Shivani Gupta on Access, Advocacy and Everyday Inclusion

In this film, Shivani Gupta, who has 25 years of experience working in the area of disability inclusion reflects on the turning points in her life and how they’ve shaped her. Embracing the work that drives Shivani, she takes us through the intricacies of access audits, the importance of inclusive design, her experiences working across borders and the challenges she faces as a wheelchair user

I am a wheelchair user since 1992 I think, that’s when I met with a car accident and had a spinal injury and I lost my husband in that accident and I was also like injured.

I had some leg fractures and things, so uh I was on the bed for nearly, because it was a femur fracture, I was on the bed for nearly 8-10 months.

And, I mean you can imagine like, mentally I was quite, in a bad space and I…I mean I didn’t know what next.

I was completely lost.

I couldn’t understand why did I have another accident. I’ve always…I’ve already had an accident and a major one. Why did I need another major accident?

And you know I was just very confused and very cut off from everything as the situation would actually make anyone, I guess.

And that’s the time when I was retro…retrospecting everything, you know? Why.. why.. why? and I started writing, writing it down and I think that is when it started and slowly you know, ‘okay let me write it into a book’ and it just went on and I, yeah, that’s when and 2014 I, it was released.

So ‘No Looking Back’ is an autobiography that I wrote after the second accident that I had and this was in 2009.

I think life has really moved on after my second accident and this, of course I took a break for nearly a year, but then, you know, slowly I started getting back to doing some projects and the first one was in Ladakh where, you know, they wanted to create an accessible tourists circuit kind of a thing for persons with disabilities.

And after that I did the audit of Central University, Hyderabad and following that I got engaged with the International Disability Alliance, this was way back in 2012 and I was working with them, they were doing trainings – training of trainers for monitoring of the UNCRPD, of basically organisations of persons with disabilities so I was supporting them in coordinating those trainings and, so that work, you know, went on for nearly a year, year and a half, and following that I continued working with them for sometime and I did some research on public procurement and accessibility and there was also a publication that came out on you know, accessibility and public procurement and then you know, simultaneously I got engaged with the, the disaster risk reduction work they were doing and at that the Sendai framework was being you know, negotiated and consulted so I was a part of those negotiations.

So Sendai framework is a global commitment, it’s a UN driven process, it’s a global commitment by countries, to look at disaster risk reduction so naturally our, you know, our entire effort is that what is being decided what the world is going to do in terms of disaster risk reduction, it needs to be disability inclusive so that’s where our role came in.

Every 10 years the UN comes out with a new framework for disaster risk reduction. I have to say that the Sendai framework was the first framework where disability inclusion was so well represented. The frameworks before that didn’t really have mention of disability.

What does a typical access audit entail?

So when I say an Access audit, access audit is simply reviewing a facility whether it’s a service or infrastructure or you know, maybe transport facility, to you know, try and see how inclusive and accessible it is for persons with disabilities.

Access audits will be done basically based on some standards and in India we have the harmonized guidelines for accessibility and universal access or something they call it.

There are also international standards.

So when one does an access audit you would go there physically.

You would actually look at the entire space, take measurements, take photographs, talk to people around and then you know, collect all that data, come back and analyse it, based on the standards and create a recommendatory report which you know, can support people to improve their services, make it more inclusive.

After an access audit, do you or your employer ensure that the recommendations in the report are properly implemented?

In my experience Access audit reports are not implemented in totality.

So there are some parts of it which definitely get implemented, some parts of which get implemented over a long time, some can be much quicker but it’s a journey, the report implementation is a journey and in any case making infrastructure accessible is not something people can do something overnight.

It is a progressively realizable kind of a aspect so it happens over time but I think doing an access audit is really the first step.

What was your experience traveling to Pakistan for work? Could you share any interesting stories from your time there?

That was 2015 and during that time I was also doing some consultancies with CBM and this was providing support and access auditing and training of organisations of persons with disabilities in Pakistan, in Egypt, in Jordan.

So going to Pakistan was really like a very interesting thing to do for me and to begin with going to Pakistan which is like perhaps 1 hour flight from Delhi, took me nearly 18 hours to reach because there is no direct flight to Pakistan from India and of course getting a visa is a nightmare.

It took us nearly 1 month rambling here…when I checked in we realized that my visa was stamped on my personal assistant Ritu’s passport and her visa was stamped on my passport.

So we couldn’t fly that day and I was going to Pakistan to conduct a training, so you know, I have to be there in time, you know because I’m facilita…I am the facilitator.

Well in any case we had one day extra and so we postponed the flight and the next day morning like we went to the embassy, as it was so difficult to get it and thankfully they kind of changed the stickers and we were able to fly the next day and it took so long to reach there.

But Pakistan is just like India, I mean people are so friendly, just as hospitable as people are here, you know?

I mean if a foreigner comes to our country we are generally, we are most hospitable exactly the same, the food is the same, everything is the same.

Wh…I mean, they had a English to Urdu translator for the training so in accessibility you have this technical jargon and all which of course the translator was finding it difficult but you know, Hindi is like Urdu so I did that training in Hindi, which was much easier for everyone to understand and there was a co-facilitator from Pakistan so if there were certain words he would translate but otherwise that was a fantastic experience.

What kind of work are you currently engaged in?

