In a compelling open letter dated February 24, 2026, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, distinguished disability rights researcher Nilesh Singit challenges the notion of "AI for All" amid India's ambitious AI push. Referencing the India AI Impact Summit 2026's sign language AI demonstration and a recent Moneylife article on technoableism, Singit highlights how AI systems absorb societal biases, scaling exclusion for persons with disabilities through default designs that overlook diverse needs. He calls for proactive measures: embedding accessibility standards, conducting disability impact assessments, auditing datasets for bias, and including disability expertise in AI governance bodies. Drawing from lived experience and aligned with the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and UNCRPD obligations, the letter urges structural inclusion over symbolic gestures to align technological leadership with social justice. For deeper insights into disability bias in AI, visit The Bias Pipeline.
Thursday, 26 February 2026
Saturday, 21 February 2026
Designing for Everyone Is Not a Slogan: What Recent Indian Developments Mean for the Built Environment
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| The Continuous Path: Systemic Inclusion in Modern Architecture |
In recent years, conversations around accessibility in India have become more visible. Institutions speak of inclusion, new developments refer to universal design, and public discourse increasingly acknowledges that the built environment must respond to a wider range of users. Yet visibility alone does not transform experience. Many environments that claim to be inclusive remain difficult to use in practice. The challenge before India is not whether accessibility should exist, but how it should be understood. If it continues to be treated as a matter of compliance or isolated provision, its impact will remain limited. If, however, it is recognised as a design condition — something that shapes how spaces are conceived — then accessibility can fundamentally improve how environments function for everyone.
Recent national discussions, including those that arose in connection with the Rajive Raturi proceedings before the Supreme Court of India and the research initiative Finding Sizes for All developed by the Centre for Disability Studies at NALSAR, have drawn attention to precisely this shift: accessibility must move from token provision to systemic thinking.
This is not a legal transition alone. It is a design transition.
The Limits of “Standard Solutions”
Accessibility is often reduced to a predictable set of features — a ramp, an accessible toilet, a lift, a designated parking space. These elements are necessary, but they are not sufficient. When treated as add-ons, they operate in isolation from the spatial logic of the building.
Consider a large institutional campus. A ramp may exist at the entrance, yet pathways between buildings involve uneven surfaces, long gradients, or unclear direction. A lift may be available, but reaching it requires navigating a confusing sequence of corridors. Facilities may technically meet dimensional standards, yet remain impractical because they are poorly located or disconnected from everyday movement patterns.
The difficulty lies not in the absence of features, but in the absence of continuity.
Standard solutions cannot address environments that are complex, layered, and heavily used. Accessibility must therefore be approached as an organising principle rather than a collection of components.
From Dimensions to Experience
Traditional approaches to accessibility focus on measurements: widths, heights, slopes, and turning radii. These are important, but they describe only the geometry of space, not how space is experienced.
Usability depends on factors that measurements alone cannot resolve:
The distance a person must travel without rest or orientation.
The clarity with which destinations are understood.
The predictability of transitions between indoor and outdoor areas.
The relationship between circulation routes and services.
The ease with which assistance can be sought if required.
An environment may satisfy every prescribed dimension and still be exhausting, disorienting, or exclusionary.
Designing for everyone therefore requires moving beyond the question, “Does it comply?” to the more meaningful one, “Does it work?”
The Indian Built Environment: Scale and Diversity
India presents a uniquely demanding context for accessibility. Developments are often large, multi-functional, and intensely used. Educational campuses accommodate thousands of students; hospitals manage continuous public flow; transport hubs connect diverse populations across long distances.
In such environments, accessibility cannot be inserted retrospectively without creating fragmentation. Each addition risks becoming an isolated adjustment rather than part of a coherent system.
The work emerging from research such as Finding Sizes for All has emphasised that Indian environments must respond to variability — in body types, mobility patterns, climate conditions, and patterns of use. Designing for uniformity in such a context is ineffective; designing for range is essential.
Accessibility as a System, Not an Element
When accessibility is integrated early, it shapes how the entire environment is organised:
Routes are planned as continuous networks rather than disconnected segments.
Entrances align with natural movement rather than requiring detours.
Facilities are placed where they are actually needed.
Landscapes, buildings, and infrastructure function together.
Wayfinding is embedded in spatial clarity rather than dependent on signage alone.
Such integration benefits all users, not only those who identify as persons with disabilities. Older persons, families with children, temporary injuries, and even those carrying luggage experience the environment differently when it is designed with range in mind.
Accessibility, in this sense, becomes synonymous with good planning.
