Beyond Compliance: Embedding Accessibility and Universal Design Across India’s Systems

Accessibility is essential to ensuring that every individual can participate in society with dignity, independence and equal opportunity. Despite India’s progress in strengthening its disability rights framework, a significant gap remains between policy commitments and their implementation across public spaces, digital platforms, workplaces and services. The need is to move beyond treating accessibility as an additional requirement and recognise it as a fundamental principle of inclusive development. Initiatives such as the Universal Design Awards and the Assistive Technology Hub are bringing greater visibility to accessibility and recognising efforts towards inclusive design. The 17th...