Foot-operated pedals to tu👍rn on taps, hand rails or grab bars at drinking water points and braille indication on taps are among the features included in the Centre's draft guidelines on accessible piped water supply for persons with disabilities, elderly and other vulnerable population groups.
The Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation has prepared draft guide🌠lines to provide inputs to 'Harmonized Guidelines and Space Standards for Barrier Free Built Environment for Persons with Disabilities and Eld🍸erly Persons.'
This draft document sug🔴gests information for designing an accessible and inclusive piped water supply for persons with disabilities and other population groups with access challenges🅰.
Those include people with temporary access challenges♉ such as pregnant women or mothers with young children or individuals who are suffering from short term physical ailments, as they too face similar barriers while accessing drinking water facilities.
In this document, the existing provisions of the various guidelines are compared and provisions are suggested for inclusive design of piped drinking water supply at household, community and institutional level, including൲ public offices and places.
Different facilities like the anganwadi centres, primary, secondary and residential schools, health and wellne🍰ss centres, primary, community health centres, civil and district hospitals, panchayatಞ offices and market places are covered under the guidelines.
The feature🎃s in the guidelines include baby-friendly water points (height, location, e▨ase of access), hand rails or grab bars at drinking water points for those suffering from mobiliy issues, braille indication on taps, automatic sensors, and use of adequate colours or tonal contrast between walls for people with low vision or partial blindness.
The guidelines also suggest adjusting the height and desඣign of water point for people with disabilities. "The height and design of the water point need to be adjusted for children and people with disabilities. For children, the height should be between 500-700 mm and for wheelchair users less than 850mm.
"In practice, this will require eitherﷺ two water points set at different heights, or one flexible modular unit with two water points," the guidelines said. Rights groups have welcomed the guidelines but suggested theꦦir strict ground implementation to help vulnerable groups.
Arman Ali, executive director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People, said India is home to more than 100 million people with disabilities (highest in the world) and the physically inaccessible piped wate🍌r supply violates their right to life guaranteed by Article 21.
"The said inputs for guidelines on accessible and inclusive piped water supply for persons with disabilities are a necessary step to be taken in today's time and would be beneficial to million𒅌s of people with disabilitiꦕes as well as other population groups such as senior citizens if implemented in its letter and spirit," he told PTI.
Himanshu Raha, founder and chairman at Agewell Foundation, ho♛wever, pointed out that this document seems to be good on paper but it needs to incorporate Indi🐓an realities.
"First, the focus should be to provide safe and conti൲nuous drinking supply to these vulnerable groups who are struggling f෴or it. Otherwise what would be the point if water is not available to them but all these facilities are in place," he pointed out.
&quo🅘t;When we are unable to provide piped water to all Indian households, providing non-contaminated drinking water is a challenge we can't🌟 possibly take up this in the near future," he added.
(With PTI inputs)
