The Aarogya Setu App has been a flagship initiative by the Government of India for tracking and reporting COVID-19 cases around the user. It has been promoted and made mandatory in some cases since the outbreak, except for one major drawback – It is not accessible.
In promising news, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has stated, according to the news report, that it is working on making Aarogya Setu App accessible to persons with disabilities.
Aarogya Setu, an Indian open-source CoVID-19 “Contact tracing, Syndromic mapping, and Self-assessment” digital service, was developed by the National Informatics Centre under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. The app reached more than 100 million installs in 40 days.
“We have already written twice to the MeitY requesting them to make the Aarogya Setu App accessible, they are working on it, and we are hopeful that soon this app will become accessible, we are making our efforts, ultimately it has to be done by MeitY,” said Prabodh Seth, Joint Secretary, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DePwD).
Dr. Seth also informed about the accessibility of quarantine centers, which has been mentioned in the comprehensive disability-inclusive guidelines circulated to all states. “While accessibility is very important but given the number of Covid-19 quarantine centers is increasing by geometric proportions, maybe it will take some time before all these quarantine centers become accessible,” he said.
