In this episode of Eyeway Conversations, George Abraham speaks with Shakila Maharaj, a social entrepreneur, innovator, recognised global disability trainer and strategist from Durban, South Africa.

After losing her vision in early twenties due to a childhood injury, Shakila’s life was uprooted. Her family shifted to Ireland to ensure she had access to quality education and life.

Over the years, Shakila’s remarkable and diverse accomplishments have contributed towards creating an inclusive society. She pioneered audio description for 12 years across South Africa and established AudioDescribe (Pty) Ltd in 2010 and in 2020 the sister company, ShazaCin Accessible Media .(A first in the country and continent) with the aim to bring young blood and shift audio description into the digital space. Shakila’s aspiration for blind persons to see the visual world resulted   in the creation of the ShazaCin mobile app which is soon to be released on the google play store.

Shakila loves travelling and experiencing new places and cultures as it allows her to interact with different kinds of people, giving her an opportunity to create awareness on life with blindness. Her other initiatives include an eight year old Audio Descriptive movie club, that allows blind and visually impaired people  to come together to experience mainstream cinema.

Tune in to learn more about Shakila’s  work in the field of inclusion!

To access the podcast transcript, click on link: https://otter.ai/u/ku_lpUq2EUAJKNoPtqbqkRQLiZY

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