Policy Update
Shruti Sethi
Background
Prior to 2015, India’s disability policy was governed by the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 which was a welfare-oriented statute that referenced non-discrimination in access to transport and public spaces but created no enforceable accessibility standards or implementation timeline. India’s ratification of the UNCRPD (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) in 2007, whose Article 9 obligates signatories to ensure accessibility to the physical environment, transport and information, created an international commitment that domestic law had not yet operationalised (PIB, 2024).
The Accessible India Campaign was conceived to close this gap. Launched by Shri Narendra Modi, the honourable Prime Minister of India, on 3 December 2015 under the tagline “Accessible India – Empowered India,” and framed within the Government’s broader “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” development philosophy, it was designed as a nationwide, mission-mode campaign rather than a standalone scheme intended to mobilise central ministries, state governments, public sector undertakings and private actors around common accessibility benchmarks (DEPwD). The 2011 Census had recorded approximately 26.8 million persons with disabilities (2.21% of the population), a figure disability-rights groups have long argued undercounts the true prevalence (MoSPI, 2016).
The campaign’s legal foundation was strengthened the following year when the RPwD (Rights of Persons with Disabilities) Act, 2016 replaced the 1995 Act, and the RPwD Rules, 2017 empowered the Central Government to notify enforceable accessibility standards across sectors, a mechanism the campaign has since used to build out a library of sector-specific guidelines.
Objectives and Architecture
The AIC was structured around three pillars, each with its own targets and lead agencies:
- Built Environment Accessibility: retrofitting and auditing government and public-use buildings including schools, healthcare facilities and workplaces for barrier-free access.
Information and Communication Ecosystem Accessibility: aligning government websites and public documents with international standards (ISO/IEC 40500:2012, based on W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0), expanding the pool of certified sign-language interpreters, and mandating captioning and sign-language
Transportation System Accessibility: making air travel, railways, buses and bus infrastructure usable by persons with disabilities, including ramps, accessible toilets, tactile and auditory aids, and low-floor or retrofitted vehicles. interpretation on public television news. (PIB, 2024)
Early targets, set in 2015, were notably ambitious relative to the machinery available to deliver them: at least 50% of government buildings in state and central capitals were to be made accessible by May 2018, 25% of government public transport by mid-2017, and all A1, A and B-category railway stations and international airports fully accessible by July 2016 (Business Standard, 2015). Sugamya Pustakalaya (a national online library) and Sugamya Bharat App (a crowdsourced reporting app) were also envisaged as citizen-facing tools.
Implementation Timeline: From Deadlines to a Standing Scheme
The campaign’s history is best understood as a series of deadline resets. The original completion target of 2018–19 was missed and by December 2019 the Government acknowledged that targets had slipped by one to three years, setting March 2020 as a revised deadline. That deadline too passed without full completion, and the campaign’s activities continued to be funded, without a fixed end-date, through the accessibility component of SIPDA (Scheme for Implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act). (Economic Times, 2020)
This culminated in a formal institutional shift: as of the most recent official review, the Accessible India Campaign’s original time-bound mandate has been absorbed into the Creation of Barrier-Free Environment scheme under the umbrella of SIPDA. In effect, an initiative launched as a campaign with deadlines has been converted into a continuing departmental scheme, a change the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) has framed positively, as recognition that “accessibility is a continuous endeavour,” but which also removes the political pressure that a hard deadline creates for measurable closure.
A Decade of Implementation: What the Data Shows
DEPwD’s own nine-year review (December 2024) and its ongoing scheme documentation provide the most authoritative recent picture of implementation across the three pillars.
Built Environment
| Indicator | Reported Status |
| Government buildings audited for accessibility | 1,671 (against a target of auditing 25–50 buildings per city across 50 cities) |
| Funds released for retrofitting | ₹562 crore, covering 1,314 buildings |
| Buildings with accessibility features incorporated | 1,748 total (648 State/UT; 1,100 Central, via CPWD) |
Source: PIB, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, “Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan: 9 Years of Driving Inclusivity and Accessibility,” 2 December 2024.
Transportation All 35 international airports and 55 of 69 domestic airports now have ramps, accessible toilets, help-desks and lifts with Braille and auditory systems; aerobridges are available at all international/customs airports.
709 railway stations are reported fully accessible, with a further 4,068 partially accessible out of several thousand stations nationwide.
Of 1,45,747 buses surveyed, only 8,695 (5.96%) are fully accessible and 42,348 (29.05%) partially accessible, meaning roughly two-thirds of the public bus fleet remains without meaningful accessibility features.
