Meeting of Consultative Committee of Parliament of Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment held

The Meeting of Consultative Committee of Parliament of Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) on the scheme of “Accessible India Campaign” held here today under the chairmanship of the Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot. The Minister of State Shri Ramdas Athawale and Shri Krishan Pal Gujjar were also present.

In his Address, Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot said that Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) was created on 12th May 2012. Persons with Disabilities are now being addressed as Divyangjan. The Department is responsible for administration of Person with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. According to Census 2011, there are 2.68 crore Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) who constitute 2.21% of the total population of our country.   He said that the Prime Minister on 3rd December 2015 launched ‘Accessible India Campaign’ for creating universal accessibility for person with disabilities in built Environment, Transport System and Information & Communication Technology (ICT) eco-system. The Philosophy behind the campaign is the social model of disability, which proposes that what makes someone disabled, is not their medical condition, but the structure and attitude of the society.

The Strategy Paper of the campaign has been prepared and after consultation with various stakeholders defining key targets and their timeline as below. The Revised time lines given by co-ordination committed is given below:-

1. Accessibility of Built up Environment: (i) Completing accessibility audit of 25-50 most important government buildings in 50 cities and making  them fully accessible in Phase-I by July 2016, (December 2017), (ii) Making 50% of all the government buildings of National Capital and all the State capitals fully accessible by Phase-II by July 2018, (December 2018), (iii) Completing accessibility audit of 50% of government buildings and making them fully accessible  in 10 most important cities/towns of States not covered in targets (i) and (ii) by Phase-III July 2019, (December 2019).

2. Transport System Accessibility: 

(i) Completing accessibility audit of all the international airport and making them fully accessible by December 2016.

(ii) Completing accessibility audit of all the domestic airports and making them fully accessible by March 2018.

(iii) A1, A&B categories of railway stations to be made fully accessible by December 2016 and 50% of all railway stations to be made fully accessible by March 2018 (iv) 10% of Government owned public transport carries are to be made fully accessible by March 2018.

3. Accessibility of Knowledge and ICT Eco-system: 

(i) At least 50% of Central and State Government websites are to meet accessibility standards by March 2017. At least 50% of public documents are to meet accessibility standard by March 2018.

(ii) Training and developing 200 additional sign language interpreters by March 2018.

(iii) Public television news- National standards on captioning and sing-language interpretation are to be created and adopted by July 2016. At least 25% of public television programmes on government channels are to comply with the standards by March 2018.

The Members of Parliaments who attended the meeting include: Dr. (Smt.) Mamtaz Sanghamita, Smt. Sakuntala Laguri, Shri Vinod Chavda, Shri Virender Kashyap (All Lok Sabha) and Shri Ahamed Hassan, Shri K.Somaprasad (All Rajya Sabha). Secretary, DEPwD, Ministry of SJ&E Shri N.S. Kang and senior officers of the Ministry were present in the meeting.