So with the GDI hub I work as a Senior inclusive design manager and my role is really to work on inclusive design projects and it’s a more Asia looking post, not that if there is some other work in another country and there is a requirement I would not work but yet to kind of do more focused work in Asia.

So uh presently I am engaged in a project uh with the expo city Dubai and they want to, you know, from expo city, they want to become a legacy of the expo city and really, they are in the process of transforming into a real city and they are a very accessible infrastructure already and they are very conscious about inclusion and they want to ensure going forward that inclusion and accessibility is embedded, it doesn’t get lost.

So we’re supporting them to create a strategy and guidance documents and things like that.

Engaged in projects that we are doing with the Asian Development Bank.

Uh I was also actually involved in a research we did, uh under the 80-20 program which is funded by the FCDO and here, there was a research undertaken in 6 cities across the world, global south cities, to look at the status of inclusive environments in the cities.

And it was a 4 year long research, I of course came in much later and it has culminated this year actually at the world urban forum and we were there at the world urban forum and the research has been, findings have been launched as a Global Action Report for, you know, making more inclusive cities and these are like some priority areas and which cities can, you know, after evaluations decide, pick up 2 or 3 priority areas for improvement and slowly improve the situation of inclusive environments.

How much priority is given to inclusion in the development of smart cities?

So when we look at smart cities, smart cities as you know, more focused on making cities more digitally smart but I mean I don’t see as much, as much attention to inclusion as there should be, because you know, when we are talking of inclusion we are talking of a very large group, we’re not just talking of people with disabilities and that’s the pitfall, because when we talk of accessibility, when we talk of inclusion we just narrow it to people with disabilities, but people with disabilities of course it’s mandatory for them, but for others it just makes life so much easier and we dont look at that and that is why if you look at the smart city mandate I do not think inclusion is one of the main pillars, where as it needs to be and the problem is if we don’t make inclusion as a very specific pillar or a guiding principle it does not get included and if it does not included then retrofitting is awfully expensive and right now when we are at a stage when, you know, globally there is a massive, you know, urbanization trend there is already a dearth of money globally to address this kind of urbanisation and to ensure that people have a good life in urban areas.

So, if we don’t include inclusion we will never have the money to retrofit and that is what really troubles me, you know, when we’re looking at urbanisation we are looking at a rise of informal settlements, you know, and we all know that disability and poverty are very closely linked.

Obviously there’ll be a large number of people living in informal settlements who are persons with disabilities and there is nothing that’s, that’s happening about it.

We are talking about affordable housing and the need for affordable housing and their needs to be more affordable housing, but none of the affordable housing are inclusive or accessible, you know, if you look at the Indra Awas Yojana and if you look at the house, the square feet space of a house, it cannot be made accessible.

So, you know, these basics are missing.

Our research in these cities was that governments are working in silos and accessibility and inclusion are very cross cutting aspect, it just sits with the Ministry of, I mean, in our country, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Department of Disability Affairs, I mean, but that is the department that should actually be just be monitoring, it is actually the other departments who should be addressing it, but it’s just the other way round.

It’s it’s that department which is actually trying to implement it.

They may be the custodian of the act but they cannot be the implementer.

Based on your travel experiences, how does accessibility in India compare to other countries?

For work I’ve traveled to more than 22 countries and you know when I look at accessibility, accessibility of course in high income countries is very good.

I mean, if, like, very recently I went to Singapore and I really liked to use the public transport because that’s something that you know you don’t get to use in your own country.

I remember the first time I used the public transport was when I went to Geneva and I used the tram and the bus and it was such a liberating experience, it was fantastic and so yes I mean if you travel to high income countries definitely accessibility is, is far better.

But when we look at low and middle income countries like ours, again the challenges are the same, you know?

You can’t use the public transport, things are not so accessible and but I have to say that, I mean sitting in India we are of course cribbing that well we are so way behind and accessibility is so bad and things but I think that’s a common thing and I would not say we are so..so behind I mean without criticizing, recently I went to Cairo and there was this lady who came with a guide dog from I don’t know some south American country and she had such a big challenge because you know, the taxis would not take her dog, the hotel will not allow her dog and it was a big challenge but I think it wouldn’t have been such a big challenge in India, I mean it would have been much better managed.

And, you know, so it’s all good to criticise but things are happening maybe not at the pace that we want, things are improving, I mean for me I’ve been disabled for 32-33 years, I’ve seen the change and and I think it would be unfair to compare yourself to a high-income country and say well we don’t have that because we are not there, whatever said and done.

What accessibility challenges do you face as a person living with a disability like yours?

One of the biggest challenge is transportation and because transportation is not accessible you don’t really get out.

And if you don’t get, get out, you get excluded you know, and whatever we are talking about inclusion, and the problem in Delhi is very peculiar because I understand the sustainability and we need to have, you know, battery or clean green transportation which is all good.

In Delhi we have only CNG taxis, so CNG taxi, what does that mean, that the dickey space is all gone, so when the dickey space is gone, where do you keep your wheelchair?

You know, and it’s a very peculiar thing and I think this is something people don’t even understand.

Every time I have to go to the airport, I have to take a cab which is perhaps 2 or 3 times more expensive because it has a dickey space and you know, and this thing of disability related extra costs just keep building, just keep building and it is atrocious.

Every step of life, anything you do there is a disability related extra cost that you are paying and I don’t think that the government really addresses it at all.