Across 24 States/UTs, 3,120 of 3,533 surveyed bus stations have accessibility features. (PIB, 2024)
Digital and Information Accessibility
A national programme to train roughly 10,000 web developers on accessibility, run with
95 Central Government websites made accessible under MeitY’s Content Management Framework, with a further 500 targeted for accessibility remediation.
676 State Government websites made accessible, of which 476 are live.
SATYA, a Chrome-extension accessibility testing tool, has been released to help developers and content managers test compliance with WCAG-aligned standards.
- the National Informatics Centre, is under development. (PIB, 2024)
Sign Language, Education, and Media
- The Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC), established September 2015, has trained over 1,013 individuals, with 183 completing its Diploma in Indian Sign Language Interpretation between 2016–17 and 2023.
- 19 news channels have telecast over 2,447 accessible (captioned/sign-interpreted) news bulletins, and 17 general entertainment channels have broadcast 3,686 accessible programmes and movies, a phased rollout rather than blanket coverage of public broadcasting.
- Curriculum-integration efforts with IIT Kharagpur aim to embed accessibility content into B.Tech, B.Plan and B.Arch programmes, pending review by AICTE. (PIB, 2024)
Sector Standards and Financing
Of 20 identified Central Ministries/Departments required to notify sector-specific accessibility standards under RPwD Rule 15, 13 had done so as of the latest review, with 3 adopting another department’s standards, leaving 4 sectors (Road Transport and Highways bus terminals, Tourism, Information & Broadcasting and Financial Services/Insurance) with guidelines still pending formal notification, some over three years after public consultation concluded.
DEPwD’s budget rose from ₹560 crore (BE) in 2013-14 to ₹1,225.15 crore (BE) in 2023-24, with actual expenditure of ₹1,143.89 crore in 2023-24, the highest in a decade. This reflects sustained, if incremental, fiscal commitment, though the Department’s total outlay remains modest relative to the scale of retrofitting a built environment, transport fleet and digital estate as large as India’s. (PIB, 2024)
International Context: Comparative Approaches
The Accessible India Campaign reflects a broader international shift from viewing disability through a welfare lens to recognising accessibility as a fundamental human right. This transition was driven primarily by the UNCRPD, adopted in 2006 and ratified by India in 2007. Article 9 of the Convention obligates States Parties to ensure persons with disabilities have equal access to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications and other public facilities and services. The Accessible India Campaign was launched partly to operationalise these commitments within India’s domestic policy framework. (UNDESA, “Article 9 – Accessibility”)
At the regional level, the campaign also aligns with the Incheon Strategy to “Make the Right Real” (2013–2022) adopted by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). Goal 3 of the Strategy specifically promotes universal accessibility through measurable targets relating to public infrastructure, transport systems and information and communication technologies. India’s three-pillar architecture covering the built environment, transport and digital accessibility, closely mirrors these regional priorities. (Incheon Strategy, DEPwD, 2012)
Internationally, accessibility policy has increasingly shifted from retrofitting existing infrastructure towards universal design, where accessibility is incorporated at the planning stage rather than added later. Japan provides an illustrative example of this approach. Through the Barrier-Free Act (2006) and the Universal Design 2020 Action Plan (2017), the country has standardised accessibility measures across airports, railway stations and public facilities.
Accessibility features such as tactile paving for persons with visual impairments, wheelchair ramps, elevators, accessible toilets, talking ticket machines and barrier-free public transport have become integral components of urban infrastructure rather than supplementary additions. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games further accelerated these efforts by embedding accessibility standards into sporting venues, hotels and public transport systems, reinforcing the principle of accessibility-by-design. (Japan National Tourism Organization)
Compared with these international models, India’s Accessible India Campaign has made important institutional progress by embedding accessibility within legislation through the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, developing sector-specific standards and expanding accessibility audits.
Critical Analysis: Structural Gaps
Uneven Progress Across Pillars and Geographies: Air travel and railways, which are capital-intensive but centrally administered, show stronger completion rates than buses and bus stations, which are state-administered, more numerous and used
A Pattern of Missed and Diluted Deadlines: The single most consistent feature of the AIC’s first decade is deadline slippage from 2016–18 targets, to the 2019 acknowledgment of one-to-three-year delays, to the March 2020 reset, to the eventual absorption of the campaign into an open-ended scheme with no terminal date. Each reset removed a point of political accountability. Without a published, time-bound roadmap for the remaining work, particularly the four sectors still awaiting notified standards and the fact that, as of March 2020, only 3.6% of the State Road Transport Undertaking bus fleet was fully wheelchair accessible, there is limited external pressure to complete implementation rather than continue extending timelines. (Economic Times, 2020) disproportionately by lower-income and rural populations.
