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.
Saturday, 3 January 2026
Employment as Applause: When Disability Inclusion Becomes Institutional Self-Congratulation
I. Introduction: Locating the Vantage Point
Conversations on disability and employment in India are rarely short of intent. They are, however, persistently short of consequence. Policy documents, corporate diversity statements, and institutional reports repeatedly affirm the importance of including persons with disabilities in the workforce, yet the lived reality of employment remains fragile, episodic, and conditional.
This article proceeds from a specific vantage point: empirical and legal work emerging from the Centre for Disability Studies (CDS) at NALSAR University of Law, including findings from the Finding Sizes for All (FSA) research. These findings do not claim to exhaust the field of disability and employment. Their value lies elsewhere. They reveal a recurring institutional orientation towards employment—one that treats inclusion as an achievement to be applauded, rather than a condition to be sustained.
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act), read together with India’s obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), establishes employment as a matter of enforceable equality. Yet, in practice, employment for persons with disabilities continues to operate as a conditional benefit—extended, withdrawn, and re-extended at the discretion of employers and administrators.
This article argues that disability inclusion in employment has increasingly become a site of institutional self-congratulation. Hiring is treated as proof of virtue; retention is rendered optional. The result is a system that celebrates entry while normalising exit.
II. The Legal Architecture: Employment Is Not Aspirational
It is necessary to begin with the legal baseline, because discussions on disability and employment often proceed as though inclusion were merely a matter of good practice, ethical commitment, or managerial benevolence.
The RPwD Act, 2016, marks a decisive shift in Indian disability law from a welfare-oriented framework to a rights-based regime grounded in equality and non-discrimination. Several features of the Act are directly relevant to employment.
First, the Act explicitly prohibits discrimination in employment, including discrimination arising from the denial of reasonable accommodation. Discrimination is defined broadly, capturing not only intentional exclusion but also practices and conditions that have the effect of disadvantaging persons with disabilities. This aligns with the UNCRPD’s emphasis on substantive equality rather than formal parity.
Second, reasonable accommodation is framed as a statutory obligation. It is not positioned as a discretionary managerial tool or a charitable adjustment. Failure to provide reasonable accommodation constitutes discrimination under the Act. The legal implication is clear: accommodation is a precondition for equality, not a concession.
Third, the RPwD Act situates employment within a broader framework of dignity, autonomy, and participation in society. Employment is not an isolated policy objective. It is a gateway right. Failure in employment cascades into failures in social protection, independent living, and community participation.
The UNCRPD reinforces this architecture. Article 27 recognises the right of persons with disabilities to work, on an equal basis with others, in a labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive, and accessible. States Parties are obligated not merely to promote employment but to safeguard the conditions under which employment can be sustained, including through reasonable accommodation and protection against discrimination.
Taken together, these instruments establish a clear proposition: employment for persons with disabilities is not aspirational. It is justiciable.
III. What the Evidence Shows: Employment as an Episodic Event
Despite this legal clarity, findings emerging from CDS research, including the Finding Sizes for All study, reveal a persistent and troubling pattern.
Employment interventions for persons with disabilities overwhelmingly prioritise entry. Skill development programmes, certification initiatives, placement drives, and recruitment targets dominate both public and private sector approaches. Entry into employment is treated as the primary marker of success.
What remains weakly addressed is continuity.
Retention, career progression, workplace adaptation, and long-term security are rarely embedded into programme design or institutional accountability. Monitoring mechanisms often end shortly after placement. Enforcement mechanisms rarely extend beyond initial hiring.
When employment relationships break down—due to inaccessible work environments, withdrawal of accommodation, or hostile organisational cultures—the system offers little recourse beyond informal negotiation or exit.
From a legal standpoint, this represents a fundamental misreading of equality. The right to employment under the RPwD Act is not a right to be hired once. It is a right to participate in work on an equal basis over time.
The episodic nature of employment has direct implications for social protection. When employment collapses, responsibility for financial and care support shifts back to families, often without formal recognition or support. Social protection thus becomes privatised, gendered, and uneven.
This is not a failure of individual resilience. It is a structural design flaw.
IV. Reasonable Accommodation: Law in Text, Discretion in Practice
Perhaps the clearest illustration of the gap between law and lived reality lies in the treatment of reasonable accommodation.
Legally, reasonable accommodation is mandatory. Operationally, it remains discretionary.
