Yes to Access

We are delighted to have been shortlisted in the Second World Summit for Social Development to be held in Qatar, Doha, from 4-6 November 2025, to conduct a Virtual Solution Session- Breaking Barriers, Building Solutions through Yes to Access’ on 5th November 12:30 PM IST.

The Association of People with Disability (APD) with Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, Government of India and State Commissioner for Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, Karnataka will be conducting this session.

Speakers

Manmeet Nanda, Additional Secretary, DEPWD, Das Suryawanshi, SCPD Karnataka and Bhumika Modh

The event highlights APD’s Yes to Access as a scalable solution to dismantle systemic barriers and foster equal participation. It seeks to exchange knowledge, promote participatory data, strengthen government–civil society partnerships, and build collective commitments to advance disability rights and inclusion in India and globally, ensuring no one is left behind.

Despite constitutional guarantees and global commitments, disability rights in India remain underfunded and sidelined. The reliance on outdated Census 2011 data, estimating prevalence at just 2.21%, obscures the realities of millions of persons with disabilities (PwDs) and hampers effective planning. The consequences are stark: labor force participation is extremely low, especially among women at around 7%, with limited access to education, healthcare, and social protection reinforcing cycles of poverty and dependence.

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPwD) Act, 2016 provides a rights-based framework aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, yet its implementation has been uneven. Campaigns such as Accessible India have seen limited progress, often constrained by fragmented approaches and one-off audits.In this context, disability inclusion must be recognized as a cross-sectoral investment essential for justice, human rights, and equitable development. Accessibility is not charity but the foundation for independence, opportunity, and participation.

The Association of People with Disability’s Yes to Access (YTA) initiative offers a scalable, community-driven solution. The YTA mobile app enables citizens to crowdsource accessibility audits by uploading photos, ratings, and checklist data on infrastructure. Using AI-driven scoring, it generates India’s largest accessibility dataset, 200,000 sites mapped by 12,000 volunteers since December 2024, empowering PwDs, influencing policy, and fostering collective ownership of inclusion.