ICT Accessibility Policies for Persons with Disabilities in India

India is home to an estimated 26.8 million persons with disabilities. As the country’s digital economy expands at a rapid pace – with digital transactions growing by 56% in a single fiscal year – the question of who gets access to these digital spaces is urgent. For persons with disabilities, inaccessible websites, poorly designed apps, and the absence of assistive technology support aren’t minor inconveniences. They are barriers to education, employment, financial services, and civic participation. India’s ICT accessibility policy framework has evolved significantly over three decades, but the distance between law and lived reality remains a pressing concern.

From welfare to rights: the legislative evolution 🔗

India’s first major disability legislation, the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, was a landmark shift in how the state acknowledged the rights of disabled citizens. It mandated barrier-free access to public buildings and transportation, reserved 3% of government posts for persons with disabilities, and introduced protections in education and employment. However, the 1995 Act had significant limitations when it came to technology. It was enacted before the digital revolution had fully taken hold in India, and its provisions on ICT were virtually non-existent. The law’s definition of accessibility was largely physical – ramps, adapted toilets, braille signage – rather than digital.

Critically, the 1995 Act recognized only 7 categories of disability and set an eligibility threshold of 40% disability, which was widely criticized as vague and difficult to implement fairly. Its provisions on accessibility lacked specific guidelines, leaving enforcement toothless. These gaps became increasingly visible as India’s internet economy grew through the 2000s.

The policy landscape started shifting meaningfully in 2009, when the National Informatics Centre introduced the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW). This was the first formal attempt to bring accessibility standards into India’s digital governance. The guidelines were progressively updated – a second version in 2019, and a third in 2023 (GIGW 3.0), which adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and integrated a dedicated policy for mobile applications called GuDApps. The 2013 National Policy on Universal Electronic Accessibility further reinforced that citizen-facing websites – not just disability-specific platforms – must be made accessible.

The RPWD Act 2016: a paradigm shift 🔗

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPWD Act) replaced the 1995 legislation with a fundamentally rights-based framework. Enacted in December 2016 and coming into force in April 2017, it expanded the recognized categories of disability from 7 to 21 – now including conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, sickle cell disease, and specific learning disabilities. The government’s quota for disabled employees in public sector jobs was raised from 3% to 4%.

For ICT accessibility specifically, the RPWD Act introduced a set of legally binding provisions. Sections 40 to 46 of the Act directly address accessibility requirements across physical infrastructure, transportation, and digital services – and these sections apply to both public and private organizations operating in India. Section 42 mandates that all information and communication technology services be accessible to persons with disabilities, including websites, digital content, and electronic media. Section 46 further requires that all government documents and public information available in digital form must be accessible, with a two-year compliance window from the date of enactment. Section 40 empowers the Central Government to formulate mandatory accessibility standards, which became the legal basis for subsequent ICT-specific regulations.

The Act also aligned India with its international obligations. India had ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) in October 2007, and the RPWD Act directly translates those treaty commitments into domestic law, shifting the approach from charity to rights.

Current ICT policy regulations 🔗

Web accessibility standards: GIGW and WCAG 2.1 🔗

Under the current framework, the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) make WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance compulsory for all public digital services. WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is the internationally recognized benchmark for accessible digital content. Level AA compliance ensures that websites can be perceived, operated, and understood by users with a wide range of disabilities, including visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments. Private organizations are also strongly encouraged to meet these standards.

IS-17802: India’s national ICT accessibility standard 🔗

A significant regulatory development came in December 2021, when the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) published IS-17802 – India’s official national standard for accessibility in ICT products and services. This standard was formally incorporated into law in May 2023 through the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Amendment) Rules, 2023, which inserted IS-17802 into Rule 15 of the RPWD Rules. It is now legally enforceable for all establishments, public and private.

IS-17802 aligns with global standards including WCAG 2.1, Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act, and the European Standard EN 301 549. Its specific requirements include: text alternatives for images and videos, full keyboard navigation support for users who cannot use a mouse, and clear colour contrast to assist users with visual impairments. Importantly, it also accounts for India’s linguistic diversity, mandating support for regional languages – a consideration absent from purely international frameworks.

Assistive technology incentives 🔗

Beyond web standards, the government has implemented several schemes to subsidize access to assistive technology. The Assistance to Disabled Persons (ADIP) scheme provides financial support to persons with disabilities for the purchase of aids and appliances, including digital tools. The Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan (Accessible India Campaign), launched in December 2015, includes a substantial digital accessibility component targeting government websites and public documents. These schemes aim to address the affordability gap that makes assistive technology inaccessible to many disabled individuals, particularly in rural areas. NGOs such as Enable India and Barrier Break have also played a key role in developing localized assistive technology solutions and conducting accessibility audits.

Obstacles in execution 🔗

Despite this growing body of policy, implementation has been uneven and frequently criticized. As the W3C India Digital Accessibility Initiative notes, the core problem in India is not a lack of standards – it is the misalignment between policy intent, institutional capacity, procurement practices, and technical expertise.

