---------- Forwarded message --------- From: WE the People - with disabilities - of India < wethedisabledpeopleofin...@gmail.com> Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2022 at 23:17 Subject: Representation : Pending National Policy translations & consultations To: <secretaryda-m...@nic.in> Cc: <ministers...@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 1. Pavan Kumar Muntha, CEO, Swadhikaar, Hyderabad. 2. Meenakshi , member , DRA 3. Javed Ahmad Tak , Honorary Chairman Humanity Welfare organisation Helpline Bijbehara Kashmir J&K 192124 4. Nitu Ranjan Dash, PhD research Scholar 5. Sudha Ramamoorthy 6. Mangal Hazra 7. Amita Dhanda Head Centre for Disability Studies, NALSAR, Hyderabad 8. Muruganantham 9. Srilatha Juvva (Professor, TISS) 10. Dr V Janaki Social Scientist n disability rights activist, Chennai 11. Muralidharan, NPRD 12. Smitha Sadasivan, MSSI Chennai 13. Dr. Ratan Sarkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Teachers' Training (B.Ed.), Prabhat Kumar College, Contai, West Bengal, India 14. Sunil Jain, Founder Astha 15. Gopinath Ramakrishnan (Managing Trustee, Special Child Assistance Network) 16. Rajiv Rajan 17. Mohd Faisal 18. Tina, Sanket Foundation 19. Akeel Usmani Disability Rights Advocacy Group (DRAG) 20. Shilpaa Anand, BITS-Pilani Hyderabad Campus 21. Deepu M (project assistant, NISH) 22. Aejaz Parasara 23. Srinivasulu, President, Network of persons with disabilities Organizations Hyderabad, Telangana state India 24. Priya Vadadan, Disability Researcher and Person with Cerebral Palsy 25. Bhavna Botta 26. Aman Saxena General secretary Association of the deaf welfare Shahjahanpur 27. Kalpana 28. Basweshwar Paike , Member, Saksham Devgiri Prant, Latur 29. Jessica Prakash-Richard, Advocacy Consultant, Touchstone Consultancies. 30. Tushar Kansara 31. M. Srinivasulu, President, Network of persons with disabilities Organizations NPdO Hyderabad 32. Mary Lousia Luiz, Kairali Foundation of Deaf Women 33. Elcy Pinto, Lecturer St Andrews College, Mumbai 34. Syamala Gidugu Executive Director , AADI 35. Sanjeev Reddy 36. Parag Shah 37. Suresh Kumar 38. Gautam Chaudhury 39. Vaibhav Ghaisas 40. Kim Fernandes 41. Kajla Dhawan 42. Poonam Natarajan 43. Dr. Goli Srinivas, Senior Medical Officer, Municipal Corporation of Delhi 44. Dr Pratap Bist, general secretary Sambhavana 45. Shaikh Mujahed Shaikh Nabi, Hony General Secretary Of Parbhani District Unity Association Of The Deaf Parbhani 46. Karthik C, DRA 47. G S Swamy 48. Saudamini, Trustee, Access Mantra Foundation 49. Yagnavalli Mukkavilli, Post graduate in CS. 50. Anuradha Naidu 51. Sukanya Gupta 52. Sachin Randive 53. Vaishnavi Jayakumar - Member, Disability Rights Alliance 54. Rajul Padmanabhan 55. Kalyani Vallath (Director, TES) 56. G Ravi, Disability Rights Activist, Bengaluru -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EMAIL OVERLOAD? Choose digest email in your deliver settings instead. --- For archives visit : https://groups.google.com/group/wethepwd/topics You received this message because you are subscribed to "We the People with Disabilities of India" Google group. --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "We the People (with Disabilities) of India - bit.ly/we-the-pwd" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wethepwd+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/wethepwd/CAN7%2BzvpEBvvw174BjMTi8TQ75nFtj4hsmF8HTZch7LkebkaLJA%40mail.gmail.com. -- Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list.. Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AccessIndia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to accessindia+unsubscr...@accessindia.org.in. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/accessindia.org.in/d/msgid/accessindia/CAN7%2BzvpEBvvw174BjMTi8TQ75nFtj4hsmF8HTZch7LkebkaLJA%40mail.gmail.com.
