Why India Still Fails Its Accessibility Law
- BerryBeat Team
- 4 days ago
- 12 min read
A ramp outside a public building is not charity. A working lift in a railway station is not a favour. Braille signage, accessible toilets, tactile paths, low-floor buses, audible crossing signals and barrier-free courtrooms are not gestures of goodwill. They are legal duties.
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 was written in the language of obligation. It says the state shall ensure accessibility. It does not ask public authorities to try when convenient, or to improve access when budgets permit. It creates a right, and then asks the machinery of government to build the world that makes that right real.
Nearly a decade later, India’s accessibility failure is not a mystery. The law did not fail because architects forgot ramps or transport departments did not know buses could be made accessible. It failed because the command of Parliament was softened into guidance, pushed into campaigns, diluted through audits, and delayed through extensions.
That is the central scandal. The country did not lack an accessibility law. It lacked the will to treat that law as binding.
This essay is public commentary on law and policy, not legal advice.
The law used the word shall, but the system heard may
The RPWD Act 2016 was not India’s first disability law, but it marked a shift in ambition. It expanded the recognised categories of disability. It aligned India more closely with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Most of all, it treated accessibility as a condition of equality, not as an optional welfare measure.
Accessibility under the Act is not limited to a ramp at the front gate. It includes the built environment, transport, information, communication systems and services open to the public. The idea is simple, but powerful: a person should not need personal influence, private money or exceptional endurance to enter a school, file a case, ride a bus, visit a hospital, cross a road or attend a public hearing.
The Act’s language matters. In law, shall is not decorative. It signals compulsion. When a statute says the government shall take steps to ensure accessibility, it creates a legal duty. Rules made under that law are supposed to carry the duty forward. They cannot quietly replace obligation with aspiration.
Yet that is exactly what happened.
In November 2024, the Supreme Court in Rajive Raturi versus Union of India examined Rule 15 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Rules. That rule was meant to operationalise accessibility standards. The Court found that it did not speak in the same mandatory voice as the Act. It used softer words, including “recommend” and “may”. The result was a rule that treated accessibility standards less like enforceable duties and more like suggestions.
The Court struck down Rule 15 as ultra vires, meaning beyond the authority of the parent Act. If Parliament mandates accessibility, delegated rules cannot turn that mandate into advice. The Court gave the government three months to frame binding rules.
That judgment exposed a deep problem in India’s disability accessibility law in India. The gap was not only between law and practice. It was between the Act and the rules that were supposed to give the Act force.
The difference may sound technical. It is not. For a wheelchair user facing a flight of steps, “recommended” means no entry. For a blind commuter at an unsafe crossing, “may provide audible signals” means danger. For a person with an invisible disability asked to prove their existence again and again, soft law becomes daily humiliation.
Rights disappear when the grammar of enforcement changes.
The Accessible India Campaign became a story of shifting deadlines
The Accessible India Campaign was launched in 2015 with a promise that sounded measurable. Half of government buildings in every state capital were to be made accessible by 2018. The target had shape. It had a deadline. It carried the moral weight of a public pledge.
Then the deadline moved.
It moved to 2020. Then it moved again to June 2022. By mid-2026, barely over 1,700 buildings had been audited against a target spread across fifty cities. That figure is more than an administrative update. It is a measure of how slowly the state moved even when it knew what had to be counted, inspected and fixed.
The bus system tells the same story. As recently as 2020, only 3.6% of state buses were accessible against a 25% target. Each inaccessible bus is not merely a transport statistic. It is a missed job interview, a delayed hospital visit, a college class skipped, a public office left unreachable, a vote made harder than it should be.
The Accessible India Campaign was designed to make access visible as a national mission. In one sense, it succeeded. It gave India a vocabulary of audits, targets, retrofitting and universal design. It helped move accessibility from the margins of welfare departments into public discussion.
But the campaign model also revealed its own limits. A campaign can mobilise. It can publicise. It can create dashboards and reviews. It cannot substitute for enforcement.
A right cannot depend on a campaign mood.
When targets are missed without consequence, deadlines become soft furniture in the policy room. Everyone knows they can be moved. Each extension is described as practical, but repeated extensions change the character of the promise. What began as a mandate becomes a moving goalpost.
That is why the government’s own numbers matter so much. They show that this was not ignorance. Public authorities were not unaware of inaccessible buildings. They had audits, targets and timelines. Money was budgeted. Files moved. Reviews took place.
Still, non-compliance continued.
When the state audits non-compliance but does not meaningfully punish it, the audit becomes a record of tolerance.
This is the heart of India’s accessibility failure. It is not that the law has been invisible. It is that violation has been visible and survivable.
The Supreme Court named the legal fiction
The significance of Rajive Raturi lies in the Court’s willingness to name what had gone wrong. It did not merely scold the state for poor implementation. Courts have done that many times across many welfare and rights contexts. This judgment went closer to the source.
