CHENNAI: The Railway Boardhas decided to replace the words 'blind,' 'deaf and dumb' and 'physically challenged' from concession forms with new words to describe the nature of disability. This was indicated in a policy circular dated January 12, which was released recently.
NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Railways has made formal changes in concession certificate issued to people with disabilities clearly listing out how they be addressed.
The move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s suggestion in 2015 that persons with disabilities be addressed as ‘divyangs’ (divine bodies) instead of ‘viklang’. Interestingly, it took the Railways almost two years to formally make the changes in travel concession forms issued to people with disabilities.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the government and civic bodies here to submit details of all government offices and public buildings which are not disabled friendly.
A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar gave the order after it was told that while new buildings are disabled friendly, most of the old buildings, including hospitals, are not.
Patients suffering from thalassemia, hemophilia, sickle cell disease etc will soon start getting disability certificate from designated government hospitals which were earlier denied to them for lack of guidelines.
The Union ministry of social justice and empowerment has framed guidelines for the assessment of those disabilities which were added for the first time in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
Afew weeks ago, Labour’s shadow disabilities minister needed to give a parliamentary response to the government’s proposals for its new work and health programme. But the MP in question, Marsha de Cordova, couldn’t read it. This MP for Battersea in south London is registered blind and needs all documents in large print.
The Supreme Court has come out with a series of directions to ensure that public infrastructure is accessible to differently-abled persons and ordered that the June 2019 deadline set by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 to make all government buildings providing public services made fully accessible to them be strictly adhered to.
MARGAO
The state government has passed the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 (Central Act), however, the rules are being framed and the file in this regard has been forwarded to the law department, informed Social Welfare Minister Pandurang Madkaikar.
He was speaking as a chief guest at a programme held to commemorate International Day for Persons with Disabilities here, on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court today asked Uttar Pradesh to come up a mechanism for promotion and facilitation of inclusive education, so that students suffering from disability are not kept away from mainstream education. The court sought a reply from the state government on how it would work out the provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, by providing inclusive education in the state.
Visually-impaired people have urged the Election Commission (EC) to make necessary arrangements so that they can have the secret voting right.
At an interaction on election of the House of Representatives and provincial assemblies at Dhulikhel on Tuesday, the visually impaired also drew the EC’s notice to the lack of voter education programmes for the people with disabilities.
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