Why Retrofitting Cannot Deliver the Same Outcome
Retrofitting remains necessary for older structures, but it is inherently constrained. Once a building’s structure, levels, and services are fixed, change becomes reactive rather than generative.
Retrofitted environments often reveal tell-tale signs:
Secondary entrances used as accessible routes.
External ramps added without integration into landscape design.
Altered interiors that disrupt circulation.
Facilities that meet standards but feel marginal.
By contrast, when accessibility informs the original design, it is invisible — not because it is absent, but because it is integral.
The Emerging Expectation: Inclusion as Normal Practice
What recent Indian discourse signals is not merely regulatory attention but a cultural expectation that public environments must anticipate diversity. Institutions and developers increasingly recognise that accessibility is tied to credibility, longevity, and public engagement.
Design teams are therefore being asked to think differently:
not how to correct exclusion after construction,
but how to avoid producing it in the first place.
This requires collaboration across disciplines — architecture, planning, engineering, and user experience — rather than delegating accessibility to a late-stage audit.
Designing for Range Rather Than Average
Much conventional design assumes an “average user.” Accessibility challenges this assumption by recognising that no such average exists. Human bodies, abilities, and interactions with space vary widely, and environments must accommodate that variability.
Designing for range does not dilute architectural intent; it strengthens it by making spaces more adaptable, resilient, and humane.
An accessible campus is easier to navigate.
An accessible hospital is less stressful to use.
An accessible transport system is more efficient for everyone.
These outcomes are not specialised benefits. They are indicators of quality.
A Shift in Professional Responsibility
The responsibility for accessibility cannot rest solely on enforcement or audit mechanisms. It must be internalised within design practice itself.
When architects and planners begin to treat accessibility as a parameter equal to structure, climate response, or safety, it ceases to be an external demand and becomes part of professional judgement.
India’s current moment of rapid construction offers an opportunity to make this shift deliberately rather than retrospectively.
Conclusion: From Awareness to Integration
Accessibility in India is no longer an unfamiliar concept. The task now is to translate awareness into environments that function seamlessly for diverse users.
Designing for everyone is not a slogan to be applied at the end of a project. It is a way of thinking that must begin at the first sketch — when decisions are still fluid and inclusion can be embedded without compromise.
If accessibility is considered early, it improves design.
If considered late, it attempts repair.
The choice between those approaches will shape how inclusive India’s future built environment truly becomes.
Suggested Reading
For readers interested in exploring these questions further:
Built environment accessibility guidelines issued by Government of India ministries addressing planning and infrastructure.
Research publications and design studies developed under the Centre for Disability Studies, NALSAR.
International literature on universal design and inclusive spatial planning.
Technical discussions on campus-scale accessibility and transport environment usability.
Comparative studies examining lifecycle outcomes of integrated versus retrofitted accessibility approaches.
Monday, 16 February 2026
Accessibility Is Not a Retrofitting Exercise: It Must Begin at the Drawing Board
Across India, accessibility is still widely misunderstood as a corrective measure — something to be “added later” once a building is complete. A ramp is inserted near the entrance, a toilet is relabelled, a lift button is lowered, and the project is declared accessible. Yet anyone who has attempted to use such spaces knows that these adjustments rarely produce environments that are genuinely usable.
Accessibility cannot be retrofitted into a design that was never conceived with diverse users in mind. It must be embedded at the conceptual stage, when circulation, spatial hierarchy, services, and human interaction with the building are first imagined. When inclusion is postponed, it becomes expensive, technically compromised, and frequently symbolic rather than functional.
The Persistent Myth of Post-Construction “Fixes”
The belief that accessibility can be added later stems from two assumptions: first, that accessibility concerns only a small minority; and second, that it involves isolated physical features. Both assumptions are flawed.
Built environments are not experienced in fragments. A ramp that leads to a heavy manual door, followed by a narrow corridor, an inaccessible reception desk, and confusing wayfinding does not create access. It creates a sequence of barriers. Retrofitting often addresses one point of failure while leaving the rest of the journey intact — and exclusionary.
When accessibility is introduced after construction, designers must work against decisions already locked into the structure: plinth heights, column grids, service shafts, toilet layouts, fire exits, and level differences. At that point, meaningful change is constrained by what has already been built.
The Cost of Delay: Financial and Spatial
It is commonly believed that incorporating accessibility early increases project costs. In practice, the reverse is true.
During the design stage, inclusive planning usually involves adjustments in geometry, alignment, and specification — decisions that cost little to implement on paper. Once construction is underway, however, even minor corrections can require demolition, regrading, relocation of services, or structural alteration. What could have been achieved through thoughtful layout becomes a logistical and financial burden.
