Bangalore – Our City – Concerns of Persons with disability

C. Mahesh

Bangalore Urban has a population of 56 lakhs and of this an estimated 4% population are persons with disabilities – people who find difficulty in walking, seeing, hearing or have intellectual impairments.

Most often persons with disabilities (belonging to all age groups, men and women) are generally home bound and excluded from participating actively in society – like going to school, college, professional training, going to a hotel, playground, getting employed in the mainstream.

The major factors preventing us from participating are –

• Attitudes of our family and society – that they need to be taken care and a financial burden
• Accompanying this is the fact that – lack of physical access to schools, colleges, workplace, inability to use the public transport, lack of access to information

Build external spaces like footpath, bus-stand, road crossings and internal environments of public spaces like Govt. offices, workspaces, toilets – needs to be safe, where people can move about independently and without restrictions. – An environment for all.

All includes people with joint pains, respiratory ailments, pregnant women, children, senior citizens, people who are temporarily disabled due to accidents. In Bangalore city alone there are 6000-7000 accidents per year, 800-900 accidents are fatal, 60-70% people suffer head injuries resulting in deaths and varying levels of disability.

Each one of us are going to get old when we will not be able to walk as fast as we could, hear or see as sharply as it is today. All these people put together form more than 40% of our population.

Can a country like us to afford to lose the productivity of 40% of our population? Not only that we are also talking about the family who due to the present circumstances are also not free to earn a livelihood.

The time has come to create barrier-free environments where all people can to a great extent move freely, independently without restrictions.

The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (Bangalore City Corporation) has amended the building bye laws in April 20003 – which is applicable for all public and semi public buildings having covered area of 300 sqm.

PART IV: SCHEDULE XI on “STRUCTURAL DESIGN AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS”; Bye-law No: 31.0 – “FACILITIES FOR PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED PERSONS”

Some of the points extracted are –

1. Approach to plinth level: At least one entrance shall have approach through a ramp.  The ramp shall have a minimum width of 1.80 metre with maximum gradient of 1:10
2. The doors shall have a minimum width of 900 mm, to facilitate the free movement of wheel chairs
3. The minimum width of corridors shall be 1.80 m
4. Staircases: The minimum width of staircases shall be 1.50 metres
5. Toilets: One special water closet in a set of toilets shall be provided for the use of handicapped persons
6. Hand rails: Hand rails shall be provided for ramps, staircases, lifts and toilets. 
7. Guiding/Warning floor material: The floor material to guide or to warn the visually impaired persons with a change of colour or material with conspicuously different texture and easily distinguishable from the rest of the surrounding floor materials is called guiding or warning floor material. 
8. Proper signage: Appropriate identification of specific facilities within a building for the handicapped persons should be done with proper signages.

Some of the points that can be considered for the external environments could include:

1. Audio signals at pedestrian crossing – beeps when it is green – assists person with visual impairment to cross the road safely.
2. Footpaths with guiding/ warning floor material – so that person with visual impairments does not bump into any obstacles or walk into a gutter.
3. Kerb ramps at Walkways and Pedestrian Crossings – make life easy for wheelchair users and people using crutches.
4. Barrier-free access for persons with disabilities in public toilets for men and women
5. Barrier-free access in parks

The need of the hour it to enforce the implementation of a ‘barrier-free’ environment – conducting access audits by appointed person in the city corporation and citizens - when buildings are constructed – apartments are built and when super structures to modernize the city are implemented – be it flyovers or subways or enhancing the city public transport system.

Come let us joint to create an environment for ALL

Where all the citizens are able to live with respect and dignity

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