Findings from Finding Sizes for All indicate that accommodation is frequently negotiated on an individual basis, dependent on managerial goodwill, budgetary flexibility, or organisational culture. Accommodations may be provided temporarily, informally, or conditionally. They may be withdrawn when personnel change or when financial priorities shift.
This produces a legally perverse outcome: a statutory right whose enjoyment depends on institutional mood.
When accommodation is treated as an exception rather than infrastructure, the burden of adjustment shifts back onto the disabled worker. Individuals are expected to compensate for inaccessible systems through personal resilience, improvisation, or silence. The workplace itself remains unchanged.
From a doctrinal perspective, this undermines the very purpose of reasonable accommodation. Accommodation is not meant to reward deserving individuals. It is meant to internalise equality into organisational design.
V. Social Protection After Failure: A Backward Logic
Social protection frameworks for persons with disabilities in India continue to operate largely as post-failure compensation mechanisms. Pensions, allowances, and family-based support systems are activated after employment has failed or become impossible.
The CDS findings expose the limits of this model. When employment collapses due to lack of accommodation or a hostile work environment, social protection addresses income loss but not the structural exclusion that produced the loss.
This approach inverts the logic of rights-based inclusion. Instead of stabilising employment through proactive support, the system compensates individuals after exclusion has already occurred.
Legally and normatively, this is backwards.
Social protection ought to be attached to employment continuity. It should support accommodation costs, protect workers from attrition caused by structural design failures, and ensure predictability rather than churn.
When social protection is decoupled from employment stability, the State meets its formal obligations while outsourcing the consequences of failure to families and civil society.
VI. Community Inclusion at Work: Beyond Cultural Framing
Community inclusion is often discussed in cultural terms—belonging, attitudes, and sensitivity. While these dimensions matter, they are insufficient from a legal standpoint.
In employment, community inclusion is about equal participation without penalty.
If disabled employees remain concentrated in limited roles, excluded from advancement, or evaluated against norms they were never accommodated to meet, inclusion has failed regardless of intent.
The RPwD Act does not require disabled workers to be inspirational. The UNCRPD does not require gratitude. What the law requires is equality in participation and opportunity.
Community inclusion that only survives during diversity days, leadership speeches, or pilot projects is not genuine inclusion. It is performance.
VII. From Goodwill to Governance: Three Legal Thresholds
It is therefore necessary to move beyond recommendations framed as best practices and articulate clear legal thresholds.
First, employment must be treated as a continuing right, not a placement outcome. Monitoring, enforcement, and accountability must extend beyond entry into employment.
Second, reasonable accommodation must be operationalised as enforceable infrastructure. It cannot remain discretionary in practice while mandatory on paper.
Third, social protection should be tied to employment continuity rather than compensating for its collapse. Protection must stabilise work, not merely respond to its failure.
These are not new ideas. They are already implicit in Indian law and international obligation. What is missing is institutional seriousness.
VIII. Conclusion: When Inclusion Flatters Institutions
Employment for persons with disabilities in India increasingly functions as a moral performance. Institutions congratulate themselves for hiring while leaving underlying structures intact. Inclusion becomes a certificate of good conduct rather than a condition of justice.
Employment, in such a system, is not offered as a right. It is offered as a reward—for the employer’s good behaviour.
That framing explains why so many inclusion efforts fail to endure.
And it brings us to the final reckoning.
If dignity at work survives only on being good,
Then justice has failed—exactly where it should.
Thursday, 13 November 2025
An Open Letter to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology: A Critique of the India AI Governance Guidelines on the Omission of Mandatory Disability and Digital Accessibility Rules
To:
I. Preamble: The Mandate for Accessible and Inclusive AI
The recently issued India AI Governance Guidelines (I-AIGG) assert a vision of “AI for All” [Click here to view document] and commit India to inclusive technology, social goods optimisation, and the avoidance of discrimination. However, the guidelines have failed to operationalise mandatory and enforceable disability and digital accessibility rules – a legal and ethical lapse that undermines both national and international obligations. As a professional engaged in technology policy and disability rights, and in light of the Supreme Court's Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2024) judgment, this letter outlines why voluntary commitments are insufficient and why robust, mandatory accessibility standards are immediately warranted.
