ANNOUNCEMENTS
Delhi has 2.34 lakh disabled population constituting 1.4% of its total population. About 72.1% of them are hearing, locomotive, seeing disabled along with other disabilities. In the last three decades, various legislations have been enacted in India to strengthen the Rights and participation of persons with disabilities in society. Though earlier, the ambit of legislations only focused majorly on treatment and care of the disabled, the new legislation, Rights of persons with disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016 focused on overall development and empowerment of persons with disabilities through utilizing ICT techniques and improvement of built environment towards the goal of inclusive socio-economic development. As built environment plays a crucial role in providing equal opportunities, social interaction, and independent life to everyone including persons with disabilities, it is important that urban planning should be done in a way that it is disabled inclusive and barrier free so that persons with disabilities also have access to every opportunity equally. Therefore, this study through a case study of Central Delhi and New Delhi assesses the accessibility for persons with disabilities in public buildings with a quantitative methodological framework and analysis based on indicators collected from the Harmonised Guidelines, 2016. In conclusion the study explains various gaps in the existing accessibility condition in the selected public buildings indicator-wise giving grading scores and recommends certain policy/regulatory interventions for effective implementation of the provisions the frameworks to enhance accessibility for persons with disabilities.
Keywords: Persons with disabilities, Built Environment, Rights of persons with disabilities Act, 2016, Accessibility, Public building.
