Opinion Shashi Tharoor’s acknowledgement of challenges faced by the disabled is welcome — there’s much we can do about it
The Department of Empowerment for Persons with Disabilities must take the lead in ensuring that accessibility targets are met. It has the funds and the mandate to do this
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor during the Winter Session of Parliament, in New Delhi, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. (PTI Photo) 
Recently, well-known Congress MP Shashi Tharoor found himself confronting the accessibility barriers that are a routine feature of the lives of those of us who are disabled. Tharoor slipped a step when walking in Parliament, thus spraining his ankle. He had to go to Parliament in a wheelchair early this week, as a result. Taking to Twitter to share his experience, he wrote: “When you need to enter Parliament in a wheelchair, there’s only one entrance with a ramp, at door 9, a good four-minute trip (with the assistance of helpers) to the Lok Sabha. This temporary disability has taught me how poorly equipped we are to support people with disabilities.”
In December 2021, I submitted a series of recommendations to the Parliamentary Research Institute for Democracies [PRIDE] to make the physical and digital interface of Parliament more disabled-friendly. My suggestions included having an Accessibility Committee in Parliament to attend to the access needs of the disabled, providing sign language interpretation for Parliamentary proceedings and ordering an accessibility audit of Parliament’s websites. I note with dismay that there has been no movement whatsoever on these recommendations.
In December 2015, the Government of India launched the Accessible India Campaign (AIC) to make the built environment, ICT ecosystem and transport facilities more disabled-friendly. What is unfortunately absent in the AIC is a strong enforcement mechanism, led by people with disabilities and accessibility professionals, to ensure that ambitious milestones are set and pursued to their meaningful conclusion.
An example of this implementation gap is the following. S. 45 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 [RpwDA] states that, as a general rule, all existing public buildings (a term, by the way, that also legally covers buildings run by the private sector that are used by the public at large) shall be made accessible within five years of the date of promulgation of such rules. The relevant Rules, namely the Harmonised Guidelines and Space Standards for Barrier Free Built Environment for Persons with Disabilities and Elderly Persons, issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, were notified in June 2017. This five-year time period, therefore, expired in June 2022. However, it is widely reported that this deadline has been breached — a fact borne out adequately by the lived experiences of the disabled living in India. Deadlines in the AIC have also been repeatedly breached.
What, then, is the way forward? First, as a report by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, titled “Beyond Reasonable Accommodation” points out, the requirement to make every new building accessible before it is granted an Occupancy Certificate (as set out in the RPwDA) and the relevant provisions of the Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India, 2021 must be integrated into local bye-laws and state planning laws. Municipal authorities must have the know-how and sensitivity to gauge compliance with the norms to make the built environment accessible and access to competent accessibility professionals who can provide appropriate inputs at every stage. The list of empanelled professionals maintained by municipal authorities must also consist of accessibility professionals, and this requirement must be codified in model building bye-laws and the National Building Code.
Second, Parliament must set up an accessibility committee urgently that must be tasked with delivering recommendations in a time-bound fashion on making every aspect of the Parliamentary process more disabled-friendly. One hopes that Tharoor will champion this cause inside Parliament and form a coalition of like-minded colleagues to pursue this work. The constitution of an Accessibility Committee by the Supreme Court recently may be a good reference point for Parliament.
Third, as Vidhi’s report again recommends, central and state level procurement laws and policies must incorporate accessibility criteria in public procurement of physical, digital and transport infrastructure. These must be replicated in agreements between procurement agencies and bidders/contractors. In addition, tender documents must set out applicable accessibility standards.
Fourth, the Department of Empowerment for Persons with Disabilities (Department) has released the Sugamya Bharat app to enable persons with disabilities to report any building that is inaccessible. When I tried to register on the app as a blind person with my screen reader on the iPhone: (a) I was unable to enter the date in my date of birth; (b) the button to select one’s gender was unlabelled; (c) the app got stuck after I pressed the submit button on entering my details. These deficiencies in the app should be rectified so as to enable a well-meaning intervention to realise its full potential.
Fifth, the Department must take the lead in ensuring that accessibility targets are met. It has the funds and the mandate to do the same. It must not shirk from discharging this responsibility and the faith placed in it by India’s disabled population.
The writer is an attorney at Ira Law, co-founder of Mission Accessibility and a Senior Associate Fellow on Disability Rights at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy
Share
