The Department of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment in India has launched the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), as a nation-wide flagship campaign for achieving universal accessibility for Persons with Disabilities. This comes as a result of one of the countries obligations for being a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Article 9 from the convention states that all signatory governments have to take appropriate measures to ensure people with disabilities have access on an equal basis with others to the physical environment, to transportation, to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems, and to other facilities and services open or provided to the public, both in urban and rural areas. The measures which include the illumination of obstacles and barriers to accessibility will apply to:
- Buildings, roads, transportation and other indoor and outdoor facilities, including schools, housing, medical facilities and workplaces.
- Information, communications and other services, including electronic services and emergency services.
The Convention also requires that all governments take action to:
- Develop, promulgate declare and keep an eye on the standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services open or provided to the public.
- All independent companies who offer services have to take in to account all aspects of accessibility for persons with disabilities.
- To ensure there is signage in Braille and easy to read and understand formats.
- To offer live assistance and intermediaries to facilitate accessibility to buildings and other facilities open to the public.
- To highlight other forms of information to support people with disabilities and make sure they have access to information.
- To highlight access for disabled people to new information and communication technologies and systems, including the internet
Senior governments have adopted a ministerial declaration and Incheon strategy to “Make the Right Real” for disabled people in the Asia Pacific region. This strategy provides the region and the world with the first set of regionally agreed, distinct, inclusive development goals. It consists of 10 goals, 27 targets, and 62 indicators. Disabled people can regain more of their own independence by using assistive devices and related support services.
Examples of assistive devices which should be provided by local authorities include:
- Ramps in public buildings
- Adaptation of toilets for wheel chair users
- Braille symbols and auditory signals in elevators or lifts.
- Ramps in hospitals, primary health centres and other medical care and rehabilitation institutions.
Three targets have been proposed to be achieved during the implementation of the Accessible India Campaign. These include:
- Increasing the accessibility of the physical environment in the national capital that is open to the public.
- Enhancing the accessibility and usability of public transport.
- To enhance the accessibility and usability of information and communications.
The Incheon strategy guidelines have markers for tracking the progress of the proposed targets. These include:
- Proportion of accessible government buildings in the national capital.
- The number of accessible international airports.
- The amount of accessible and usable public documents and web sites that meet internationally recognised accessibility standards.
- There should be a wide variety of public buildings available which have no barriers.
- The number of sign language interpreters.
A number of targets and objectives have also been proposed for the campaign. These include:
- Enhancing the proportion of accessible government buildings.
- Conducting an accessibility audit of at least fifty most important government buildings and converting them into fully accessible buildings by July 2016 in the following cities:
- Bengaluru
- Chennai
- Delhi
- Hyderabad
- Kolkata
- Mumbai
- Ahmedabad
- Pune
- Bhopal
- Kanpur
- Coimbatore
- Indore
- Jaipur
- Vadodara
- Surat
- Nagpur
- Lucknow
- Patna
- Vishakhapatnam
- Raipur
- Gurgaon
- Srinagar
- Thiruvananthapuram
- Bhubaneswar
- Chandigarh
- Guwahati
- Conducting an accessibility audit of at least 25 most important government buildings and converting them in to fully accessible buildings by July 2016 in the following cities:
- Port Blair
- Itanagar
- Daman
- Panaji
- Shimla
- Ranchi
- Jhansi
- Nashik
- Gandhinagar
- Kavaratti
- Imphal
- Shillong
- Aizawl
- Kohima
- Pondicherry
- Gangtok
- Agartala
- Dehradun
- Silvassa
- Ludhiana
- Faridabad
- Varanasi
- Changing half of all government buildings of the national capital and all the state capitals into fully accessible buildings by July 2019.
- Conducting an audit of half the government buildings and converting them in to fully accessible buildings in 10 most important cities/towns of all the states.by July 2022.
Objectives have also been set out with regard to transport. These include:
- Enhancing the number of accessible airports.
- Conducting an Accessibility audit of all international airports as well as converting them in to fully accessible airports by July 2016.
- Conducting an accessibility audit of all domestic airports and converting them in to fully accessible airports by July 2019.
- Enhancing the number of accessible railway stations.
- Ensuring that A1, A and B categories of railway stations in the country are converted in to fully accessible railway stations by July 2016.
- Ensuring that half of all railway stations in the country are converted in to fully accessible railway stations by July 2019.
- Enhancing the amount of accessible public transport.
- Ensuring that a quarter of government owned public transport carriers in the country are converted into fully accessible carriers by July 2019.
With regard to making it easier for disabled people to access information and communication Eco-systems, the following objectives have been set out:
- Improving the number of accessible and usable public documents and websites that meet internationally recognised accessibility standards.
- Conducting an accessibility audit of half of all government websites and converting them in to fully accessible web sites by July 2019.
- Ensuring that at least half of all public documents issued by central and state governments meet accessibility standards by July 2019.
- Increasing the amount of sign language interpreters.
- Training and developing 200 additional sign language interpreters by July 2019.
- Enhancing the proportion of daily captioning and sign language interpretation of public television news programmes.
- Developing and adopting of national standards of captioning and sign language interpretation in consultation with national media authorities by July 2016.
- Making sure that a quarter of all public television programmes aired by government channels meet these standards by July 2019.
In preparation for the campaign, the Department of Empowerment of Persons With Disabilities held a zonal awareness conference and workshop at the Yashwantrao Chavan Auditorium in Mumbai on September 24th this year to provide an insight in to the various contours of the campaign which adhere to the Incheon Strategy Guidelines. There were also in depth discussions on the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders in the journey to achieve universal accessibility for the inclusion of disabled people. Many official figures attended the event including Shri Devendra Fadnavis, Honourable Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and Shri Thaawarchand of Gehlot, Honourable Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Honourable Union Minister of State, Social Justice and Empowerment Sh. Krishan Pal Gurjar, Honourable Ministers of the Government of Maharashtra, Shri Rajkumar Badole (Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment), and Shri Diwaker Raote (Minister of Transport).
The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment was congratulated by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Shri Devendra Fadnavis for arranging the spectacular initiative. He was also the chief guest. It was declared that the state would leave no stone unturned in its quest to achieve its accessibility targets. Shri Diwakar Raote, Honourable Minister of Transport for the Government of Maharashtra also reiterated the government’s commitment to achieve a true model of accessibility.
The audience observed a presentation from a number of key groups to highlight many of the points during the meeting. A mobile app for technically involving Civil Society members and other key stakeholders will be launching soon along with a web portal for crowd sourcing information of inaccessible public spaces which was also presented at the workshop.
Amongst the other speakers at the conference were Mr Mukesh Sharma, ADG Doordarshan Kendra Mumbai, Shro Isaac George, HR&CSR Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, Ms Rama Chari, Director, Diversity and Equality Opportunity Centre, Ms Neeta Verma, Dy DG, NIC, Ms Shivani Gupta, Director Access Ability and Ms Anjalee Agarwal, Executive Director of Samarthyam. Many other senior government officers also actively participated in the event.
For more information about this campaign please visit:
http://innovationclustersarchive.nic.in/content/accessible_india.php
http://www.samarthyam.com/accessible-india.php
