Jayshree Raveendran

Jayshree Raveendran is the founder and managing trustee of Ability Foundation, a cross-disability organisation she established in Chennai in 1995 to press for the equal participation of disabled people in Indian public life. Her approach has been less about service delivery than about changing what the public, employers and the media assume disability means.

The Foundation was registered as a public charitable trust and set out to work across publishing and media, counselling and referral, advocacy, and training and employment. Its earliest instrument was print: Success and Ability, first published in 1995, is a quarterly cross-disability magazine that reports on disability rights and on the lives of disabled people, and was later reissued in accessible formats including screen-reader text, Indian Sign Language and audio. A weekly radio programme followed.

Raveendran built the Foundation's later work around a small number of recurring public events, each designed to put disabled people in front of audiences that would not otherwise encounter them. The CavinKare Ability Awards, begun in 2003, honour disabled achievers. AbilityFest, the India International Disability Film Festival, was first held in Chennai in 2005 and has run biennially since, screening films by and about disabled people. Sound of Silence brings hearing and non-hearing audiences together during International Deafness Awareness Week, and ExpressABILITY runs workshops for journalists on covering disability. The Foundation also carries out access audits of public venues in Chennai and runs an employment wing that connects disabled jobseekers with recruiters through the EmployABILITY job fairs and the LinkABILITY course.[2][3][4]