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The Madras High Court on Tuesday, September 16, asked the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) response to a Public Interest Litigation regarding the inaccessibility of the ECI website and polling stations for persons with disabilities.
The division bench comprising Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan asked Niranjan Rajagopalan, counsel for the ECI, to file a response within four weeks.
The petition filed by disability rights activist Vaishnavi Jayakumar states that polling stations as well as the ECI website are inaccessible to persons with disabilities. The petitioner states that the stipulations of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act,
2016, are not being followed seven years after it came into effect, despite repeated requests to the EC.
“I submit that Section 11 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 mandates that the respondent and state election commissions shall ensure that all polling stations are accessible to persons with disabilities and all materials related to the electoral process are easily understandable by and accessible to them,” the petition states. It adds, “Polling stations and the website of the ECI are not universally accessible to even verify a voter’s status and the candidates lists during elections, depriving persons with disability and other mobility impaired persons their valuable right to vote.”
The petition points to the ‘completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart’ (CAPTCHA) requirements of the website as a significant barrier to accessibility for persons with disabilities. The CAPTCHA on the ECI websites are in a single image format instead of a multi modal format including audio, text, logic, OTP options, which restricts persons with impaired vision.
The petition states that the ECI website is not compliant with the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW), which mandates multimodal access.
Another barrier to access comes in the form of polling booth selection. “The respondent commission, while shortlisting and designating a building as a polling station, has to ensure that the building chosen, i.e., the polling station, has step-free access via compliant ramps and accessible route to enter the building and also to access every polling booth established in the station, to enable access to persons with disability and other mobility impaired persons.”
The petitioner also points out that the ECI has stopped maintaining a website with data regarding each polling station in an election, including the coordinates and facilities available, posing a further challenge to Persons with Disabilities.
The petitioner asked for court directions to the ECI to designate only the polling booths having all the facilities specified in the ECI’s ‘Assured Minimum Facilities’ document to ensure such facilities are in compliance with the standards mandated by the Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India 2021.