Court of CCPD directs the Ola Cabs to make their app accessible to all users and allow independent and dignified use of app.

Court: Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Govt. of India

Bench: Mr. P. P. Ambashta, Dy CCPD

Case No: 13532 /1102/ 2022 / 159384

Case Title: Amar Jain Vs. Ani Technologies Private Limited (Ola Cabs)

Date of  Reccord of Proceeding (ToP): 31 May 2023

Next Date of Hearing: 04.07.2023

Brief:

The complainant challenged the inaccessibility of OLA Appplication. 

This Court sided with the preliminary observations made by the Complainant that addressing all the cccessibility chalenges in the  OLA app will take some time and thus some interim arrangements are to be made. 

The Court thus recommended that the Respondent shall make features such as pickup & drop location and driver information accessible for Persons with Disabilities within 4 weeks from the date of this Order, so that Persons with Disabilities become able to make these inputs without assistance of any other person.

The Court also recommended that within 4 weeks from the date of the Record of Proceedings (RoP). the Respondent shall conduct meeting with the Complainant and identily issues relating to accessibility of app and prepare a roadmap for making all features of the app accessible for Persons with Disabilities.

The court  further expressed that considering the continuous nature of the Complaint, this Court decides that hearing shall be conducted again in the present Complaint. The Respondent is directed to inform this Court about the compliance of above two recommendations during next hearing which shall be conducted on 04.07.2023.

This is also a good practice being followed by the Court to keep the matters live until substantial actions have been taken by the respondent to remediate the wrongs and thus is worthy of mention.

Read the Order embedded below:

DHC seeks UOI's stand on a PIL seeking direction to enhance effective access for persons with vision impairments by placing QR Codes on Medicines, Food Products, Cosmetics & other Consumer products .

Court: Delhi High Court

Bench: Hon'ble Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Hon'ble Justice Subramonium Prasad. 

Case No: W.P.(C) 5985/2023 

Case Title: The Kapila and Nirmal Shweta Hingorani Foundation & Ors  Vs. Union of India & ors.

Date of Hearing : 09 May 2023

Next Date of Hearing: 16 Aug 2023

Brief:

In a PIL moved by The Kapila & Nirmal Hingorani Foundation, a public charitable trust and two visually impaired Delhi University professors, a division bench of  Delhi HC issued notice to the Centre through the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities) and Food Safety and Standards Authority of India.

The PIL seeks to secure effective access for visually impaired persons to medicines, food, cosmetics and other consumer products which is also a mandate of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, (RPwD Act 2016) whcih specifically provides for (i) measures/ schemes/ programmes to promote their healthcare (ii) standards of accessibility for information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems, and other facilities and services provided to the public in urban and rural areas and (iii) measures to promote development, production and distribution of universally designed consumer products and accessories for general use for persons with disabilities among other rights.

The PIL submitted that visually impaired people face immense difficulties in taking medicines and they feel the shape and size of tablets and do not even have the benefit of differentiating drugs based on colour. Due to a lack of accessible information, visually impaired people may take wrong medicines, leading to major health problems, adverse reactions and even loss of life.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the petitioners Dr. Smriti Singh, associate professor (English) at Maitreyi College; and Shobhan Singh, senior assistant professor (History) Zakir Hussain PG Evening College, who are visually impaired, went through a horrible time, desperate for help and information, in absence of accessibility of medicines and food products.

The plea highlights that the scope for utilising the capabilities of smartphones with QR codes to help visually impaired persons identify products and access all relevant product information is huge. It referenced newsreports that India had 1.2 billion mobile subscribers in 2021, of which about 750 million were smartphone users. Furthermore, the number of smartphone users was expected to increase to 1 billion by 2026, with rural areas driving the sale of internet-enabled phones, which in turn were set to get a push with the government’s plan to fiberise all villages by 2025 under the BharatNet Programme.

The petitioners had sent a representation in December 2021 and a follow-up in February 2022 to the Prime Minister of India and another representation to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on February 21, 2022 which is yet to be responded.

The representation of the petitioners urged that all medicine manufacturers be directed to affix QR code on each tablet (or at the very least between two tablets) at the back of the strip so that a smartphone with accessibility feature could then scan the QR code with its stored data or information about the particular medicine, and decode it to convert the text to speech format of the application.

The PIL claimed that petitioners, on learning that some medicines in the market did have QR Codes (without full information/details of the medicine), also made follow-up representations. The plea stated that employing QR Codes in the manner suggested in the representations would increase the efficacy of medical care for visually impaired patients by reducing medication errors, incorrect dosages, unintended drug interactions and side effects.

The PIL has asserted that the continued lack of effective access to medicines, food, cosmetics and other consumer products constitutes a “denial of the constitutional rights of visually impaired persons under Article 21 of the Constitution” as well as their “statutory rights” under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.  The PIL has sought directions to the concerned authorities to secure effective access for visually impaired persons to medicines, food, cosmetics and other consumer products and towards this end, to take comprehensive measures and adopt comprehensive guidelines on affixing QR Codes on such products.

Matter will be next listed on 16 Aug 2023.