INDIA: Uttar Pradesh Metro Rail Corp has worked with the Handicare Indian Association of Persons with Disabilities to organise an inclusive public transport workshop to help senior staff as well as new recruits understand the needs of disabled passengers
Handicare was established in 1986 as a national advocacy group aiming to help people achieve full participation in society.
At the metro workshop Handicare Chair Mridu R Goel discussed issues which people can face in daily life. She emphasised that help should be offered and not forced, highlighting the need to gently push a wheelchair with both hands, the importance of offering a hand to a blind person instead of pushing or pulling them, speaking gently rather than shouting at someone, and looking out for people who might been in need of assistance.
Attention was drawn to accessibility facilities on the Lucknow Metro, including the provision of staff-assisted wheelchairs at all stations, buttons near on-train wheelchair spaces so that passengers can request a longer station stop to enable easy boarding and alighting, wide ticket gates for wheelchairs and prams, audible messages in lifts, Braille plates on lift buttons and at priority seats and tactile lines to enable passengers to locatethe platform edge.
‘It is our social responsibility to sensitise society about the specially able persons and we also have taken this initiative to train our metro staff deployed at the stations to address and attend to their needs for the sake of their convenience’, said Swadesh Kumar, General Manager (Operations) at UPMRC.
