Department, is, started in 2003 by person with disabilities.

So our motto is, in this, this unit, motto is, "nothing about us without us" under the UNCRPD Act, UNCRPD convention.

We focus on advocacy and legal aid, legal uh aid for person with disabilities.

We also work uh in partnership with Tamil Nadu State Legal Service Authority Act, 1987.

So, we have set up free legal aid cell at Vidya Sagar.

Free legal aid cell uh it's a person who cannot uh access the courts due to um financial limitation and a lack of accessibilities, people who are not able to go, this is uh make it easy.

So, our unit is successfully uh completed uh numerous uh numerous um legal cases for, of person with disabilities.

So, like, so many cases are there, with regards to discrimination, in employment, uh neighborhood harassment, then we have um custody of a child, then adoption.

Adoption by person with disabilities is denied, so we have to work on this.

So, these are the things and also, we also, worked on um guardianship issues, with regards to property.

Every advocate from the panel of legal, State Legal Service Authority, so they will come here uh twice in a month and provided free legal assistant for any legal issues, any legal matter, in terms of even schemes uh even legal entitle…entitlement.

Uh we also uh facilitate uh in providing accessibility.

For example, a person with…deaf who comes, the client who comes here, uh one of the case, custody of a child, they come here and they they want to uh custody, their take the custody but this court is denied because they are deaf person.

And we have to understand the communication, with regards to communication, we help them to provide sign language interpreter and then um, they they communicate uh each other and that's how advocate from the panel, advocates also understand what is the disability issues and the accessibilities, so we we worked mutually.

That's how we complete the cases.

Uh every district should have legal aid services.

So, through here, through Vidya Sagar, through DLU, we also worked in providing free legal aid cell in all districts, because some organizations not available.

They're not aware of, you know, anyone is eligible, under the section 12 can obtain free legal aid.

For example, child, children, uh senior citizen, women, person with disabilities.

So but we have to work on data.

We are also working on data.

So, uh, in Tamil Nadu State Legal Service Authority, how many cases of person with disability, they have a data.

So, so far there's no data.

So, we're pushing on that.

Many people don't know the issues of person with disabilities and what are the legal issues, so to create awareness we are going to write a book on that.

Every 9th November, every year, every 9th November we have Legal Aid Day, so we create awareness for advocates.

Member Secretary of District Judges because they also uh not aware of uh um legal issues, legal problems of person with disabilities and laws related to disabilities, so that also we creating awareness.

And legal aid is not just cases, it's about accessibility, it's about accessible in terms of language, in terms of infrastructure and um and also High Court, we also working on High Court is not accessible, that also we are working on, high court accessibility.

And then uh we also working on POCSO Act.

Under the POCSO Act, there are no panels of uh special educators and sign language interpreters, so we, we are working on that to, to gathers in every districts, so gather some special educators, sign language interpreter to provide in legal pro…proceedings, to help them to express, to communicate well in the legal proceedings.

So, speech to text we have in the laptop.

I speak and like speech to text, it's easier for me to work.

Sometimes when, when I call clients or any legal issues, I have to write down the notes or remember things, so I have that, I have a challenges in that.

So I, how I worked on that, I'll ask permission, 'Shall I record? Shall I record over the phone?' with the permission I record, then I can write it down.

So that's how I worked.