Accessibility Standards (Section 40)

Section 40 of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 is the engine room of the entire accessibility regime. It is a short, almost deceptively modest provision, yet every downstream obligation — the building-plan veto in Section 44, the five-year deadline in Section 45, the two-year deadline for service providers in Section 46 — hangs on the standards the Central Government is commanded to frame under it. The provision converts the abstract promise of an accessible India into measurable, enforceable rules. For the judiciary and CLAT-PG aspirant, Section 40 is where statutory text, delegated legislation (Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017) and constitutional adjudication collide — most dramatically in Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2024), where the Supreme Court held that accessibility standards must be mandatory, not recommendatory. This chapter dissects the text, the rule-making power, the surrounding scheme and the case law that gives Section 40 its bite.

The Text and Architecture of Section 40

Section 40 reads: “The Central Government shall, in consultation with the Chief Commissioner, formulate rules for persons with disabilities laying down the standards of accessibility for the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems, and other facilities and services provided to the public in urban and rural areas.” Three structural features deserve attention. First, the verb is “shall” — the rule-making is a statutory duty, not a discretion. Second, the rules must be framed in consultation with the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, the statutory watchdog created under Chapter XII, injecting expert and participatory input into the standard-setting. Third, the canvas is deliberately broad: the physical environment (buildings, roads, public spaces), transportation, and “information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems” — language wide enough to capture websites, mobile applications and digital public infrastructure.

Section 40 does not itself prescribe a single technical norm. It is an enabling and command provision: it locates the power to fix accessibility standards centrally, in the Union, and makes the exercise of that power obligatory. The actual content of the standards is supplied by delegated legislation — chiefly Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017 — and by the technical guidelines those rules adopt. This separation between the parent command and the subordinate detail is precisely what generated the litigation discussed below. For the conceptual foundations of the Act’s rights-based design, see our chapter on the introduction to the RPwD Act.

From the 1995 Act to Universal Design: Why Section 40 Was Necessary

The predecessor statute, the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, contained accessibility provisions (Sections 44–46 of that Act, dealing with transport, roads and built environment) but qualified almost all of them with the fatal phrase “within the limits of their economic capacity and development.” That escape clause hollowed out the obligation: a State could perpetually plead poverty. The 2016 Act, enacted to bring Indian law into conformity with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) — which India ratified in 2007 — deliberately abandoned that qualification.

Article 9 of the UNCRPD obliges States Parties to take appropriate measures to ensure access “on an equal basis with others” to the physical environment, transportation, information and communications, and to develop and monitor minimum standards. Section 40 is the domestic transposition of Article 9’s standard-setting mandate. The shift also reflects the move from a medical model of disability (the person is the problem) to a social and human-rights model (the environment disables the person) — a shift the Supreme Court expressly endorsed in Vikash Kumar v. Union Public Service Commission (2021) 5 SCC 370. Accessibility, on this view, is not charity; it is the removal of socially constructed barriers. The Act’s embrace of universal design, defined in Section 2(z), reinforces that products and environments should be usable by all to the greatest extent possible without adaptation.

Rule 15 and the Standards Notified Under Section 40

The Central Government discharged its Section 40 duty through Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017 (notified 15 June 2017). Rule 15(1) listed the standards that “every establishment shall comply with” and, critically, did so by adopting external technical documents: the Harmonised Guidelines and Space Standards for Barrier-Free Built Environment issued by the Ministry of Urban Development; the Bus Body Code and accessibility norms of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways; and guidelines for information and communication technology, later anchored to IS 17802 (Parts 1 and 2), the Bureau of Indian Standards’ ICT accessibility standard published in 2021, and the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW).