II. The Policy Paradox: Aspirational Promises versus Legal Obligations
The I-AIGG framework advances “voluntary” compliance, elevates inclusive rhetoric, and references “marginalised communities” in its principles. However, it neither defines “Persons with Disabilities” (PwDs) nor mandates conformance with domestic accessibility rules, as legally required by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPwD Act). This introduces a regulatory gap: aspirational principles supplant the non-negotiable legal floor guaranteed to persons with disabilities. Such dilution is legally unsustainable given India’s obligations under the UNCRPD and under Sections 40, 44, 45, 46, and 89 of the RPwD Act.
III. The Rajive Raturi Judgment: Reinforcing Mandatory Compliance
The Supreme Court’s decision in Rajive Raturi (2024) unambiguously directed the Union Government to move from discretionary, guideline-based approaches to compulsory standards for accessibility across physical, informational, and digital domains. The Court found that reliance on non-binding guidelines and sectoral discretion violated statutory mandates, and it instructed the creation of enforceable, uniform, and standardised rules developed in consultation with persons with disabilities and stakeholders.
This is particularly relevant to digital and AI governance, where exclusion can be algorithmic, structural, and scaled, denying access to education, employment, health, and social participation. The judgment refutes the adequacy of sectoral or voluntary approaches – digital accessibility is a fundamental right and non-compliance amounts to denial of rights for PwDs in India.
IV. The EU Benchmark: Legal Mandates, Not Discretion
The European Union’s AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) and its general accessibility directives establish mandatory, rights-based compliance for digital accessibility. The EU Act:
- Explicitly enforces accessibility as a legal obligation, not a voluntary commitment, anchored in the UNCRPD and Universal Design principles.
- Mandates that all high-risk AI systems comply with technical accessibility standards by design, with legal penalties for non-compliance.
- Classifies systems impacting education, employment, healthcare, and public services as high-risk, subjecting them to strict regulatory scrutiny.
- Prohibits any AI deployment that exploits or discriminates against persons with disabilities, addressing historical and algorithmic bias at source.
Thus, the EU approach demonstrates enforceable protection for PwDs, with stakeholder consultation, technical linkage to sectoral accessibility standards, and mechanisms for remediation and complaint.
V. Critique of I-AIGG: Core Deficiencies and Recommendations
- Absence of Disability-Specific Provisions:The term “marginalised communities” is insufficiently specific. India’s legal framework demands explicit protection for PwDs, including reasonable accommodation, accessible formats (such as ePUB, OCR-based PDF), and compliance with domestic (GIGW, Harmonised Guidelines 2021) standards.
- No Accessibility-By-Design Mandate for AI:
- Inadequate Response to Algorithmic Bias:
- Weak Grievance Redressal Mechanisms:Voluntary or generic redress measures neglect the diversity of disability and the necessity for robust, accessible remedies in every sector where AI is used.
- Non-compliance with Judicial Mandate:
VI. Policy Prescription: Steps Toward Compliance
- Draft and Notify Mandatory AI Digital Accessibility Standards:
- Classify High-Risk AI Systems with Disability Lens:Mandate Disability Impact Assessments, mirroring the EU approach, for all AI systems deployed in health, education, employment, and public services.
- Institutionalise Disability Rights Expertise:
- Mandate Dataset Audits and Privacy Protections:Require dataset bias audits for disability, establish anonymisation protocols for disability-rights data, and ensure representation in AI datasets.
- Create Enforceable, Accessible Grievance Redress Channels:
VII. Conclusion and Urgent Appeal
Presently, the I-AIGG’s disability approach is aspirational, not enforceable; voluntary, not mandatory. This is contrary to the Supreme Court's directive, India's legal obligations, and international best practice. To prevent algorithmic exclusion and rights denial, MeitY must urgently revise the I-AIGG:
- To operationalise mandatory disability accessibility safeguards across all AI and digital systems;
- To implement Disability Impact Assessments as standard in high-risk domains;
- To establish permanent, consultative mechanisms with DPOs and subject-matter experts.
- Failure to act will perpetuate digital exclusion, legal non-compliance, and undermine the promise of “AI for All.” India’s technology policy must embrace enforceable accessibility, both as a legal imperative and a standard of global leadership.
References
- Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, Supreme Court of India, 8 November 2024.
- India AI Governance Guidelines: Enabling Safe and Trusted AI Innovation, MeitY, 2025.
- Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and associated Rules.
- Finding Sizes for All: Report on Status of the Right to Accessibility in India, for facts on digital exclusion.
- European Union, AI Act 2024 (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), especially Recital 80, Article 5(1)(b), Article 16(l).
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW).