The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 guarantees to every disabled person a large bouquet of rights and entitlements. But the reality that disabled persons confront in their everyday lives is far removed from the law’s progressive vision. The Supreme Court judgment in Avni Prakash v. National Testing Agency (2021) is emblematic of this gap. As the appellant’s answer book during an exam was snatched away, due to the testing authority’s confusion and the centre’s callousness, she did not get an hour of extra time to which she was legally entitled. The Court had to remind the competent authorities about their duty to provide her reasonable accommodation and inclusive education. Against this backdrop, the draft accessibility guidelines and standards for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and Universities released by the University Grants Commission (UGC) are a welcome intervention.
A procedural flaw
The way in which the guidelines were released, however, left much to be desired. The public notice preceding the guidelines was inaccessible to persons with visual disabilities. This was because the notice appears to have been printed and poorly scanned. If the document had been a digital document, authenticated by the digital signature of the competent authority, it would have been fully accessible. Worse still, the same problem was seen late last year in the public notice released by the Union Home Ministry with respect to its guidelines on creating disabled-friendly infrastructure and the guidelines released by the Civil Aviation Ministry on making air travel more disabled-friendly.
