From The Times Of India:
“33-year-old on a mission to make
buildings accessible for disabled”
Living life on a wheelchair
propelled 33-year-old Prateek Khandelwal to take an initiative to make public
buildings disabled-friendly. Prateek, who is an entrepreneur, had injured his
spinal cord in 2014 in an accident. Before 2014, Khandelwal was leading a
normal life. But, when he accidentally fell from an under-construction building
injuring his spinal cord badly, his life changed completely. The accident not only left him with a
paraplegia but also with a health condition that was only meant to deteriorate
in the face of a damaged nervous system and no proven medical solutions to heal
it. Now, Khandelwal has made it a
mission to ease the life of people who are also wheelchair-bound like him. “I
took the initiate in Bangalore 18 months ago. Now, 30 restaurants have
constructed ramps after we took up the issue with them for helping people on
wheelchair lead their life with freedom,” he said. Khandelwal was recently in the city to
replicate the initiative in Jaipur along with other prominent cities of the
country. “There are laws for making government buildings disabled friendly. How
many buildings do we have which are disabled friendly. There is a big chuck of
physically challenged population whose lives are confined to their houses since
places such as restaurants and other buildings are not disabled friendly,” he
said. While working towards the mission,
Prateek had to deal not only with enormous physical challenge but also social
isolation. But he decided to fight. Today,
he is taking measures to facilitate infrastructural changes for wheelchair
users where he not only provides ramping solutions to local eateries, sports
academies and other public utilities, but also trains employees and staff of
the organizations to change their thought processes towards people facing a
physical challenge.
^ Sadly, I don’t really know much
about disability issues in India, but this article has peaked my interest in
learning more. India has a billion people in it and so I assume the number of
the disabled is pretty high while the number of accessible places is pretty
low. ^
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