Disability Access Audit of Public Service Facilities

Abstract

The present investigation adopts cross-sectional comparative case study design to undertake disability access audit on a sample of six representative public utility buildings located in the sprawling campus of All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, located in Mysore, Karnataka. After field trials, group discussions, on-site observations, interviews with unaffected and affected users, a final version of the 117-item ‘Disability Access Audit Checklist’ (DAAC) distributed across 15 domains was developed exclusively for data collection in this study. It was used by three independent and exclusively trained raters in the audit team. Results paint a rather grim picture on available accessibility for persons with disabilities at the studied institute. At the basic or beginning baseline level, it is seen that there is limited structural access score measuring no more than 29.2 % for all the target buildings included in this study. Even wherein few facilities like ramps, railings, furniture, lifts, corridors, lighting or flooring surfaces are available, their accessibility score drops markedly by almost a third to 9.1 % when adequacy criteria is adopted to demarcate ‘genuine accessibility’. In conclusion, the study admits that the present endeavor is merely a beginning baseline benchmark for the oncoming alterations that need to be carried out in the relentless pursuit of universal design to provide greater accessibility for persons with disabilities as per the provisions mandated by the United Nations Convention on Rights for Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).