With an aim to make public spaces disabled-friendly and accessible to all, Svayam Foundation recently began the 'Accessible India Campaign'. According to the foundation, the aim of the initiative is to make stakeholders of public spaces come together to make sure that such spaces are made accessible to people from all age groups.
While the foundation surveyed over 51 public spaces in Mumbai, on January 26, they joined hands with H-west ward of the BMC to reclaim an open space in Bandra as a part of their pilot project. Speaking about the project, Sminu Jindal, founder, said, "It is an initiative to make public spaces accessible for people belonging to all age group, gender and physical capabilities.It is important that public spaces must be clean and accessible for citizens. There were over 200 parameters while conducting the survey but the main parameters included parking facility, entrance, corridor space and accessibility of washrooms for the disabled."
According to the survey, none of the buildings audited in the city have exclusive parking bays reserved for persons with disabilities, 96 per cent of buildings do not have an accessible toilet, 80 per cent of the buildings don't have the ideal infrastructure as per the accessibility standards of BMC.
With help from civic authorities, the foundation wants to make 71 public spaces accessible for all age group before August 15. The pilot project in Bandra has recieved a good response so far from citizens and civic authorities as well. "We are happy to get a good response from the BMC to make this a reality. It is important to create awareness about accessibility among citizens. We will be asking local citizen groups to come forward and support the civic authority to make this project successful. Soon the initiative will begin in other parts of the city as well," added Jindal.
Speaking about how social media is helping them to spread the word,she said, "We ran a social media campaign for six days in the first week of December with the hashtag #Accessibility4All. It created a large viewer impression in six days. Social media is helping us to make it a movement among the citizens."
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