Accessible India Campaign

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The Accessible India Campaign also known as the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan was launched in 2015 by the Prime Minister.

About Accessible India Campaign

Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) is a nation-wide Campaign launched by Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) of Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment to provide universal accessibility to persons with disabilities.
The campaign aims at providing equal opportunity to persons with disabilities to participate in all the aspects of life and live independently.
The Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan focuses on developing accessible physical environment, transportation system and Information & communication ecosystem.
The Government of India with firm commitment towards socio-economic transformation of the persons with disabilities is making efforts to create mass awareness for universal accessibility.
India is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

Components of Accessible India Campaign

Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) has the following three important components
- Built Environment Accessibility
- Transportation System Accessibility
- Information and Communication Eco-System Accessibility

Targets originally entailed under the three components:

Making 50% of all the government buildings of National Capital and all the State capitals fully accessible by December 2018.
Completing accessibility audit of 50% of government buildings and making them fully accessible in 10 most important cities/towns of States by December 2019.
Ensuring that 50% of railway stations in the country are converted into fully accessible railway stations by March 2018.
Ensuring that 25% of Government owned public transport carriers in the country are converted into fully accessible carriers by March 2018.
Conducting accessibility audit of 50% of all government (both Central and State Governments) websites and converting them into fully accessible websites by March 2017.

Objective of Accessible India Campaign

Enhancing the proportion of accessible government buildings
Enhancing proportion of accessible airports
Enhancing the proportion of accessible railway stations
Enhancing the proportion of accessible Public Transport
Enhancing proportion of accessible and usable public documents and websites that meet internationally recognized accessibility standards
Enhancing the pool of sign language interpreters
Enhancing the proportion of daily captioning and sign-language interpretation of public television news programmes

United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD)

To develop, promulgate and monitor the implementation of minimum standards and guidelines for the accessibility of facilities and services open or provided to the public;
To ensure that private entities that offer facilities and services which are open or provided to the public take into account all aspects of accessibility for persons with disabilities;
To provide training for stakeholders on accessibility issues facing persons with disabilities;
To provide in buildings and other facilities open to the public signage in Braille and in easy to read and understand forms;
To provide forms of live assistance and intermediaries, including guidelines, readers and professional sign language interpreters, to facilitate accessibility to buildings and other facilities open to the public;
To promote other appropriate forms of assistance and support to persons with disabilities to ensure their access to information;
To promote access for persons with disabilities to new information and communications technologies and systems, including the Internet.