Lack of accessibility for persons with disabilities once again comes to fore

New Delhi: Even as 22-year-old Shrishti Pandey on Sunday highlighted how she has been denied access to public spaces simply owing to the fact that she uses a wheelchair, the incident where she was denied entry at a posh Gurugram restaurant once again brought to the fore how cities, even in the NCR, continue to deny access to public spaces for the differently-abled.

Speaking to mediapersons on Sunday, Pandey said, "This is not the first time. I have been denied access to schools & educational institutions in general, several other places & now it's eatery as well. It's like no one wants me anywhere at all."

And while cities like Gurugram, Delhi and Noida completely lack supportive infrastructure for those differently-abled to access public services, little is done by authorities to expedite the process.

In fact, this was highlighted last year when the Delhi High Court ordered the Delhi government to conduct a full-fledged social disability audit of public infrastructures like footpaths, buses and bus stops to see if they are accessible for the differently-abled person.

Moreover, the High Court had asked district officials to test infrastructure like footpaths by themselves using a wheelchair and seeing how easy it is to use them. It had also mentioned that the Delhi government must be responsible for designing public spaces in a way that differently-abled persons are independently able to use them with ease.

While the Delhi government has planned to introduce wheelchair-accessible buses in its fleet, activists have said that most of the buses do not have this feature working. Reports from 2018 and 2019 show that most buses in Delhi remain inaccessible for wheelchair-using passengers with activists saying most public transportation is out of bounds for the differently-abled and this stems largely from poor planning.

For instance, while the Metro infrastructure is largely accessible for differently-abled persons, there is no friendly infrastructure that helps them reach the Metro stations in the first place. The most last-mile connectivity transport is e-rickshaws which are yet to be made wheelchair-accessible and of course the problem is heightened when persons with disabilities are not even able to use footpaths simply due to the lack of ramps.

Activists have also highlighted that a major problem that has contributed to cities being developed in such a manner is the lack of representation of differently-abled persons in the city planning teams, which allows administrations to ignore the needs of these residents.