The bench found that Rule 15 did not carry the force required by the RPWD Act. The rule framed accessibility through a non-mandatory vocabulary. That meant authorities could treat compliance as desirable rather than compulsory.
This matters because the structure of Indian governance often hides failure behind procedure. A department can say it issued guidelines. A local body can say an audit is pending. A transport agency can say procurement norms are being reviewed. A public works department can say retrofitting has been planned. Each statement sounds like progress. Together, they can delay rights for years.
The Court cut through that comfort. If the Act creates a right, the rules must create enforceable standards. If a building must be accessible, a department cannot be left to decide whether accessibility is “feasible” in the abstract. If a bus fleet is to be made accessible, procurement cannot remain neutral between inclusive and exclusionary vehicles.
The judgment also carried an uncomfortable institutional mirror. Even the Supreme Court needed an internal review of its own premises before confirming that the court adjudicating these rights was itself accessible. That fact should not be treated as an embarrassment to be hidden. It should be treated as a democratic lesson.
Accessibility is not something one institution grants to another. It is a discipline every institution must apply to itself.
Courts, legislatures, ministries, municipal bodies, universities, police stations, hospitals, museums, parks and public transport systems all sit inside the same constitutional promise. They cannot claim moral authority over disability rights while leaving their own corridors, forms, toilets, websites and service counters unusable.
The delay after the judgment adds another layer. The Court ordered binding rules within three months. Twenty months passed before draft amendment rules were gazetted in July 2026. As this piece goes to press, those rules remain in draft.
This delay is not a footnote. It shows how even judicial urgency can be absorbed into administrative time. The machine can receive a constitutional command and still process it slowly, cautiously and without visible fear.
For persons with disabilities, that slowness is not abstract. It is paid for in dependence, lost income, lost education, higher travel costs, injuries, stress and exclusion from public life.
India’s enforcement model still waits for the injured person to complain
India counts 2.68 crore persons with disabilities in the 2011 Census, a number many researchers consider an undercount. That figure sits uneasily beside another reality: fewer than 40% hold the Unique Disability ID that the state increasingly requires before acknowledging their disability.
The gap matters. If people cannot obtain documents easily, they cannot access entitlements smoothly. If the state recognises disability only after a long certification process, rights become conditional on paperwork. A person’s body, impairment, access need and exclusion are not enough. The file must agree.
Documentation has a role. It can help deliver schemes and prevent arbitrary denial. But when the document becomes the doorway to recognition, the state risks mistaking its database for reality.
This is a wider problem in disability rights India. Enforcement often depends on the person facing exclusion having the time, money, support and stamina to complain. If a public building has no ramp, someone must object. If the objection fails, someone must escalate. If the authority delays, someone must litigate. If the court orders compliance, someone must monitor it. The burden keeps returning to the person already excluded.
The United States offers a useful contrast, though not a perfect model. Its disability rights framework is enforced in part through thousands of lawsuits each year. That has created its own debates, including concerns about excessive litigation in some contexts. But it has also made non-compliance risky. Businesses, universities and public agencies know that inaccessible design can bring legal action.
India’s model has relied far more on official audits, review meetings, circulars and extended deadlines. This approach can work only if non-compliance carries consequences. Without consequences, it rewards delay. An inaccessible building can remain in public use while awaiting funds. A bus fleet can continue operating while future procurement is discussed. A railway station can remain difficult to navigate while improvements are rolled into phases.
The person excluded today is told to wait for the next phase.
That is not enforcement. It is postponement.
A rights-based system would ask different questions.
Who approved an inaccessible building plan?
Who certified completion despite non-compliance?
Which budget line covers retrofitting?
Which officer is responsible for delay?
What happens when a public authority misses a statutory deadline?
Can affected persons get swift remedies without years of litigation?
Are accessibility audits public, searchable and linked to corrective action?
These questions move the issue from sympathy to accountability. They also prevent accessibility from being reduced to architecture alone.
A ramp is a structure. Accessibility is a system.
A ramp that is too steep is exclusion with concrete poured over it. A lift that does not work is an inaccessible staircase by another name. A toilet marked accessible but locked for storage is a legal insult. A website that cannot be read by screen readers turns online governance into another closed door. A tactile path blocked by vehicles teaches blind pedestrians that design without maintenance is theatre.
Accessibility must be designed, funded, inspected, maintained and enforced. Miss any one of those stages and the right weakens.
The cost argument is weaker than it sounds
The usual defence of delay is money. India has too many old buildings, too many transport systems, too many competing needs and too little public money. Accessibility, this argument says, must be phased in gradually.
There is some truth here. Retrofitting old structures can be complex. Smaller municipalities may lack technical capacity. Public transport replacement cycles take time. Rural and semi-urban areas face different built environment challenges from large metros.
But the cost argument collapses when it becomes a permanent excuse.
