Step 1: Assess media professionals’ levels of understanding about disability

When we started this project, we didn’t have any experience working in this area, especially on how to portray people with disabilities in the media.

We began by talking to journalists, trying to understand what perspectives they had about people with disabilities, and looking at how they portrayed them in their stories for print, online media or television. We visited journalists in two cities in Bangladesh (Dhaka and Chittagong) and three districts (Ghazipur, Khulna and Narsingdi). We chose to focus on these areas because they have higher populations of people with disabilities.

The other thing we looked at is storytelling: the syntax, words and language that are used in the media to talk about people with disabilities.

For example, we found that journalists had little knowledge about the CRPD or the law that exists in Bangladesh to ensure that people with disabilities have equal rights like anyone else. The journalists we spoke to were surprised to hear they could be penalised for portraying people with disabilities in a negative way.

Step 2: Develop training that can be easily applied to local contexts and ways of working

We used what we learned to develop two-day training workshops for journalists from mainstream media organisations. We designed the workshops in a way that was relevant to their ways of working and how they produce reports. We also tailored our training to the different districts and the local context.

Reporters from the capital, Dhaka, for example, have different perspectives to journalists from other districts. The context they work in and the issues they cover are often different. So we picked out examples of the kinds of stories covered in those districts and then worked with journalists in the training sessions on how to apply good practice to their work.

We gave them different scenarios and asked: how would you portray this kind of story? How would you include stories about people with disabilities in your regular, everyday stories – about the economy, infrastructure, or politics – because currently, they’re missing. By making the training relevant to the journalists and their work, it was much more effective.

Step 3: Include people with disabilities

In the beginning, we were often challenged by journalists about the guidance we were giving and whether it reflected the views of people with disabilities. So we began inviting activists or experts from organisations of people with disabilities (OPDs) to explain how they wanted to be addressed and portrayed. Wherever we go and whenever we talk about inclusion now, we include people with disabilities.

We also realised that many of us that work in the media didn’t have any first-hand experience of talking to or meeting people with different disabilities. Through the training, we gave journalists the opportunity to talk face-to-face and hear first-hand how they should approach interviewing people with different disabilities.

Step 4: Provide consistent mentoring support

After the training sessions, we asked the journalists to cover as many stories as they could and provided them with mentoring support. Whenever they needed any kind of support, they could call us – 24/7. They would ask us to check their stories, to check if they were using the right words or if they were approaching stories from the right angle, and we would offer them feedback and suggestions.

We expected possibly 20 or 30 stories to come from the project. We actually received more than 200. The media journalists we trained are still producing great stories and including people with disabilities in their work, and we are still in contact with them.