For example:
Designing a step-free entrance at the outset requires alignment of site levels.
Introducing it later may require external ramps, drainage reworking, and façade modification.
Planning accessible toilets from the beginning affects partition placement.
Attempting to enlarge them later disrupts plumbing, finishes, and circulation.
Early decisions shape the entire lifecycle cost of accessibility.
Accessibility as Spatial Logic, Not Equipment
Another reason retrofitting fails is that accessibility is treated as the installation of elements rather than the shaping of relationships between spaces.
True accessibility is about:
How one arrives at a building.
How one understands where to go.
How easily one can move between functions.
How independently one can use facilities.
How safely one can exit in an emergency.
These are questions of spatial logic, not accessories.
If corridors are too long without rest points, lifts are hidden, signage lacks clarity, or transitions between buildings involve level changes, no amount of later modification can fully resolve the experience. Accessibility must therefore be conceived as an organising principle — a way of structuring movement and perception.
The Indian Context: Rapid Construction, Limited Integration
India is currently witnessing an unprecedented expansion of educational campuses, healthcare institutions, transport hubs, and commercial developments. Much of this growth is driven by tight timelines and standardised construction models. Accessibility is frequently introduced only when approvals, certifications, or complaints demand it.
This reactive approach produces environments that technically satisfy requirements yet remain difficult to use in practice. Large campuses often reveal discontinuities between buildings; transport interchanges provide access at entry but not at transition points; institutional spaces treat accessibility as an isolated compliance package rather than an integrated system.
The challenge is not absence of intent, but absence of early engagement.
Why the Drawing Board Is the Most Powerful Moment
The conceptual design phase offers a unique opportunity: nothing is fixed, yet everything is possible. Decisions taken here determine whether accessibility will be seamless or forced.
At this stage, designers can:
Align entrances with natural pedestrian movement.
Establish step-free circulation networks.
Integrate vertical movement logically within building cores.
Plan sanitary facilities where they are actually needed.
Ensure gradients, surfaces, and transitions are inherently usable.
Coordinate landscape and architecture to function as one system.
When accessibility informs these foundational choices, it disappears into the design — not because it is absent, but because it is naturally accommodated.
Moving From Compliance to Usability
Compliance frameworks are necessary, but they represent minimum thresholds. Usability asks a different question: can a wide range of people actually use this environment without assistance?
A compliance-driven retrofit may achieve dimensional correctness. A usability-driven design considers human diversity — mobility, ageing, temporary injury, sensory differences, and the simple unpredictability of everyday life.
Buildings that are usable tend also to be:
Easier to navigate.
Safer in emergencies.
More comfortable for all occupants.
More adaptable over time.
Thus accessibility, when planned early, strengthens overall design quality rather than constraining it.
Institutional Projects: The Multiplier Effect
Large institutions illustrate the importance of early planning most clearly. Universities, hospitals, and public facilities function as interconnected environments rather than single buildings. If accessibility is not embedded at the planning stage, barriers multiply across distances, levels, and services.
Retrofitting one building at a time cannot resolve systemic issues such as:
Disconnected pedestrian routes.
Inconsistent level management.
Fragmented signage strategies.
Transport drop-offs that do not relate to entrances.
Variations in usability between old and new blocks.
Early accessibility planning allows such environments to function coherently as campuses rather than collections of structures.
The Role of Design Teams and Developers
Accessibility should not be viewed as an external audit imposed late in the project. It is most effective when design teams engage with it as part of their own decision-making process.
Developers increasingly recognise that inclusive environments:
Enhance long-term asset value.
Reduce later modification liabilities.
Improve public perception and usability.
Support demographic realities such as ageing populations.
When accessibility expertise is consulted during planning rather than after completion, it becomes a collaborative design tool rather than a corrective mechanism.
From Adjustment to Intention
Retrofitting will always remain necessary for older environments. However, new construction offers a choice: continue repeating patterns that require later correction, or shift towards intentional inclusion from the outset.
Designing access from the beginning does not require radical change. It requires a different sequence of thought — one that asks, early on, who the building is for and how it will actually be used.
When accessibility begins at the drawing board, it ceases to be a special feature. It becomes part of how architecture works...
Suggested Reading
Readers wishing to explore these ideas further may consult widely recognised guidance on inclusive design, built environment usability, and universal design approaches, including:
National accessibility guidelines issued for built environment planning in India.
Technical provisions within India’s building regulatory framework addressing access and circulation.
International good practice documents on usability and universal design principles.
Research literature examining the relationship between spatial planning and inclusive participation.
Studies on lifecycle cost comparisons between early integration and post-construction modification.