Despite provisions, differently-abled students struggle for basic rights

Lack of infrastructure, insensitivity among invigilators, peers, and teachers, access to inclusive education, institutionalisation of rights are some of the major concerns often raised by the PwD candidates which are somehow acknowledged but not acted upon

world disability day, international day for disabled persons

The Central government replaced the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. (Representative image)

Written by: Sakshi Saroha

7 min readNew Delhi IDec 4, 2021 10:06 AM IST First published on: Dec 3, 2021 at 12:16 PM IST

Prajakta Shinde was just 10 years old when she lost her limbs in a road accident. Shinde had to struggle for years to get adapted to using crutches and a wheelchair for everyday activities. However, it took enormous patience and support from teachers and parents for her to get through the trauma only to encounter the insensitivity and weariness of the people in later years of life.

“It was in 2017 when I had to appear for an entrance exam and the centre allotted to me had no provision of ramps or elevators for the differently-abled persons. As a result, the helpers available at the centre had to manually carry me along with the wheelchair to the elevated room. Once they put me through the room, one of the helpers called me too heavy for a disabled person,” Shinde told indianexpress.com

“The incident was not just humiliating but also mentally straining as to how people generally observe and treat a differently-abled person,” she added.

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Lack of infrastructure, insensitivity among invigilators, peers, and teachers, access to inclusive education, institutionalisation of rights are some of the major concerns often raised by the PwD candidates which are somehow acknowledged but not acted upon. As a result, people with disabilities encounter discrimination from various walks of life.

The Central government replaced the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995 with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016. With this, the number of disabilities recognised in the act was increased from 7 to 21. The act talks about inclusive education as a norm. However, there are no defined parameters to review its implementation.

“The RPwD act 2016 mandates to conduct survey of school going children in every five years for identifying children with disabilities, ascertaining their special needs and the extent to which these are being met. However, no such survey has been carried out till date despite the fact that the first survey had to be conducted within a period of two years from the date of commencement of this Act,” a senior advocate told indianexpress.com.

Since the primary survey has not been conducted yet, the policy formation for the implementation of the act remains in the pipeline.

Lack of sensitisation among society

In a recent hearing, the Supreme Court said that the National Testing Agency (NTA), the exam conducting body for competitive exams like JEE, NEET etc. must train their invigilators who are at the ground level in examination centres as to how should they deal with students with disabilities.

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna remarked while hearing a plea of a female student suffering from dysgraphia whose grievance was that she was not allowed an additional one hour for attempting the questions and her answer sheet was snatched by the invigilator.

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The top court said individual injustices originating in a wrongful denial of rights and entitlements prescribed under the law cannot be sent into oblivion on the ground that these are a necessary consequence of a competitive examination.

Geetha Ram Mohan, Secretary of National Federation of the Blind of India said that the discrimination borne by the students with disabilities is beyond physical discomforts. “These students find it easier to fight their disabilities than the system. Recently, two of our members Venkatesan and Kiran who are partially blind could not appear in the SBI PO exam as we could not arrange a scribe for them since the exam centre allotted to them was in a remote area of Karnataka and no one volunteered to help these students. It’s a shame that despite possessing talent these students have to live on the goodwill of other people.”

Tapas Bhardwaj, a visually impaired student of Masters in Human Rights has experienced the wrath of discrimination in various incidents during his career. “From being allotted an exam centre 50 kms away from my place to being assigned an ineligible scribe in the exam, I have experienced every possible discomfort during my higher education. And even after repeated requests made to the concerned authorities, no action was taken to sort the issue,” Bhardwaj said.

“The problem lies when the society see differently abled people as a liability or a charity case. The entire concept of ‘special kids’ term used for us is flawed. No person with disability wants to be treated exceptionally. All we need is sensitisation towards our basic needs,” he further added.

Meanwhile, Chandani Ahuja, founder of Raindrops Foundation, a student-run organisation that helps people with disabilities said that the rights of the PwD should be institutionalized rather than being discretionary.

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“Often during the exams or at schools, not just the teachers but even the students are not sensitised towards their PwD peers. As a result they are treated with sympathy rather than empathy. Therefore, their needs are not met as a mandatory step but remains at the goodwill of others.” Ahuja said.

“Sign language interpreters, availability of scribes, PwD friendly school curriculum should be implemented as complusory measures. It should not be an added responsibility of a candidate to find themselves the scribes to write an exam,” she further added.

Covid-19 elevated the discomforts of PwD students

While prior to the pandemic, learners with disabilities were reported to be receiving inferior-quality education, often separated from their peers. the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the shortcomings, fragilities, risks, and inequalities in the education of learners with disabilities.

“During the lockdown imposed due to Covid-19, many of children with disabilities faced the wrath of a pandemic. With public participation rounding to zero, they struggled to find scribes, sign language interpreters to continue their studies. Even the school curriculum was hastily shifted to online mode, inclusive learning took a back seat. Hence, adding the more pain to the existing problems,” Chandani said.

With online learning being the new normal, schools, as well as other educational authorities, have to step up and acknowledge the needs of PwD students.

“It is necessary to take into account all the features of the neuropsychological, cognitive and emotional profile of the child when planning and delivering a lesson, and this is not very simple during “distance learning”. The use of a “Universal Design for Learning” approach could be a way to address these situations, to develop learning materials and lessons and to increase the inclusiveness of “distance learning,” the UNSECO has suggested in its report on Understanding the impact of Covid-19 on learners with disabilities.