PEOPLE’S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES

Implications of Rights of Person with Disabilities in India

Kumail Fatima*

ABSTRACT

The notion of rights of persons with Disabilities is to promote the equality in society and it lays
emphasis on providing equal opportunities to disabled persons and make things accessible for them.
Sometimes it becomes onerous to do certain things due to their disabilities. The Resolution on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights treaty of the United Nations
projected to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities. Our Indian constitution secure
the rights of each individual through equality of status and opportunity. This research project is
concerned with understanding the cultural perception and treatment of the disabled and the services
which are rendered to them through various bills. Many amendments have been passed for disabled
people and to look after that are they implementing correctly or not, certain rules are formed. This
paper gives the information on recent changes in policies and programs for disable persons and
focuses on how these policies are implementing in our country and it also discusses about the on
going circumstances which are not good and prerequisite to be changed.

Keywords: Notion, Resolution, Concerned, Information, Prerequisite

1.0 Introduction Disabilty has been defined based on evolving and dynamic concept. Disabilities are
of different kind, like religious disabilities, social disabilities and economic disabilities. basically
the word disable means to cause to become unable and here we are talking about physical and
Mental disability. It is physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or
activities. According to World Health Organisation disability is "any restriction or lack (resulting
from any impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range
considered normal for a human being".1 A disability includes those that: are present, or once
existed but don't any more, for example, a person who has had a back injury, a heart attack or an
episode of mental illness, or may exist in the future, for example, a person with a hereditary
tendency to a disease, such as Huntington's disease or heart disease or a person who is HIV
positive, or someone thinks or assumes a person has.

1
Definition of disability, http://hcdg.org/definition.htm
People with a disability may include:

• people who are blind or partially sighted

• People with learning or intellectual disabilities

• People who are deaf or hearing impaired

• People with a physical disability

• People with long term illnesses

• People with mental health or psychological difficulties

• People with an acquired brain injury

The convention on the rights of persons with disability make major steps to represent what
human rights mean in context of people with disability. The Convention covers a wide range of
areas including: health, education, employment, access to justice, personal security,
independent living, and access to information.2

1.1 People who are blind or partially sighted In India, according to PWD Act
1995,blindness means a condition where person suffers total absence of sight; or Visual
acuity not exceeding 6/60 or 20/200 (Snellen) in the better eye even with correction
lenses; or Limitation of the field of vision subtending an angle of 20 degree or worse.
Persons having low vision but only those who’s low vision cant be corrected even after
medical treatments but this “Low vision are those who suffer visual acuity
between 20/200 to 70/200 (Snellen) or 6/18 to 6/60 in the better eye after the best possible
correction or a Field of Vision between 20 to 30 degrees and there is controversies that
weather the one eyed person would be considered bilnd or not then its answer is it is
not treated as a disability if the person’s other eye is fully functional.
Implications of blindness disability :-
 Difficulty in learning when long passages are read and from visual inputs.
 Taking more time to interpret meaning as reading on Braille mode, requires longer time and
involves higher degree of memorizing and synthesizing from wholeness of phrases, sentences
etc.
 Difficulty in comprehending from verbal content, including geographical terms and concepts,
like - latitude, longitudes, physical directions etc.

2
https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/our-human-rights-work/monitoring-and-promoting-un-
treaties/un-convention-rights-persons-disabilities
 Graphic and visual descriptions like map-reading, graphs, diagrams, paintings, inscriptions,
symbols and monumental architecture.
 Poor in observing environment and space - land, climate, vegetation and wildlife, distribution
of resources and services.
 Poor in developing spatial concepts and understanding the relationships between spatial
concepts.
 Poor understanding of three-dimensional objects transformed into two dimensional forms.
 Difficulty in understanding special characters (symbols) used in Mathematics.
 Difficulty in audio recording of mathematical text, for eg., equations, formulas etc.
 Difficulty in transcribing and reading mathematical text in Braille because of spatial
arrangement and colour codes.
 Difficulty in learning of Nemeth or any other Mathematical Braille Code
 Difficulty in comprehending abstract concepts.
 Difficulty in comprehending science experiments, especially in Chemistry.
 Require longer time for performing academic tasks.

