Union Minister for Social justice and Empowerment Shri Thaawarchand Gehlot will virtually launch “Sugamya Bharat App” and a handbook entitled “Access – The Photo Digest” through video conference tomorrow. The App and the handbook have been developed by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. The inauguration will be web-telecast at 11.00 AM tomorrow at https://webcast.nic.in/msje/. Thereafter, the Mobile App can be downloaded from Play Store by Android users. The IoS version of the App will be available by 15^th March 2021.

Sugamya Bharat APP — a Crowdsourcing Mobile Application is a means for sensitising and enhancing accessibility in the 3 pillars of the Accessible India Campaign i.e. built environment, transportation sector and ICT ecosystem in India. The app provides for five main features, 4 of which are directly related to enhancing accessibility, while the fifth is a special feature meant only for Divyangjan for COVID related issues. The accessibility related features are: the registration of complaints of inaccessibility across the 3 broad pillars of the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyaan; positive feedback of examples and best practices worth emulating being shared by people as jan-bhagidhari; Departmental updates; and guidelines and circulars related to accessibility.

The Sugamya Bharat App is a simple to use Mobile App with an easy registration process, requiring only 3 mandatory fields, namely, Name, Mobile number and Email-id. Registered users can raise issues related to accessibility being faced. The App has been provided with several user-friendly features like easy drop-down menus, videos in Hindi and English, along with sign language interpretation have been added demonstrating the process of registration and uploading complaints with photographs. The App is made accessible for ease of use for persons with disabilities also with features such as font size adjustment, color contrasting option, text to speech, and having an integrated screen reader in Hindi and English. It is available in 10 regional languages, namely, Hindi, English, Marathi, Tamil, Odiya, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Malayalam. The App also has provision of easy photo uploads with geotagging option of the premise where accessibility intervention is required. The App has provision for providing notifications to the users at the time of registration, regular status updates as well as at the time of resolution and closure of the complaint.

DEPwD has also prepared a handbook entitled “Access - The Photo Digest” with a collection of photographs from across different States and UTs. This Book is envisaged as a tool and guide to sensitise stakeholders about 10 basic features of accessibility and related good-bad practices in easy to understand pictorial form. The electronic version of this handbook will also be available on the App and the website of the Department.

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NB/SK/jk/MoSJ&E/01.03.2021