Public places must be accessible to differently-abled people: Hrithik Roshan

Earlier this year, Hrithik Roshan got much critical acclaim for his outing as a visually-impaired man in the Sanjay Gupta directorial, Kaabil. Around that time, the actor went on record to say that thanks to his part, he developed a deep connection and a sense of understanding with differently-abled people.

Now, HT has learnt that the actor wants to promote better infrastructure for differently-abled people so that they can have greater accessibility to public places — especially in multiplexes, as he belongs to the film fraternity.

Speaking about the issue, Hrithik says, “Through my film’s characters, I have acquired a deeper understanding of differently-abled people’s lives and the challenges they face. One thing that has been playing on my mind is the need for our public places to be easily accessible to these people. It is a larger thought, but it is surprising that it hasn’t happened yet, even with over 20 million differently-abled people in India.”

For his part, Hrithik is appealing to multiplex chains to implement better infrastructure, and he is willing to help them with the same. “Coming from the film fraternity, I would like to appeal to the multiplex chains to take them [differently-abled people] into consideration and work towards appropriate infrastructure. Infrastructure with which they [the differently-abled] will not be deprived of the big-screen experience of a film, and won’t have to think twice before stepping out for something as small as watching a movie. I’d love to help if there is anything I can do for that,” he says.

At the time of Kaabil’s release in January, Hrithik had said that “personally, Kaabil was a different experience”. He had also asserted that an “invaluable understanding” would remain with him more than the accolades and the film’s box-office success. “I perhaps realised for the first time that the phrase ‘differently-abled’ is not just a polite word for disabled people. They are actually differently-abled… How I look at them has changed forever,” he had said.