Noting that 1,755 people in every one lakh population in the country are suffering from disability, Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday called for enabling access to them in built up environment including buildings and workplaces, public transportation and information and communication technology eco-system.

He was speaking at an event here after releasing "Inclusiveness and Accessibility Index" that measures the actions and attitudes of different organisations towards disabled employees and persons.

The Index has been prepared by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in collaboration with the FICCI. It enables the organisations to reflect on their policies and organisational culture in aid and support of differently abled persons, employment of such persons and adaptations to meet the needs of such persons at work places.

The Index based on which organisations can be ranked, encourages them to recruit more disabled persons and give them equal opportunities.

Naidu further said that disabled persons can realise their potential in an enabling environment and called for changes in stigmatised attitudes and responses to disabled persons to make them contribute to different walks of community life.

He pointed out that about 8.40 per cent of rural households and 6.10 per cent of urban households were reported to have at least one disabled person. The Minister further noted that about 47 per cent of the disabled were never married and about 55 percent illiterate. "These statistics suggest that society's inadequate and improper responses to the disabled persons make their lives more difficult and challenging" he said.

To facilitate measurement of the index, a questionnaire has been designed to assess an organisation's standing on the I&A index. The questionnaire is designed to enable the accessor to give appropriate ratings to individual organizations that choose to be assessed, said Mukesh Jain, Joint Secretary, DEPwDs, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.