Improving Physical Access and Mobility for Disabled Women

For millions of women with disabilities, stepping out of the house is not a simple, everyday act. It is a negotiation – with broken footpaths, inaccessible buses, absent ramps, and often, with families who believe the outside world is not meant for them. The intersection of gender and disability creates a unique set of barriers that go far beyond physical limitations. When public spaces, transport systems, and buildings are not designed to be inclusive, disabled women bear the heaviest cost: isolation, dependency, and exclusion from the very fabric of social life.

The scale of the problem 🔗

According to Census 2011, nearly 27 million persons – roughly 2.2% of the population – live with some form of disability. While this is the official figure, the actual number is widely believed to be much higher due to underreporting and stigma. Within this population, women and girls face compounded marginalisation. Reports indicate that only about 23% of disabled women are employed, compared to 47% of disabled men. Much of this gap can be traced back to a fundamental issue: disabled women simply cannot get to workplaces, schools, hospitals, or public offices because the physical environment is hostile to their needs.

Women with disabilities contend with a combination of inadequate mobility aids and inaccessible environments that keeps them uneducated and unemployed. The problem is particularly severe in rural areas, where unpaved roads, distant schools, and the near-total absence of assistive infrastructure make daily movement a serious challenge.

Infrastructure failures that restrict movement 🔗

The physical environment in most towns and cities remains overwhelmingly inaccessible. Footpaths – where they exist – are uneven, broken, or encroached upon. Public buildings routinely lack ramps, lifts, or accessible toilets. Many educational institutions, for instance, do not have ramps, elevators, or accessible restrooms, which directly prevents disabled women from participating fully in academic life.

Public transport: a critical gap 🔗

Public transport is often the lifeline for people who cannot afford private vehicles. Yet buses, trains, and metro systems are largely designed without disabled passengers in mind. Transportation is vital for independent living, and persons with disabilities depend on accessible systems including air travel, buses, taxis, and railways. In practice, however, the gap between this principle and reality is enormous.

In cities like Mumbai, a train ticket costs about ₹5, while specialised services like wheelchair-accessible taxis can cost roughly 60 times as much – effectively pricing out the vast majority of disabled commuters. Even regular buses in most cities do not have low floors, hydraulic lifts, or designated wheelchair spaces. Railway platforms have wide gaps that are dangerous for wheelchair users, and stations in smaller cities have little to no accessibility infrastructure.

For disabled women specifically, these challenges are compounded by safety concerns. Disability rights activists have reported instances of blind women being groped or harassed while being assisted by strangers on public transport. The fear of harassment means many disabled women avoid travelling altogether, further narrowing their world.

Roads and pathways in rural areas 🔗

In rural settings, rough, unpaved mud roads, long distances to schools and health centres, and the absence of basic facilities like libraries and toilets discourage disabled women from pursuing education or even stepping outside. There is a near-complete absence of assistive infrastructure in villages – no tactile paths for the visually impaired, no wheelchair-friendly routes, and no accessible public toilets. This effectively confines rural disabled women to their homes.

Confinement at home: the hidden consequence 🔗

One of the most disturbing outcomes of poor physical access is the tendency of families to keep disabled women confined indoors. This is not always motivated by malice; families often believe they are protecting their disabled daughters, sisters, or wives from a world that is clearly not built for them. But the result is the same: complete social isolation.

Few people with disabilities are visible on urban streets, and this very invisibility is sometimes cited as a reason not to invest in accessible infrastructure – a self-reinforcing cycle of exclusion. Stereotypes also play a role. Common assumptions – that families will always take care of disabled members, or that disabled people cannot work and therefore need not leave home – contribute to a culture where accessibility is treated as a luxury rather than a basic necessity.

A Human Rights Watch investigation documented how women and girls with disabilities are forcibly placed in institutions by family members or police, partly because the government fails to provide adequate community-based support and services. Those who remain at home often fare little better, living in near-total isolation with no access to education, employment, healthcare, or social interaction.

The disability rights movement itself has not sufficiently addressed the layered barriers that disabled women face, including unsafe transport, inaccessible healthcare, and family-imposed restrictions. Patriarchal attitudes play a central role: disabled women are often seen as incapable of making decisions, unfit for public life, and best kept out of sight.

The legal and policy framework 🔗

On paper, the legislative framework has improved significantly in recent years. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016 replaced the older 1995 legislation and expanded the list of recognised disabilities from 7 to 21. Under the RPwD Act, accessibility became a legal right rather than merely a welfare measure, and non-compliance is now punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Sections 40 to 46 of the Act require the government to formulate standards for physical environment, transportation, and information and communications accessibility in both urban and rural areas. Section 41 specifically mandates accessible facilities at bus stops, railway stations, and airports, as well as the development of accessible roads.