First, many access failures are not expensive. Clear signage, uncluttered pathways, working handrails, accessible counters, priority seating, audio announcements, staff training and usable grievance systems do not require grand capital projects. They require administrative seriousness.
Second, inaccessible design creates costs of its own. When a person cannot use public transport, they may pay more for private transport or stay home. When a school is inaccessible, education is interrupted. When a health facility cannot be entered independently, care is delayed. When courts and government offices are inaccessible, justice and citizenship become costly.
Third, retrofitting is often expensive because accessibility was ignored at the design stage. The cheapest time to build access is before construction. Every inaccessible new building is a future budget burden created by present negligence.
This point should anger taxpayers, not only disability rights advocates. Public money builds a school twice when the first version excludes. Public money modifies a station after opening because universal design was treated as optional. Public money funds audits that confirm what users already knew.
The public pays for exclusion, then pays again to correct it.
There is also a deeper ethical problem. Societies routinely find money for signals of prestige: flyovers, beautification projects, ceremonial gates, large events, new administrative complexes and technology platforms. Access is then asked to justify itself line by line.
A democracy should not make disabled citizens prove that entry is affordable.
The question is not whether India can afford accessibility. The question is why exclusion has been cheaper for public authorities than compliance.
Optional rules produce optional citizenship
The phrase “barrier-free access” can sound technical, but its absence shapes citizenship. A person who cannot board a bus cannot move through the city on equal terms. A student who cannot enter a classroom cannot enjoy the right to education in full. A lawyer who cannot access a courtroom cannot practise equally. A voter who cannot reach a booth without indignity does not experience universal franchise in the same way.
This is why the dilution of mandatory language matters so much. Words like “may” and “recommend” do not stay on paper. They appear as stairs without ramps, counters too high to use, forms without accessible formats, hearings without sign language interpretation, crossings without audio signals and toilets built for inspection rather than use.
Optional rules produce optional citizenship.
The answer is not merely more compassion. Compassion is unstable. It depends on the mood of the official, the patience of the clerk, the sensitivity of the engineer, the kindness of a stranger. Rights exist because dignity cannot depend on mood.
India needs a harder architecture of enforcement.
That means binding accessibility standards under the RPWD Act, with no escape through suggestive wording. It means public procurement rules that refuse inaccessible buses, trains, software, kiosks and buildings. It means building permissions and completion certificates tied to access compliance. It means regular public reporting that names non-compliant authorities, not just sectors.
It also means remedies that move faster than constitutional litigation. A person should not need to reach the Supreme Court to enforce a ramp. District and state disability authorities must have real power, adequate staff and the ability to order correction within fixed timelines. Courts should remain available, but they cannot be the only route to access.
Civil society has a role, but it should not be forced to carry the whole system. Disability rights organisations, access auditors, lawyers, urban planners and disabled citizens have already done immense work documenting barriers. The next stage must shift the burden back to the state.
The state built the inaccessible system. The state must repair it.
The next deadline must be different from the last one
India does not need another symbolic accessibility deadline that can be extended without consequence. It needs a compliance culture that treats exclusion as a breach of law.
The draft amendment rules gazetted in July 2026 will matter because they can restore the mandatory force that Rule 15 lacked. But stronger text alone will not be enough. India already has a history of strong Acts weakened by weak rules, weak implementation and weak accountability.
The next phase should be judged by practical tests.
Can a disabled person enter a government hospital without calling ahead for help? Can they board ordinary public buses, not just a few model vehicles displayed at events? Can they file a police complaint, attend court, use a public toilet, cross a road, read a government website and travel between offices without being treated as an exception?
Can an inaccessible public building continue to function without a time-bound correction order? Can a new public project receive approval if it violates accessibility standards? Can officials ignore missed targets without explanation?
If the answer remains yes, the law remains fragile.
An inspirational politics of accessibility is still possible in India, but it must be honest about power. Access is not a request made by a minority. It is the design basis of a democratic society. Everyone moves through dependency at some point: as children, as injured workers, as pregnant people, as older persons, as patients, as citizens carrying luggage, strollers or illness. Universal design is not a concession to a few. It is public infrastructure at its most intelligent.
Yet disability rights must not be defended only because accessibility helps everyone. That argument is useful, but incomplete. Persons with disabilities are entitled to access because they are equal citizens, not because ramps also help delivery workers and elderly passengers.
The law already recognised that truth in 2016. The missing ramp was never missing because nobody knew how to build one. It was missing because a mandatory right was filtered through optional governance.
The task now is to end that fiction.
India has the statute. It has the court ruling. It has the audits. It has the numbers. It has the lived testimony of crores of disabled people who navigate exclusion daily. What it needs is the courage to make non-compliance costly, visible and unacceptable.
A country that can count inaccessible buildings can fix them. A state that can extend a deadline can enforce one. A legal system that can identify the word “may” as unlawful must now defend the meaning of shall.
The promise of accessibility is not a ramp at the edge of a staircase. It is the right to arrive without asking permission.
