Women with Disabilities in Bangladesh: Accessibility in the Built Environment

Bangladesh is one of the signatories of United Nations Conventions on Rights of People with Disabilities (UN CRPD) that ascertains accessibility of disabled people to all sorts of physical facilities including but not limited to transports and public institutions. In accordance with the National Building Code (NBC), Dhaka City Construction Rule 2008, Persons with Disabilities Rights and Protection Act 2013 and Road Transport Act 2018 Government of Bangladesh and different authorities are obligated to ensure an accessible environment for Women with Disabilities (WWDs). Transport facilities and infrastructure are invariably inaccessible for Women with Disabilities, prohibiting their movement around their local area as well as around the country. Therefore, assessing the accessibility of women with disabilities to public transport and institutions in the built environment is the focus of this study. No study was conducted systematically on this specific area of Women with Disabilities. So, this study aimed to assess the Accessibility Rights of Women with Disabilities in public transports and public institutions in order to include them in mainstreaming development of Bangladesh. In this study, data were collected through one to one interview to Woman with Disability Development Foundation’s  (WDDF) staff and Disable Peoples Organizations’ (DPO) activists, and FGDs from randomly selected 50 Women with Disabilities from WDDF database. Relevant legislation, rules, regulations, policies, circulars, and related literature were reviewed. The respondents of the FGD reported that as Women with Disabilities faced multifaceted challenges to avail basic civil rights and essential services such as education, healthcare, treatment, employment, communications, banking services and so on from Government and Non-Government Organizations more than Male with Disabilities due to existing inaccessibility in public transports and institutions. Key Informants (KI) focused on strong monitoring and mechanism system, implementing and actualizing existing legislation and policies including adopting time required and effective initiatives. Existing legislation, policies and orders for accessible public institutions and transports should be implemented properly and monitoring and mechanism system should be strong enough to enforce these legislations, policies and orders.