OREANDA-NEWS. December 01, 2015. The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities has put together events of national importance centering around the commemoration of 'International Day of Persons with Disabilities' - celebrated on 3rd Dec throughout the world, every year. The Prime Minister will be launching the  nationwide 'Accesible India Campaign' and presenting the National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, 2015, in a function at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on 3rd December 2015.

Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), is a nationwide flagship campaign for achieving universal accessibility for Persons with Disabilities and to create an enabling and barrier free environment, with a focus on three verticals: Built Environment; Public Transportation and Information & Communication Technologies.  

By this campaign, atleast 50% of all the government buildings of National Capital and all the State capitals into fully accessible buildings by July 2018. All the international airports and converting them into fully accessible international airports by July 2016. A1, A & B categories of railway stations in the country will be converted into fully accessible railway stations by July 2016. Atleast 10% of Government owned public transport carriers in the country will be converted into fully accessible carriers by March 2018. Atleast 50% of all public documents issued by the Central Government and the State Governments will meet accessibility standards by March 2018.

The Campaign is also in the process of developing a web portal along with a mobile application for creating a crowd sourcing platform to get information about inaccessible places, processing information for approving proposals and channelizing CSR resources for creating of accessible spaces. An Accessibility Index is also underway to measure the level of disabled friendliness of a system.

The National Awards are conferred on 3rd December every year on the ‘International Day of Persons with Disabilities’ on outstanding Persons with Disabilities; individuals and organizations that are working for the empowerment of persons with disabilities. 58 National Awards are given under 14 (fourteen) broad categories every year. 51 individuals/institutions have been approved for the National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities for the year 2015. One National Award pertaining to the year 2014 will also be conferred during this year. List of National Award winners can be found here https://goo.gl/nmVIJc