Fwd: Representation : Pending National Policy translations & consultations
Vaishnavi Jayakumar
From: WE the People - with disabilities - of India <wethedisabled...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2022 at 23:17
Subject: Representation : Pending National Policy translations & consultations
To: <secretar...@nic.in>
Cc: <minist...@gmail.com>, <vku...@sansad.nic.in>
14 July 2022
Ms. Anjali Bhawra, Secretary
Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities
Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment
New Delhi, India
Dear Ms. Bhawra,
Sub: Pending request for accessible formats, Indian language translation and widespread local community consultations on the Draft National Policy for Persons with Disabilities (as already stated in the sector’s prior communication of 20, 23, 29 June 2022)
We appreciate your Department’s conceding to an extension of the deadline to submit the recommendations to the national policy for persons with disabilities up to 31 August 2022.
We also appreciate the Ministry for recognizing the need for inclusion of persons with disabilities in making policies that impact the citizens of India, thus partially adhering to compliance with Section 4 (ii), Section 12 (4) (a) and Section 42 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPD) Act 2016.
This process can be redeemed from mere tokenism only when it reaches out to persons with disabilities who live in different rural and urban areas. For that to happen, the draft national policy for persons with disabilities document needs to be made available in Indian Sign Language, official regional languages and accessible forms like AAC, Plain Language and regional language Braille as outlined in the RPD Act.
12 (4) The appropriate Government shall take steps to—
(a) ensure that all their public documents are in accessible formats;
…
(c) make available all necessary facilities and equipment to facilitate recording of testimonies, arguments or opinion given by persons with disabilities in their preferred language and means of communication.
And
2 (f) “communication” includes means and formats of communication, languages, display of text, Braille, tactile communication, signs, large print, accessible multimedia, written, audio, video, visual displays, sign language, plain-language, human-reader, augmentative and alternative modes and accessible information and communication technology;
In light of this mandatory obligation which is partly/partially conceded to by the Ministry, we once again request you to take such necessary steps to instruct all national institutes, their regional centres and CRCs meant for the empowerment of persons with disabilities and Commissioner/Director, Disability Welfare of all States to take up the translation of the draft national policy document and complete the task of translation within a period of one week and make it available on their respective websites with a copy on the union website.
Here, we also want to bring to your notice that in the year 2012 -2013, the Ministry had adopted a similar strategy for the draft RPD Bill and had conducted regional level consultations across India. During the undertaking of that process, the Ministry had invited persons with disabilities, DPOs and OPDs, NGOs and the concerned Disability Welfare Departments and other stakeholders to these consultations to provide their recommendations. We do hope that the Ministry would continue to adopt this similar strategy and take the necessary steps as following:
A. The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, could instruct all Directors of all National Institutions meant for the empowerment of persons with disabilities and Principal Secretaries Commissioner/Directors of respective departments to recognize the mandatory legal obligation of inclusion of persons with disabilities, as per section 12 of RPD act 2016 and take such steps to arrange for the translation of draft national policy for persons with disabilities into Indian Sign Language, official regional languages and accessible forms like AAC, Plain Language and regional language Braille.
B. All Directors of National Institutions and Principal Secretaries/Commissioners/Directors of concerned Departments of all State Governments to complete the task of the above-mentioned translations within a period of one week from the date of receiving these instructions with due diligence and compliance and may be reported.
We hope that the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment will take a positive view of the above and take necessary action and communicate the action-taken information through its website and/or in print and electronic media.
ENDORSED BY
Pavan Kumar Muntha, CEO, Swadhikaar, Hyderabad.
Meenakshi , member , DRA
Javed Ahmad Tak , Honorary Chairman Humanity Welfare organisation Helpline Bijbehara Kashmir J&K 192124
Nitu Ranjan Dash, PhD research Scholar
Sudha Ramamoorthy
Mangal Hazra
Amita Dhanda Head Centre for Disability Studies, NALSAR, Hyderabad
Muruganantham
Srilatha Juvva (Professor, TISS)
Dr V Janaki Social Scientist n disability rights activist, Chennai
Muralidharan, NPRD
Smitha Sadasivan, MSSI Chennai
Dr. Ratan Sarkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Teachers' Training (B.Ed.), Prabhat Kumar College, Contai, West Bengal, India
Sunil Jain, Founder Astha
Gopinath Ramakrishnan (Managing Trustee, Special Child Assistance Network)
Rajiv Rajan
Mohd Faisal
Tina, Sanket Foundation
Akeel Usmani Disability Rights Advocacy Group (DRAG)
Shilpaa Anand, BITS-Pilani Hyderabad Campus
Deepu M (project assistant, NISH)
Aejaz Parasara
Srinivasulu, President, Network of persons with disabilities Organizations Hyderabad, Telangana state India
Priya Vadadan, Disability Researcher and Person with Cerebral Palsy
Bhavna Botta
Aman Saxena General secretary Association of the deaf welfare Shahjahanpur
Kalpana
Basweshwar Paike , Member, Saksham Devgiri Prant, Latur
Jessica Prakash-Richard, Advocacy Consultant, Touchstone Consultancies.
Tushar Kansara
M. Srinivasulu, President, Network of persons with disabilities Organizations NPdO Hyderabad
Mary Lousia Luiz, Kairali Foundation of Deaf Women
Elcy Pinto, Lecturer St Andrews College, Mumbai
Syamala Gidugu Executive Director , AADI
Sanjeev Reddy
Parag Shah
Suresh Kumar
Gautam Chaudhury
Vaibhav Ghaisas
Kim Fernandes
Kajla Dhawan
Poonam Natarajan
Dr. Goli Srinivas, Senior Medical Officer, Municipal Corporation of Delhi
Dr Pratap Bist, general secretary Sambhavana
Shaikh Mujahed Shaikh Nabi, Hony General Secretary Of Parbhani District Unity Association Of The Deaf Parbhani
Karthik C, DRA
G S Swamy
Saudamini, Trustee, Access Mantra Foundation
Yagnavalli Mukkavilli, Post graduate in CS.
Anuradha Naidu
Sukanya Gupta
Sachin Randive
Vaishnavi Jayakumar - Member, Disability Rights Alliance
Rajul Padmanabhan
Kalyani Vallath (Director, TES)
G Ravi, Disability Rights Activist, Bengaluru