Arushi routinely works with hotels, restaurants, museum, places of archaeological interest, parks, shopping malls, banks, educational institutes, public utilities to make them accessible to the disabled. As early as in 1999, Arushi’s advocacy led to the opening of India’s first disabled-friendly bank when a branch of the Central Bank of India branch in Bhopal was made completely barrier-free with ramps and counters at low levels for wheelchair users.

Over the years, Arushi has worked relentlessly to make more and more public spaces barrier-free. Spread over 200 acres, Bhopal’s Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya has signages and information boards in Braille. Many other landmarks in the city like the Regional Museum of Natural History, the National Park, the State Museum, Bharat Bhavan and Bhopal Haat are all accessible public spaces with ramps, pathway and warning tiles, and information in Braille. Even the historical Gauhar Mahal, where alterations were initially met with resistance due to the sensitive nature of its legacy, is now completely accessible.

Our work continues beyond the boundaries of MP. Information and signage in the museum and gardens at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, have also been transcribed into Braille by Arushi. We have also worked for making many national monuments accessible to people with disabilities, as described in the following section.

When Arushi started work in this domain, we understood that work was often done in silos and comprehensive plan or approach existed to tie all the effort together. People with disabilities faced tremendous challenges in living a full, independent life due to inaccessibility. For inclusive environment and for them to really be a part of the society, it was imperative to draw them out from homes and for that, one must have barrier free environments. Particularly for girls who can’t be away for home for more than a few hours without accessible toilets and enabling environments and most girls drop out after schools. The lack of education sets off a cycle that costs the disabled opportunities at every stage of their lives. Most efforts at inclusion stop at schools, which is a half measure. Until not just schools, but every public utility, mode of transport and government office is accessible to the disabled, they will not be an integral part of society

Access audits are the first step for creating a barrier free environment. Arushi audits buildings and public spaces for disabled friendly features like existence of ramps, their gradient, door dimensions etc. and then make recommendations. Arushi was empanelled as one of 18 agencies empanelled by the Government of India under the Accessible India Campaign launched by the prime minister in 2015. We have conducted access audit of 50 government buildings in Bhopal and 25 in Port Blair. Our recommendations for making them accessible are already being implemented. The High Court and MIT in Chennai, the AG Office at Gwalior and the IB training centre in Shivpuri have also been audited.

For more than a decade now, Arushi has been facilitating the participation of people with disabilities in elections by helping them exercise their right to vote. People with disabilities often face difficulty in reaching the polling booths. There are many other barriers in the entire process of casting votes. Volunteers from Arushi accompany them to the polling booths and train people who are blind or visually impaired to vote independently.

In 2008, Arushi introduced Braille in electronic voting machines. Bhopal, in a creditable first, is the only city in the country where all 1,150 polling booths in urban areas are Braille-enabled.