This uneven pattern risks entrenching a two-tier accessibility landscape in which urban, higher-income and interstate travellers benefit first, while last-mile and rural mobility – arguably more central to daily independence – lags furthest behind. A 2024 CAG audit of Karnataka’s state transport corporations found that the statutorily required committee of disabled persons had never been constituted to advise on accessibility in transport infrastructure planning, and that lift-mechanism retrofits were not technically feasible on the existing high-floor bus fleet (CAG, 2024) — a concrete instance of the structural, rather than merely financial, barriers to bus accessibility that the national bus-fleet figures alone do not reveal.
Digital Accessibility Lags Despite Clear Standards: Unlike the built environment, where retrofitting is capital-intensive and time-intensive, digital accessibility relies on an internationally settled standard (WCAG 2.0). That only a few hundred of India’s several thousand government websites have been certified accessible after a decade suggests the constraint is less about standard-setting than about departmental compliance incentives, procurement practices for new government websites, and auditor capacity, issues within the government’s direct control to a greater degree than physical retrofitting.
Enforcement and Grievance Redress Remain Weak: While the RPwD Act, 2016 and its Rules create a legal basis for accessibility standards, penalties for non-compliance are rarely invoked and the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities’ enforcement powers remain largely recommendatory. Crowdsourced audit initiatives (the Sugamya Bharat App, the APD partnership) generate valuable data on where barriers exist (PIB, 2026), but their value depends on whether flagged issues are acted upon within a defined timeframe and by an accountable authority, a feedback loop that current public disclosures do not clearly document.
Data, Monitoring and Independent Verification: Progress figures are self-reported by the implementing department, and independent, third-party verification of claimed accessibility (as opposed to audits conducted and reported by the same agencies responsible for delivery) remains limited. The shift toward citizen-sourced audit data through the APD MoU is a step toward independent verification but its evidentiary status relative to official audit figures and how discrepancies would be reconciled, is not yet clearly defined in public documentation.
A rare instance of independent verification does exist at state level: a 2024 CAG performance audit of Karnataka’s implementation of the RPwD Act found that of ₹27.09 crore released to the state for building accessibility between 2018 and 2023, only ₹8.44 crore had been utilised to provide accessibility features to 18 buildings, with ₹2.60 crore remaining unspent as of May 2023 (CAG, 2024). Where such independent audits exist, they surface implementation gaps considerably starker than DEPwD’s own aggregate national figures suggest, reinforcing the case for extending this kind of scrutiny nationally rather than relying on department self-reporting alone.
Disability-Inclusive Design Beyond Physical Access: The campaign’s built-environment and transport metrics predominantly track features suited to physical and visual disabilities (ramps, tactile paths, Braille signage). Accessibility for persons with intellectual, developmental, psychosocial and multiple disabilities requiring different design considerations such as sensory-friendly spaces, simplified communication formats and cognitive accessibility, features far less prominently in reported metrics, suggesting the campaign’s operational definition of “accessibility” may still be narrower than the UNCRPD’s broader vision.
State-level audit data bears this out: a 2024 CAG review of public libraries in Karnataka found that over 88% lacked accessible toilets and furniture, while 74% provided no services at all for persons with intellectual disabilities, and 47% lacked accessible media formats (CAG, 2024). Even where physical retrofitting is comparatively more advanced, accommodation for intellectual disabilities lags furthest behind, illustrating how the campaign’s operational notion of accessibility still skews toward mobility and sensory impairments over cognitive ones.
Policy Recommendations
Publish a time-bound completion roadmap for the remaining transport and built-environment targets, with sector-wise, state-wise milestones and public dashboards restoring the accountability function that open-ended scheme status has diluted. The bus fleet warrants the most urgent attention: fewer than 6% of surveyed buses are fully accessible and a further 29% only partially so, meaning roughly two-thirds remain without meaningful accessibility features.
Prioritise bus and bus-station accessibility financing, given its disproportionate impact on rural and lower-income users. Funding should be made conditional on states actually constituting the disabled-persons advisory committees required by law to guide transport infrastructure planning. A 2024 CAG audit found these committees had never been formed at Karnataka’s state transport corporations, meaning buses and bus stations are being planned without the input the law requires.
Fast-track the four pending sector-specific standards (road transport terminals, tourism, broadcasting, financial services), which have been in consultation for over three years, and set a hard notification deadline. The case for prioritising tourism is now concrete: the same CAG audit found Karnataka’s state tourism policies for 2015–20 and 2020–25 made no reference to accessibility at all.