The 2021 Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India refreshed the built-environment norms. On paper, the architecture looked complete: Section 40 commanded the rules, Rule 15 supplied them, and the technical documents filled in the engineering detail. The problem — exposed in Rajive Raturi (2024) — lay in the verb tense and modality of those adopted guidelines, many of which were framed as advisory “guidelines” a designer “may” follow rather than non-negotiable mandates. This gap between a mandatory parent provision and a discretionary subordinate rule became the fault line of the litigation. For how these duties slot into the broader catalogue of guarantees, see rights and entitlements.

The Enforcement Scheme: Sections 44, 45 and 46

Section 40 does not stand alone; it is the hub from which three enforcement spokes radiate. Section 44 (Mandatory observance of accessibility norms) is the sharpest tool: no establishment may be granted permission to build any structure if the building plan does not adhere to the rules formulated under Section 40, and no completion certificate or occupation may be issued unless the structure complies. This converts accessibility into a condition precedent for construction approval — an ex ante veto rather than an ex post grievance.

Section 45 (Time limit for existing infrastructure) requires all existing public buildings to be made accessible in accordance with the Section 40 rules within a period not exceeding five years from the date of notification of those rules, with power in the Central/State Government to extend the period for certain categories. Section 46 (Time limit for service providers) obliges every service provider — government or private — to make its services accessible within two years of the notification of the Section 40 rules. The penal backbone is Section 89, which makes contravention of the Act or its rules punishable with a fine up to ₹10,000 for a first offence and ₹50,000 to ₹5,00,000 for subsequent offences. Read together, Sections 40, 44–46 and 89 form a closed loop: standards are set, made conditions of approval, given deadlines, and backed by penalty.

Rajive Raturi (2017): Accessibility as a Facet of Article 21

The constitutional groundwork for Section 40’s enforcement was laid in Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, (2018) 2 SCC 413, decided on 15 December 2017 by a bench led by Justice A.K. Sikri. The petitioner, a visually impaired activist, sought barrier-free access to roads, transport, buildings and information systems. The Court grounded the right to accessibility in Article 21, holding that the right to life and dignity is broad enough to incorporate access to public spaces, and that meaningful participation in society is impossible without it.

The judgment issued a now-famous set of eleven directions to all States and Union Territories, including auditory signals at traffic lights, curb cuts and slopes for wheelchair users, tactile/engraved zebra crossings and platform edges for the visually impaired, and ramps in healthcare facilities. Crucially, the Court linked these directions to the freshly enacted RPwD Act, 2016, treating Sections 40–46 as the statutory machinery for realising the constitutional command. Rajive Raturi (2017) thus established that accessibility is not a policy aspiration the State may defer — it is a justiciable dimension of fundamental rights, a theme developed further in our chapter on the right to equality and non-discrimination.

The decision also marked a tonal break from the apologetic “economic capacity” formula of the 1995 Act. By reading accessibility into Article 21 rather than leaving it to the goodwill of the executive, the Court placed it on the same constitutional footing as the right to a clean environment, to health and to a dignified life — rights the Court has consistently held the State cannot trade away on grounds of cost. The eleven directions were not abstract exhortations; they were specific, auditable engineering outcomes, and the Court retained the petition for monitoring compliance. That continuing supervisory jurisdiction is precisely what allowed the matter to return seven years later as the 2024 judgment, illustrating how public-interest litigation in disability rights operates as an ongoing, structural remedy rather than a one-shot declaration.

Rajive Raturi (2024): Rule 15 Held Ultra Vires

The same litigation returned to the Supreme Court and produced the most important judgment on Section 40 to date: Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, decided on 8 November 2024 by a three-judge bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. Acting on a report by the NALSAR Centre for Disability Studies, which mapped pervasive non-compliance, the Court confronted the modality problem head-on.

