FEATURED ARTICLE
A Slow Journey To Inclusivity: Understanding accessibility in India and its complex journey to create an enabled environment by Swapna Menon
Swapna Menon is a Mumbai based freelance feature writer and architect, with published architectural and entrepreneurship stories. She loves extending her time and capacity to inclusion facilitation in diverse groups, and is inspired to raise awareness and action for accessibility needs within her community in India.
T
he latest Indian National Census estimates more than 26.8 million Indians live with disabilities, that’s roughly 2.2% of its population.[1] The World Health Organisation states that 15% of the global population lives with some form of disability. Indian disability activists argue that the actual count of India’s population living with disability lies somewhere between these two estimates. They reiterate that official numbers are grossly under reported and that Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) remain largely an invisible, unheard minority in their country. Why does India, the fifth largest economy in the world, still struggle to provide visibility and the most basic access features to its citizens with disabilities? To grasp these challenges in the Indian context, it is essential to revisit the timeline of economic progress and understand the complexities in creating an accessible environment, in the most populous democracy of the world.
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THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ASSOCIATION OF CONSULTANTS IN ACCESS AUSTRALIA
