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Accenture invited Mr. Anuj Jain, Executive Director, NAD at their Gurgaon Office, Haryana in Cyber Hub as part of their Diversity Inclusion Program on 21st February 2018 . Mr. Jain was accompanied by Ms. Sonia Bhatia, Member, NAD and Mr. Shivoy Sharma, Sign Language Interpreter.
The session was broadcasted through a Skype group call to all the Accenture business centers in India, the participants were around 250 Accenture employees. Mr. Sanjay Dawar, MD – Accenture Strategy, India gave a brief introduction about how since 2010 Accenture has been working towards an inclusive and barrier free work environment, and welcomed Mr. Anuj Jain who took over and he told about his personal life and the challenges that he faced while growing up from not allowed to use sign language openly, no proper access to education.
Mr. Jain also told about how he overcame those challenges of sign language stigma and family issues; the importance of sign language for accessibility and in communication for a deaf person.
Ms. Sonia Bhatia took a short basic sign language class over the conference video call which included the alphabets, days, months and numbers in Indian sign language. At the end the participants were delighted and inspired from the session.
There were many questions asked to Mr. Anuj Jain: why isn’t there any unified sign language to which Mr. Jain replied that just like spoken languages, there are different sign languages all over the world and it is as equal to any other language having its own grammar and syntax. One more question was asked about the etiquettes while meeting a deaf person – to look at the deaf person and not the interpreter and understanding the sign for ‘deaf’ when the hearing person meets them.