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Svayam Founder featured on AXSChat

Dear Colleagues,

#AXSChat is an open online community of individuals on Twitter, dedicated to creating an inclusive world who believe that accessibility is for everyone. Every week, #AXSChat features a different guest who is contributing to making the world a more inclusive place through technology or innovating to enable wider participation in society for people with disabilities.

In this series, on 24 February 2018, our Founder-Chairperson Ms. Sminu Jindal was invited by AXSChat team for an online interview.  The live interview conducted by Mr. Neil Milliken (England), Mr. Antonio Santos (Ireland) and Ms. Debra Ruh (United States) focused on a number of issues around accessibility, sustainability, ICT, Smart Cities and Svayam’s contribution towards an inclusive world.

Ms. Jindal spoke at length on importance of raising awareness about accessibility and how it benefits everyone and not merely the persons with disabilities. She highlighted the grey areas in transport sector especially the aviation sector where long haul flights still did not consider accessible toilets as a necessity and why the stakeholders across the world continue to suffer in silence without making a hue and cry about it! She emphasized that on-board accessible toilet isn’t a luxury but a basic human right for persons with reduced mobility!

She also said that youth need to be sensitized as they can become change makers for a more sustainable and accessible world. Ms. Jindal emphasized on the importance of accessible toilet at every school in rural areas, so that the people still not exposed to the benefits of the accessibility are able to experience the benefits and be inspired to make their own toilets accessible. This would also enable the persons with reduced mobility such as older adults to contribute to national building.

Watch the full interview here and continue to support #Accessibility4All

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Svayam conducts Access Workshop for Disabled community leaders at Aarth Astha

New Delhi : 16 March 2012

Svayam Team conducted a Training Workshop on “Accessibility in Community Infrastructure” at the invitation of Astha India (NGO) for the disabled community leaders of Lal Kuan and Govind Puri slums.   The community leaders with disabilities have come together under the umbrella of “Viklang Ekta Manch”. Several parents, family members and members of Astha staff were also present in the training session.

The whole exercise was facilitated by Aarth Astha and coordinated by Mr. Binod – himself a person with disability and the community lead for Astha. The leaders were also briefed on conducting access audits and approaching the right authorities for making things happen.

The inputs from Pradeep, Punam and several others regarding the ground conditions in their residential colonies were eye openers for many of us! The training was followed by a Question and Answer session which brought out several issues from attitude of drivers of Delhi Transport Corporation towards the disabled people to inaccessibility from the house to the nearest bus stop / metro station and of admissions in the university under the disability quota to lack of accessible and affordable public transportation to attend college.

It came out that several disabled members despite being very bright and interested to pursue education could not attend colleges /work due to lack of seamless access from their houses/dwellings to the nearest bus stop. Also due to lack of direct accessible transport options, many could not purse regular education. Various government schools in the vicinity were not accessible to children with disabilities and children, especially girls did not go to the school because of lack of accessible and hygenic toilets in the  school.

“Astha’s mandate is to empower persons with disabilities in communities to take up their issues themselves. We are thankful to Svayam Team for agreeing to conduct this workshop for our disabled community leaders at such a short notice. Inaccessibility in the residential dwellings especially in the slums where Astha work has been a big barrier for the children to come out and avail the rehabilitation facilities and options of education and vocation. Disabled community leaders like Pradeep and Poonam are taking this lead and I am sure this workshop will equip them with necessary knowledge to take up their fight against inaccessibility in their colonies to its logical conclusion”, said Ms. Sudha Vohra, Executive Director- Astha.

It is proposed to take this forward by active advocacy for the accessibility rights by the members of the Self Help Group – Viklang Ekta Manch with support from Svayam and Aarth Astha.

Some visuals from the workshop:

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