The Accessible India Campaign 🔗

The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities launched the Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan) on December 3, 2015, as a nationwide initiative focused on three pillars: the built environment, transportation, and information and communication technology.

However, the campaign’s implementation has been deeply disappointing. Railways had set targets for full accessibility of Grade A and A+ stations by 2016-17, but none of these targets were met. Even access audits of government buildings have barely moved beyond major cities. The campaign was relaunched with revised timelines in 2021, but those deadlines too have largely passed unmet. Inadequate budget allocation has been identified as the single biggest obstacle.

The gender gap in disability policy 🔗

A critical shortcoming of both the RPwD Act and the Accessible India Campaign is their gender-neutrality. The Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan was never designed with a gender focus and did not address barriers specific to disabled women. This is a serious blind spot. The challenges of a woman using a wheelchair are not the same as those of a man using a wheelchair – women face additional risks of sexual harassment, have different sanitation needs, and are more likely to be denied permission by families to travel independently.

Girls and women with disabilities face an exceptional burden at the intersection of gender and disability, and certain groups – including disabled women – have been consistently overlooked in policy design.

What needs to change 🔗

Improving physical access and mobility for disabled women requires action across multiple fronts – from urban planning and transport design to family attitudes and institutional reform.

Inclusive urban and rural infrastructure 🔗

All new public construction – government offices, hospitals, schools, bus terminals, railway stations – must strictly adhere to universal accessibility standards as mandated under the RPwD Act. Existing buildings need time-bound retrofitting. The Harmonized Guidelines and Space Standards for Universal Accessibility in India (2021) provide a comprehensive framework for built environment accessibility. These guidelines must be enforced, not merely circulated.

In rural areas, the priority should be on paving roads connecting homes to schools, health centres, and panchayat offices; building accessible public toilets; and ensuring that anganwadi centres and ration shops are wheelchair-friendly.

Gender-sensitive transport systems 🔗

Public buses need low-floor designs, wheelchair ramps, and priority seating. But beyond physical modifications, transport systems must also address safety. This means well-lit bus stops, CCTV cameras, trained staff who can assist disabled passengers respectfully, and helplines for reporting harassment. Making cities more accessible for people of all abilities is the first step towards genuine equity and inclusion, as without options to independently travel around, people with disabilities remain cut off from education, healthcare, employment, and social protection.

Community-based support instead of institutionalisation 🔗

Human Rights Watch has called on the government to shift from forced institutional care to voluntary community-based services and support for people with disabilities. This means investing in personal assistants, accessible community centres, peer support groups, and outreach workers who can connect disabled women with available schemes and services. When communities are accessible and supportive, families are far less likely to confine disabled women at home or send them to institutions.

Assistive devices and mobility aids 🔗

Access to wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, crutches, white canes, and hearing aids can be transformative. Government schemes like the Assistance to Disabled Persons for Purchase/Fitting of Aids and Appliances (ADIP) scheme exist, but awareness is low, distribution is patchy, and the devices provided are often of poor quality. The focus should be on high-quality, customised assistive devices that actually meet the user’s needs, distributed through a streamlined, accessible process.

Changing attitudes and building awareness 🔗

Perhaps the most difficult barrier to overcome is attitudinal. Disabled women are frequently viewed as sick, weak, and helpless, with their disabilities foregrounded and their abilities ignored. Families, communities, and even service providers need sustained sensitisation about the rights and capabilities of disabled women. This can happen through disability awareness modules in schools, media campaigns featuring disabled women in active, public roles, and training for government officials who interact with disabled persons.

The way forward: from policy to practice 🔗

The legal architecture for accessibility is largely in place. The RPwD Act is a comprehensive piece of legislation, and the Accessible India Campaign was launched with genuine ambition. What is missing is implementation – and the political will to treat accessibility as a priority rather than an afterthought.

Disabled women sit at the intersection of two powerful systems of exclusion: gender and disability. Patriarchy plays a central role in their marginalisation, and without dismantling it, progress in disability inclusion will remain minimal. Any serious effort to improve physical access and mobility must place disabled women at the centre – not as passive beneficiaries, but as active participants in designing solutions. Disability organisations need to prioritise the voices of disabled women and bring them into leadership spaces.

The question is not whether accessible infrastructure is possible. Countries with far fewer resources have made remarkable progress. The question is whether there is enough commitment to make it happen – and whether disabled women will finally be seen not as people to be protected from the world, but as people who have every right to move through it freely.

What do you think? Should accessibility compliance be made a mandatory condition for granting building permits and operating licences to public transport providers? And how can families be better supported so that keeping disabled women at home no longer feels like the only option?

References

1. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/30/indias-mumbai-living-with-a-disability-in-the-megacity
2. https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/12/03/india-women-disabilities-locked-away-and-abused
3. https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15939/1/the_rights_of_persons_with_disabilities_act,_2016.pdf
4. https://depwd.gov.in/en/accessible-india-campaign/