Amidst the coronavirus scare, the Centre seems to have forgotten the people with disabilities (PwDs) as it is yet to make all its information and circulars/advisories related to Covid-19 in a format that is easily accessible to them.
Waking up to this need of the sector, the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry has now written to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to make the awareness material in braille for blind people and in sign language video/tapes for deaf and dumb people.
The Ministry has also asked the Union Health Ministry to ensure medical treatment on priority basis to the sector, in case they are inflicted with the virus, as envisaged under the Rule 25 of the Rights of People with Disabilities Act 2016.
In a letter to all the State Chief Secretaries recently, Shakuntala Doley Gamlin, Union secretary (Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry) drew their attention stating that the information in regard to the Coronavirus that has infected over 3,0000 and killed over 14,000 is very often not accessible by the PwDs.
As such they remain unaware of the safety measures to be taken by them to deal with the situation even though it has been proven that they face increased risk of getting infected and developing more severe cases of COVID-19.
The virus can be kept at bay by following simple hygiene measures like washing hands with soaps and usage of hand sanitisers.
Taking stringent view of the gaps, Gamlin reminded the States about the RPwDs Act 2016 that envisages dissemination of all information in accessible format both print and electronically.
Rule 15 of the Rights of the PWD rules clearly mandate that all the websites must be made accessible in accordance with guidelines for governments websites as adopted by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances and all public domain documents to be uploaded in the website either in the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or ePUB (ebook file format) format, she said.
Gamlin asserted that immediate steps need to be taken to make all the publicity material related to COVID 19 accessible in print material in braille and audio tapes, videographic material with sub titles and sign language interpretation for the sector.