It held that Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017, was ultra vires Section 40 insofar as it framed accessibility standards as recommendatory guidelines rather than mandatory norms. The reasoning is clean: Section 40 commands the Government to lay down binding “standards of accessibility,” and Sections 44–46 make compliance with those standards a precondition and a deadline-bound duty. A subordinate rule cannot dilute that mandatory parent obligation into a discretionary one a designer “may” follow. As the Court put it, the rule “does not provide for non-negotiable compulsory standards, but only persuasive guidelines” — a contradiction of the statutory scheme. The Court therefore directed the Union to frame mandatory, non-negotiable accessibility rules within three months, in consultation with stakeholders and the NALSAR-CDS, segregating compulsory baseline standards from aspirational guidance, and to do so under the umbrella of Sections 40, 44, 45, 46 and 89.

The judgment is doctrinally significant beyond disability law because it is a textbook application of the limits on delegated legislation: a rule made under a statute cannot whittle down the obligation the statute imposes. Where the parent provision says “shall lay down standards,” the delegate cannot reframe those standards as optional. The Court was careful, however, not to leave a vacuum — rather than striking down the entire rule and the guidelines wholesale, it preserved the technical content and faulted only the discretionary modality, directing the Government to re-issue the standards in mandatory form. This calibrated remedy reflects the principle that courts prefer to cure a defect in delegated legislation by reading down or directing reformulation, rather than create a regulatory void that would itself harm the rights-holders the statute protects.

The Two Guiding Principles: Accessibility and Reasonable Accommodation

Beyond striking down Rule 15, Rajive Raturi (2024) articulated a conceptual framework that examiners frequently test. The Court laid down two distinct but complementary principles. First, accessibility is an ex ante, collective and universal obligation: it addresses systemic barriers in the environment for the disabled community as a whole, and must be built in from the design stage rather than retrofitted on request. Second, reasonable accommodation is an ex post, individualised obligation: it responds to the specific needs of a particular person in a particular context, defined in Section 2(y) of the Act.

The Court drew on Vikash Kumar v. Union Public Service Commission, (2021) 5 SCC 370, where a three-judge bench held that a candidate with writer’s cramp (dysgraphia) was entitled to a scribe even though he did not have a 40% “benchmark disability,” because reasonable accommodation is keyed to individual need, not a rigid threshold. The synthesis is important: accessibility (Section 40) sets the universal floor; reasonable accommodation fills the residual, person-specific gaps. The Court also clarified that accessibility is a precondition to the meaningful exercise of all other rights — a person cannot enjoy education, employment or community life if the building, bus or website excludes them at the threshold. This connects directly to the right to community living.

Disabled Rights Group: Accessibility in Higher Education

The accessibility mandate is not confined to civic infrastructure. In Disabled Rights Group v. Union of India, (2018) 2 SCC 397, decided on 15 December 2017, the Supreme Court addressed both the non-implementation of reservation in educational institutions and the physical inaccessibility of those institutions for students with disabilities. The Court directed that institutions covered by Section 32 of the 2016 Act comply with the reservation mandate and, importantly, that they make their campuses, pedagogy and facilities accessible to students with disabilities.

The case is significant for Section 40 because it treats accessibility standards as binding on educational establishments — including premier law schools and universities — not merely on municipalities and transport authorities. It rejects the notion that accessibility is subject to budgetary convenience, locating it instead in the rights to equality and dignity. Subsequent amendments to Rule 15 (in 2023 and 2024) expressly extended its sub-rules to educational institutions, codifying the judicial direction. The decision thus widens the practical reach of Section 40 from public roads and buildings into the heart of the education system, complementing the catalogue in recognised disabilities.

Digital and ICT Accessibility Under Section 40

Section 40’s express reference to “information and communications, including appropriate technologies and systems” makes it the statutory anchor for India’s digital accessibility regime. Read with Section 42 (access to information and communication technology), which requires that audio, print and electronic content be accessible and that electronic media carry audio description, sign language and closed captioning, Section 40 empowers the Government to mandate technical norms for websites, apps and digital services.

