I second the idea. Perhaps reference can be made to the international treaty on the treatment of the air-passengers. Unfortunately I am unable to give you the exact reference. Second, you guise also may wish to look at the disability policy of the MTA of New York. The web site address is:
http://www.mta.info Regards, Vetri. -------- Produced in my Nokia N82 via T-mobile internet using talks, a screen reader for S60 phones. -original message- Subject: Re: [AI] Draft petition to the railway Minister From: "Manish Agrawal" <[email protected]> Date: 02/11/2010 12:04 AM Harish, The draft looks useful. Here are some of my suggestions: 1. The sequence of items mentioned in the draft should be based on how important we feel each of those to be. The first 2 points about concessions to me are less important than the safety and ease of travel for disabled passengers and I would move the sections related to accidents, tactile markings, announcements, disabled coaches etc. to the top. Alternatively, we can have the document divided into headings: Ticket reservations, Passenger safety, Platform facilities and building design, employee sensitivity trainings etc. These headings will make the document look better thought through. 2. The document makes some factual statements like there have been several accidents because of "x" reason or this will be more in line with international treaties. It will be good to support these with references to documentation/reports that may have come out from any inquiry committees or with the name of the international treaties we are referring to here. 3. The top of the letter mentions the scope of the document as including disabled railway employees but the rest of the document only talks about passengers. I think it will be better to focus only on passengers and not bring up the equal opportunity employment issue here. It sort of dilutes the intent of the letter. 4. The letter needs to make clear somewhere that the suggestions given here are just samples of what can be done and the ministry can engage with organizations/experts working in the disability field to come up with and implement a comprehensive solution with a clear plan to address the quick wins in the short term and starting larger initiatives on an ongoing basis. The document does refer to this in the last section but I don't think collaboration with people working in the disability field is brought out from the language used. The above are just my views and not meant to criticize anyone. I think this is a very useful initiative. Regards, Manish -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Pranav Lal Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 5:58 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AI] Draft petition to the railway Minister Hi all, 1. We need tactile markings before every set of stairs. 2. We are asking for Braille signage. How will we know where the signs are located? 3. There are displays which show which train will come on which platform. There are also displays on the platform which give you where a particular coach will be situated. This allows you to stand in that position and board the coach with comfort. We need access to both pieces of information. As regards the first part about the train coming on a given platform, announcements are made but they are made when the train is about to come on the platform. Things are very crowded at that time and some trains stop for a very short time. So, we need the information on those displays so that we can get to the platform in advance. 4. There should be a querying mechanism that will allow passengers to determine the current location of the train. You could have announcements but what do you do in trains that travel over night? You won't want to be disturbed with station location announcements in the middle of the night. Pranav To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
