01/12/2026
Deaf man completes short film to bring more awareness to access to media without hearing
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — TV, radio, newspapers and other forms of media can be liberating to those able to take advantage of them as creative outlets.
“Really, personally, I wanted to be able to focus on myself to create content that I could disseminate, whether it be sharing music or different types of short films or videos, all of that type of thing,” Zain Ahmed said.
He’s an actor, film writer, director and even producer. For him, media is a way to connect. His most recent short film is called "INVERSE."
“It's not all based just on me or my life,” Ahmed said. “I wanted to share story in a more general context for, really a group of people that people don't know about. I wanted to give everybody that is hearing an in-depth experience of what it might be like to be deaf for some deaf people; this is not wholly representative of the deaf and hard of hearing community. But there are a subgroup of deaf and hard-of-hearing people who don't speak. They don't wear a cochlear implant or a hearing aid.”
Ahmed identifies as a deaf, gay Pakistani-American man. He moved to the United States when he was 8 years old. His short film is about challenges he’s faced growing up because of stereotypes that surround his disability, ethnicity and sexuality. He produced his film entirely in silence.
“Often people have a voice that is underrepresented or overlooked and can be marginalized or even oppressed,” he said. “And so I have felt that in myself. And so I've been wanting to share this story as I can — a deaf, gay Pakistani man. And so I'm not seeing that anywhere else. I feel like I am the only one. So, if I'm the only one, then it becomes my responsibility to make the content to tell the stories to help people, to realize and come to their own realizations that, ‘Oh, there are deaf Pakistani gay people.’”
“One in four Americans has a disability, Nic Novicki, the founder and director of the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, said. “So that's over 61 million Americans. And there's less than 2% representation on screen of actual, authentic disabled people, being those actors that we see on TV and in movies. And so, I think going a step further. It's important for everybody to be able to enjoy and feel included.
“It's very important for deaf people to tell their own stories and to showcase themselves as they want to be seen,” Novicki added. “The same for blind wheelchair users. We have people with invisible disabilities, veterans with PTSD, people on the autism spectrum, all these different types of disabilities.”
The annual challenge brings together creatives from across the globe. This year, there were about 135 short films submitted. Once a theme is picked, each team has five days to write, shoot, edit and finish their film. All films in the challenge required at least one individual to have a disability, visible or invisible. Each film also incorporated closed captioning.
“Here, there are a lot of situations that come up,” Ahmed said. “Let's say a film festival, for example. It could be a low-budget film festival. If I were to ask, can we get an interpreter on screen for the entirety of the festival? They'll say no, especially when it comes to foreign films. They might be using English subtitles.”
“We build that into mind when we're thinking, ‘Hey, we will need ASL interpreters. We're going to need to make sure this is an accessible space.’ I think as other disabled artists move on into opportunities outside of the film challenge, it's important for them to talk about the accessibility needs that they need and to put it out there,” Novicki explained. “There's more and more representation. You know, movies and TV an authentic representation of people with disabilities. And I truly believe that the next phase is for us as a disability community, to be creating our own content because it allows us to showcase ourselves in an authentic way and really the best way.”
Follows Talha, a Deaf, gay Pakistani teenager, as he navigates painful moments of discrimination, family pressure, and identity struggles in his everyday lif...
