Date:06/07/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/07/06/stories/2009070657970200.htm

Front Page

25,000 persons with disability identified

Aloysius Xavier Lopez

— File Photo

A social auditing of buildings in Chennai to make them more disabled-friendly will be conducted in August.

CHENNAI: The first enumeration of persons with disability in the State by the government has been completed in Chennai. Around 25,000 people with disability have been identified in the city.

The enumeration includes data on nine types of disability such as visually impaired and low vision, orthopaedically handicapped, mental retardation, mental illness, cerebral palsy, speech and hearing disabled, autism, leprosy cured and persons with multiple disabilities.

“The work in almost 50 per cent of the other districts in the State has been completed,” said Meenakshi Rajagopal, State Commissioner for the Disabled.

The door-to-door survey, on the scale of a Census, was carried out to create a database on persons with disability and classify various types of disability.

It included 7 parameters such as personal details, type of disability, education status, employment, usage, need and supply of aids and appliances, rights of the people with disability and impact of various government schemes.

Around 700 volunteers undertook house-to-house visits. across the city and enumerated the persons with disability in each family besides profiling the type of disability on the basis of a questionnaire.

Printed copies of questionnaires were routed to resource persons through the respective District Disabled Rehabilitation Officers.

Details collected during the enumeration would help in better planning for persons with disability, said Ms.Rajagopal.

The baseline data for the exercise could help future policies, strategies and purposeful interventions.

It has been designed to be much more illuminating on not just the magnitude of disability, but its types and distribution of prevalence.

Analysis reporting of the survey will be done in coordination with the National Informatics Centre by September.

“We are forming a team to start social auditing of various buildings in Chennai next month,” said

Ms.Rajagopal. This would help suggest changes in buildings to make them more disabled-friendly.