Set a hard remediation deadline and dedicated budget line for the several thousand already-existing non-compliant government websites, rather than concentrating digital-accessibility requirements on new launches alone. Since digital accessibility relies on an internationally settled standard (WCAG 2.0) rather than capital-intensive retrofitting, the persistence of this backlog after a decade points to compliance incentives and auditor capacity as the binding constraint, not technical difficulty.
Strengthen enforcement by empowering the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities with clearer, time-bound remedial powers and mandatory public reporting of action taken on crowdsourced complaints filed via the Sugamya Bharat App and partner platforms.
Extend CAG-style state performance audits to all states on a rolling schedule, and publish methodology alongside results. In Karnataka, this kind of independent audit surfaced unspent accessibility funds, incomplete buildings, and the never formed disability advisory committees that national self-reported figures did not show – evidence that independent verification, not merely more departmental self-reporting, is what closes the credibility gap.
Broaden accessibility metrics to explicitly track provisions for intellectual, psychosocial and multiple disabilities, not solely mobility and visual impairment, in line with the UNCRPD’s full scope. The scale of this gap is not hypothetical: a 2024 CAG review of Karnataka’s public libraries found 74% offered no services at all for persons with intellectual disabilities, even as physical retrofitting of toilets and furniture proceeded further.
Link new government website launches and major infrastructure tenders to mandatory pre-certified accessibility compliance, shifting from retrofit-after-the-fact to accessibility-by-design as the default. This shift is overdue: the same CAG audit found that Detailed Project Reports under the AMRUT urban infrastructure scheme in Karnataka did not incorporate accessibility features at the design stage at all.
Conclusion
The Accessible India Campaign has been consequential in establishing accessibility as a recognised, funded, and institutionally embedded policy objective in India, a marked change from the pre-2015 landscape. It has built durable infrastructure for progress: audit protocols, a growing auditor cadre, sign-language training capacity, sector standards and increasingly, participatory and crowdsourced monitoring tools. These are not small achievements for a country of India’s scale and diversity.
However, a decade after launch, the campaign’s own record – missed deadlines pushed back three times, a bus fleet still overwhelmingly inaccessible, digital accessibility trailing well behind settled international standards and its recent absorption into an open-ended scheme without a terminal date, suggests that the harder work of enforcement, equitable geographic distribution and independent verification still lies ahead. Whether Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan becomes remembered as the campaign that made accessibility an enforceable right or as a long-running scheme whose targets kept receding will depend less on new announcements than on whether existing commitments are finally closed out against clear, public, time-bound benchmarks.
References
- Business Standard. 2015. Accessible India Campaign to achieve universal accessibility for persons with disabilities launched National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities presented
- Comptroller and Auditor General of India. 2024. Compliance/Performance Audit on Implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 — Government of Karnataka, Chapter 3: Accessibility.
- Department of Economic and Social Affairs. United Nations. Article 9 – Accessibility
https://social.desa.un.org/issues/disability/crpd/article-9-accessibility
- Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India. “Accessible India Campaign (AIC).”
depwd.gov.in/en/accessible-india-campaign/
- Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. 2012. Incheon Strategy to “Make the Right Real” for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific
- Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO). Breaking Down Barriers: Advances in Barrier-Free Technology and Design Make Tokyo 2020 Accessible for Everyone
- Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. 2016. Disabled Persons in India: A statistical profile 2016.
- Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment. “Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan: 9 Years of Driving Inclusivity and Accessibility.” 2 December 2024. pib.gov.in, Release ID 2079826. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2079826®=48&lang=2
- Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment. 25 March 2026. Crowd Sourcing Accessibility: DEPwD and APD Join Hands to Turn Every Citizen into an Accessibility Auditor.
https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2245169®=3&lang=2
The Economic Times. 2020. Fresh deadline for accessible India drive set to March 2020, targets missed by 1 to 3 yrs
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/fresh-deadline-for-accessible-india-drive-set-to-march-2020-targets-missed-by-1-to-3-yrs/articleshow/73003269.cms?from=mdr
About The ContributorShruti Sethi is a Research & Editorial Intern at IMPRI. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata. Her research interests include Gender & Labour Economics.
Acknowledgement
The author extends her sincere gratitude to the IMPRI team for their expert guidance and constructive feedback throughout the process.
Reviewed by Vaishnavi Nandekar and Rakhi Kumari.
Disclaimer
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.
Read More at IMPRI:
India – Norway’s Strategic Partnership in Trade, Sustainability and Innovation.
