In News
- 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.
Source: THE HINDU & PIB