The principal instrument is IS 17802 (Parts 1 and 2), the Bureau of Indian Standards’ accessibility standard for ICT products and services, published in 2021 and broadly aligned with the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Government websites are additionally governed by the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW). Following Rajive Raturi (2024), the discretionary framing of these digital standards is squarely vulnerable to the same ultra vires reasoning that felled the built-environment guidelines: if Section 40 commands mandatory standards, ICT norms too must be compulsory rather than advisory. The 2023 amendment to Rule 15 began this hardening by incorporating IS 17802 into the enforceable framework. For aspirants, the digital limb illustrates that Section 40 is a living, technology-neutral mandate, not a brick-and-mortar relic.

The Consultative Role of the Chief Commissioner

A frequently overlooked element of Section 40 is the mandatory phrase “in consultation with the Chief Commissioner.” The Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, constituted under Chapter XII (Sections 74 onwards), is not merely an ornamental consultee. The consultation requirement is a procedural safeguard: it ensures that accessibility standards are framed with disability-sector expertise and, where the Commissioner discharges the function meaningfully, with the participation of organisations of persons with disabilities, honouring the UNCRPD’s “nothing about us without us” ethos.

Failure to genuinely consult could, in principle, render the resulting rules procedurally infirm, much as the absence of mandatory consultation vitiates delegated legislation in other contexts. The Chief Commissioner also monitors implementation, inquires into deprivation of rights (Section 75), and reviews the safeguards provided for persons with disabilities — functions that feed back into the adequacy of the Section 40 standards. In Rajive Raturi (2024), the Court’s insistence that fresh rules be framed “in consultation with stakeholders” echoes and reinforces this statutory consultation duty, signalling that the process by which standards are set is itself justiciable.

Mandatory Versus Recommendatory: The Doctrinal Core

The single most examinable doctrine arising from Section 40 is the distinction between mandatory and recommendatory norms. A standard is mandatory when non-compliance attracts a legal consequence — refusal of building permission (Section 44), penalty (Section 89), or a binding deadline (Sections 45–46). A standard is merely recommendatory when it states best practice that an actor is free to ignore without sanction.

The Rajive Raturi (2024) Court held that Section 40, read with its enforcement provisions, leaves no room for recommendatory accessibility standards: the statutory architecture presupposes that the standards are binding, because Sections 44–46 cannot operate on a norm nobody is obliged to follow. A rule that converts a mandatory parent obligation into discretionary guidance is therefore ultra vires — an instance of subordinate legislation exceeding or contradicting the parent statute. This is a clean application of the principle that delegated legislation must conform to, and cannot override, the enabling Act. The lesson for the draftsman is that the modality of a standard (the choice between “shall” and “may”) is not a mere stylistic detail but a determinant of validity. Students should anchor this discussion in the statutory definitions of universal design and reasonable accommodation that give the standards their content.

Implementation Gaps and the Road Ahead

Despite a robust statutory and judicial framework, implementation of Section 40 has lagged. The NALSAR Centre for Disability Studies report relied upon in Rajive Raturi (2024) documented widespread non-compliance across transport, public buildings and digital services — ramps that are too steep, websites that fail screen readers, and buses that defy the Bus Body Code. The deadlines in Sections 45 (five years) and 46 (two years) have, in practice, been observed in the breach, with extensions and inaction blunting their force.

The Court’s 2024 directions — mandatory rules within three months, stakeholder consultation, and a clear separation of compulsory baseline standards from aspirational guidance — are designed to close this gap by removing the discretionary loophole that allowed authorities to treat accessibility as optional. Whether the executive’s revised rules satisfy the mandate remains a live compliance question. For the exam-going student, the takeaway is doctrinal and practical at once: Section 40 is a textbook example of how a strong statutory command can be neutered by weak delegated legislation, and how constitutional adjudication can restore the legislature’s intent. A confident answer pairs the bare text of Section 40 with Rajive Raturi (both 2017 and 2024), Vikash Kumar and Disabled Rights Group, and explains the mandatory-versus-recommendatory fault line. For the full statutory map, return to the RPwD Act hub.