#TIL: 3 ways in which COVID has changed travelling for Persons with Disabilities

By Apoorv Kulkarni

Image description: A collage of caricatures including COVID-19 virus, 2 deaf people signing, a blind woman, a man using a wheelchair, metro train, black and yellow taxi, and a bus with the passengers and driver waring non-transparent masks.

It’s December and the world has been grappling with COVID-19 for almost 10 months. Social distancing norms and other restrictions have brought in many changes in the day-to-day life. Transportation too has undergone significant changes to ensure that safe and hygienic travel options are made available. While these changes have been beneficial for the most part, they also have inadvertently alienated millions of Persons with Disabilities (PwD).

Today, on the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, let’s take a look at three ways in which travel experience for Persons with Disabilities has taken a turn for the worst during the COVID pandemic:

1. Hailing auto or taxi on the street

Image description: A blind person is standing at a road side at an intersection with a white cane in hand. Three cars are approaching the intersection.

Persons living with visual disabilities find it challenging to spot an auto or a taxi plying on a street and hail it. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, they often requested for assistance from sighted passers-by. However, with the social distancing norms, reduced number of people and a general coronaphobia, getting assistance has become difficult for these individuals.

2. Entering and exiting through train stations

Image description: A man in a wheelchair entering a train station. He is depicted trying to climb down a flight of stairs on his wheelchair.

Many train stations have opened only a select entry/exit gates for the passengers. While this makes it easy for the transport operators to follow safety norms such as temperature checks, it creates difficulty for Persons with locomotor disabilities. Often, these entry/exit gates are not accessible. At other times, using these gates could force one to take a longer route. For many persons with locomotor disability this becomes additionally challenging given their compromised motor functions.

3. Communicating with transport staff and fellow passengers

Image description: two pictures are placed side by side. On the left hand side, a person is wearing a black non-transparent mask. On the right, a person is shown waring a FDA approved clear mask. The person’s mouth and lips are visible in the picture in the right. The said person is smiling.

The Deaf and hard of hearing persons (collectively referred to as “Deaf”) often rely on lip reading while conversing with hearing individuals. However, the wide use of non-transparent masks makes it challenging to communicate with transport staff, fellow passengers and others.

As transport systems open up, it is important that they are accessible for Persons with Disabilities. Not doing so will amount to disfranchising over 100 million disabled Indians. On the International Day for Persons with Disabilities, we invite transport planners and operators to make accessibility and inclusion a key success factor of transportation.

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