In December 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the nationwide Accessible India campaign to improve the accessibility to built environment, transportation, and information and communication systems. Accessibility audits were to be conducted at all the international airports, railway stations and government-owned public transport carriers in the country and they were to be made fully accessible by March 2018.
“The Accessible India campaign started with a lot of fanfare and set targets. The latest timeline is for June 2022. But not enough has happened. To implement this the entire ecosystem needs to participate and the government needs to issue clear guidelines, notifications that will require actors to deliver on certain accessibility measures and penalties should be issued. The campaign set targets, like 25% by a certain year, but the financial allocation has not been adequate to make a meaningful difference at scale in a time-bound manner,” Kulkarni said.
In 2016, the government drafted the Right of Persons with Disability (RPD) Act, which replaced the 1995 People with Disabilities Act and mandated that all private and government institutions and establishments should ensure barrier-free spaces and services for people with disabilities. Section 41 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 stated that the government would ensure that persons with disabilities would have access to all modes of transport that conform with “design standards” (designs of products and services that can be used by the maximum number of people). This would include retrofitting of old modes wherever technically feasible and making it safe without entailing major structural changes. The government is also expected to take suitable measures to provide facilities for the disabled at bus stops, railway stations and airports.
“Under the RPD Act, the government has to frame standards on accessibility for not only government entities but also private entities providing services to the public, including in areas such as educational and vocational, employment, shopping, banking, communication, and access to justice by June 2019. So far three notifications have been issued. But many service providers have not yet brought their practices in line with the law,” said Rahul Bajaj, senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
In November 2021, the road transport and highways ministry issued a new draft notification titled “accessibility guidelines for bus terminals and bus stops”. Among other things it mandates reservation of places for persons with disabilities within 30 metres of the entrance of bus terminals. A uniform set of norms were to apply in all states.
“The problem with these notifications is that they themselves are not accessible for people with disabilities. Many of these notifications are as image-based pdf’s, not text-based pdf, which makes them unreadable for screen reader users,” said Bajaj.
In the 2017 case of Rajive Raturi vs. Union of India, the court discussed at length the accessibility requirements of persons with visual disabilities with respect to safe access to roads and transport facilities. The court found that the tasks and activities planned and initiated by the governments under the Accessible India campaign were not comprehensive enough and did not adhere to the time frames provided for in the 2016 Act.
States too are working on improving access to transportation. In January 2019, the Delhi Government announced the addition of 1,000 buses fitted with hydraulic ramps to the existing fleet of 3,750 accessible buses. In June 2019, the Chief Minister of Goa launched wheelchair-accessible school buses for students of the Sanjay Centre for Special Education, a school for disabled children, to reduce the dropout rate among students using a wheelchair.
“There are interventions to improve accessibility of a train station or make a percentage of buses more accessible, but these isolated interventions may not be enough to deliver improvement at scale, said Kulkarni. “Transport planners need to adopt a trip chain lens. Accessibility improvements need to be prioritised across physical and digital infrastructure of the mobility ecosystem.”
“We can’t really de-alienate digital and physical accessibility because helplines are online. And if a deaf person won’t be able to call, how will that person access justice?” asked Goyal.