India's Disability Act of 1995 provides various facilities for both children and adults with disabilities in India.
Under the Disabilities Act of India, children with disabilities have the right to free education until they reach the age of eighteen in schools that are integrated, or in ‘special,’ schools. Children with disabilities have the right to appropriate transportation, removal of architectural barriers, as well as the restructuring of curriculum and modifications in the examination system. Scholarships, uniforms, books, and teaching materials are all provided to children with disabilities for free in India.
Children with disabilities in India have access to special schools that are equipped with vocational training facilities, and non-formal education. India provides training institutions for teachers in order to establish manpower. Parents of children with disabilities in the nation can move to an appropriate court for the redress of grievances in regards to their children with disabilities; Mobility Products for Handicapped.
Parents of children with disabilities in India are required to obtain a, 'disability certificate,' in order to access the facilities mentioned above; they can obtain this certificate from their nearest government hospital, where an Identity Card from the, 'Office of the Commissioner for Disabilities,' will issue it. People in rural areas can obtain this Identity Card from their Block Development Officer’s Office (BDO).
Recent Disability Figures in India:
- At least 1.2 million people with disabilities in India are living in households consisting only of people with disability.
- While the total people with disabilities increased by just over 22 per cent over a decade, from almost 22 million in the Census 2001 to 26.8 million in 2011, the number of people with disabilities living on their own has nearly doubled, jumping by 84 per cent in the same period.
- About 6.3 lakh people with disabilities lived alone in single member households and 2.7 lakh two-member households had two disabled people each (about 5.5 lakh in all) staying on their own in households without any non-disabled person.
- Among the larger states, Jammu & Kashmir has the highest proportion of households with at least one person with disability, over 12 per cent, followed by Odisha with 10 per cent of such households.
- Interestingly, in Delhi and Tamil Nadu, which have strong disability rights movements compared to other states, only 5 per cent of households were identified as having one or more people with disabilities. These movements have consistently maintained that official data is underestimating the actual number of people with disabilities in India.
- In the 2011 census, 92 per cent of the nearly 25 crore households in the country had no people with disabilities. Over two crore households had one or more people with disabilities. Almost 71 per cent of these households (1.46 crore) were in rural areas while the remaining 60.5 lakh-plus households were in urban areas.
- There was a fall in the proportion of households with one or more people with disabilities from about 10 per cent in 2001 to just 8 per cent in 2011, though the absolute number of such households has gone up by over 20 lakh or 2 million.