Stagnant compliance numbers 🔗

The numbers tell a troubling story. The count of accessible central government websites has remained at 95 since 2020, with no meaningful increase. Among those officially listed as accessible, many still contain barriers such as image-based CAPTCHAs, poor page layout, and inoperable navigation elements. If central government portals – which receive the most visibility and monitoring – show this level of non-compliance, the situation with state-level and private websites is considerably worse. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the banking sector have also lagged, with financial institutions only directed to ensure digital accessibility as recently as February 2024.

Unclear mandates and enforcement gaps 🔗

One structural weakness is the absence of strong, independent monitoring. Three years after the RPWD Act was passed, only 12 states had begun to implement it, and many states had not appointed Disability Commissioners. While penalties for non-compliance under the RPWD Act begin at Rs. 10,000 and escalate for repeat offenses, enforcement has historically been weak. In August 2024, the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities (CCPD) issued notices to over 140 private and public entities for failing to meet accessibility standards – a significant signal, but still reactive rather than proactive. By February 2025, 155 organizations had been penalized for non-compliance.

High costs and the rural-urban gap 🔗

Assistive technologies – screen readers, braille displays, captioning software – remain expensive relative to average incomes. While the ADIP scheme offers subsidies, coverage is limited and distribution mechanisms often do not reach those in remote areas. There is also a significant digital literacy gap: even when accessible platforms exist, persons with disabilities in rural India may lack the skills or devices to use them effectively. This creates a layered exclusion where the policy framework applies equally in theory but unevenly in practice.

Fragmented governance and awareness deficits 🔗

ICT accessibility cuts across multiple government departments – technology, disability affairs, education, finance, telecom – and the lack of coordinated inter-departmental governance leads to duplicated efforts, contradictory requirements, or gaps where no ministry takes clear ownership. Many web developers and organizational decision-makers also lack awareness of what accessible design actually requires, resulting in solutions that appear compliant on paper but fail real users in practice.

Strategies for improvement 🔗

Strengthening monitoring mechanisms 🔗

Policy experts and accessibility advocates have consistently called for a dedicated, independent monitoring body with the authority to conduct regular audits of government and private digital platforms. Currently, the audit function is largely voluntary or complaint-driven. A structured annual audit cycle – tied to measurable benchmarks and with transparent public reporting – would create accountability that existing complaint mechanisms lack. Making procurement of ICT services contingent on demonstrated accessibility compliance is another lever; researchers and policy analysts have argued that embedding accessibility as a mandatory award criterion in government procurement decisions would create upstream market incentives for accessible design across the technology industry.

Inter-departmental collaboration 🔗

Effective ICT accessibility requires coordinated action across MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology), the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), the Ministry of Education, TRAI, and sector-specific regulators. A formal inter-ministerial coordination mechanism – with clear accountability and shared implementation timelines – would reduce the fragmentation that currently allows gaps in coverage to persist. The inclusion of persons with disabilities themselves in policy design and implementation review is equally critical: authentic user participation catches accessibility failures that technical audits miss.

Capacity building and awareness 🔗

Developer education must be systematically integrated into India’s ICT training ecosystem. Accessibility standards like IS-17802 and WCAG 2.1 should be embedded in computer science curricula at universities and in professional certification programmes. Sensitization workshops for organizational decision-makers – particularly in the private sector, where the RPWD Act’s mandates are least understood – can shift accessibility from a compliance checkbox to a design priority. The government’s role in funding awareness campaigns and incentivizing investment in accessible technology innovation would also help build a domestic industry of accessible ICT products.

Leveraging India’s digital infrastructure 🔗

India’s public digital infrastructure – from DigiLocker to the India Stack – represents an opportunity to embed accessibility by default rather than retrofit it. GIGW 3.0’s integration with platforms like Aadhaar-based identity services, open data APIs, and AI-based language translation can, if implemented accessibly, dramatically expand the reach of government services to persons with disabilities across linguistic communities and geographic regions.

What do you think? Given that India’s count of accessible government websites has remained stagnant for years despite clear legal mandates, what would it take to shift compliance from reactive to proactive – and who should bear the primary responsibility for making that shift happen? If you were advising a state government with limited technical capacity, which single intervention – monitoring reform, procurement policy, or developer training – would you prioritize first, and why?

References

1. https://www.deque.com/apac-digital-accessibility-laws/india/
2. https://ccpd.nic.in/acts-guidelines/
3. https://aif.org/the-slow-march-of-progress-an-overview-of-the-history-of-disability-legislation-in-india/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Persons_with_Disabilities_Act,_2016
5. https://depwd.gov.in/en/faqs-4/
6. https://www.pivotalaccessibility.com/2025/06/rpwd-act-and-is-17802-indias-digital-accessibility-standards-2025-guide/
7. https://www.barrierbreak.com/indias-digital-inclusion-initiative-is-now-a-law-is-17802-mandates-accessible-ict-products-and-services/
8. https://depwd.gov.in/en/sipda/
9. https://www.w3.org/community/idai/
10. https://www.deque.com/blog/how-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-act-rpwd-impacts-digital-accessibility-in-india/
11. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0970389617301131