1.2 People with learning or intellectual disabilities Intellectual disabilities are those
disabilities which are categorized by some noteworthy limitations in both intellectual
functioning which include reasoning, learning and also in the process of adaption of
behaviour. This includes wide range of everyday social and practical abilities. This kind
of disabilities are generally originate before the age of 18. People who are termed as
intellectualy disabiled covers the same group of individuals who were analysed
previously with mental retardation in number, kind, level, type, duration of disability, and
the need of people with this disability for individualized services and supports.
Implications of Learning and Intellectual Disabilities:-
 Difficulty in understanding and learning from new experiences and information.
 Short attention span
 Difficulty with memory retention Lack of ability to learn from incidental experiences.
 Difficulty in transferring learning from routine experiences to new situations.
 Difficulty with communication and social skills
 Slow in cognitive processing time.
 Difficulty in sequential processing of information, planning, organizing and generalizing.
 Slow in comprehending abstract concepts.
 Poor in listening, expressing ideas / speaking fluently and coherently.
 Poor reading including decoding, phonetic knowledge and word recognition.
 Poor in eye-hand coordination and writing skills
  Poor language comprehension.
 Poor in understanding figurative language - idioms, metaphors, similes etc.
 Difficulty in accessing written work, illustrations, charts, graphs and maps.
 Challenge in extracting relevant information from bulk information.
 Poor in mathematical calculations (computations), copying problems etc.
 Difficulty in sequencing, step wise problem solving and comprehending number place
value
 Confusion in mathematics operational symbols.
 Poor comprehension of word problems.
 Slow in understanding technical language.
 Poor in inferring meaningful linkages/relationships between concepts.
1.3 People who are deaf or hearing impaired This term is used to describe those people
who

Suffers any degree of hearing loss, from mild to profound. Including those who are

Completely deef and those who are hard of hearing. Students with hearing impairment are

Sometimes visual learners. Impact on learning will depend on the degree of the impairment

and cause of hearing loss.

Implications of Hearing Disability:-

 Problem in taking meaningful notes.
 Poor or unintelligible reading.
 Difficulty in understanding verbal questions.
 Poor Vocabulary
 Problem in responding to oral tests.
 Difficulty in following verbal / group conversations.
 Problem in understanding abstract concepts and figurative language (like similes, metaphors
and idioms).
 Problem in reading and learning spellings (because of difficulty in phonemic awareness and
speech / sound discrimination).
 Challenge in organizing or composing ideas.
 Deficits in communicating ideas due to restricted vocabulary.
 1.4 People with a physical disability This is a kind of disability which affects the person’s
ability of doing physical task or physical functioning. There are some Developmental
disabilities which are also termed as physical disabilities such as Cerebral palsy.

Implications of Physical Disabilities :-

 restriction in exploring their physical environment and learning from it can be challenging.
 Speech may be impaired.
 May have difficulty using conventional chairs / tables in class / lab.
 Difficulty in finishing assignments / tests in prescribed time limit.
 Experiences fatigue when speaking to a person for a long.
 Requires additional time, support of compatible assistive technology and exemptions for
coping with curricular demands.
 Student need specialized furniture or transport means.
 Difficulty in using regular writing tools like holding a pen to write for continuously for long
time.
 Activities involving use of hands like turning pages, writing, taking out books from bag can
be difficult hence have to be adapted suitably.
 Challenges with input, output and information processing when working on assignments,
tests, and /or exams.

 People with long term illnesses A long term illness are those illness which cannot be cured
completely but its complications and symptoms can usually be controlled by the treatment. some
examples are arthritis, asthma, diabetes and epilepsy.

Implications of long term disability:-

 impacts on career and educational decisions.(like they opt regular classes courses or open)
 Affects choices regarding work load.
 Also faces various psychological and environmental barriers.

People with mental health or psychological difficulties this refer to those problems which leads to
some mental distress on person or due to which some abnormality came into existence in the
behaviour of the person.

Implications of Mental Disabilities.

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