A meeting of the State Steering Committee on Accessible Elections, formed to make the entire process of the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections-2024 barrier-free for persons with disabilities (PwD), was held under the chairmanship of Himachal Chief Electoral Officer Manish Garg on Saturday. 

Issues related to barrier-free registration and voter participation were discussed extensively in order to provide maximum registration of PwD voters and facilities for them to vote, a spokesperson of the Election Department said.

The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said that against the figures of about 67 thousand specially-abled persons in the state, the department has so far identified 55,420 voters and the remaining would also be identified. He said that the list of PwD voters was being provided to BLOs through UDID, pensioners, DWDC (DWO) so that the missing eligible voters could be registered and identified in a timely manner. Anganwadi and Asha workers would also be included in this campaign.

He said that eligible specially abled persons can also get themselves registered through Saksham App. For the convenience of the voters with disabilities, the departmental website has also been prepared according to their accessibility, which was as per the WCAG-2.1 standard.

The Chief Electoral Officer said that materials like videos with Hindi subtitles, hoardings in sign language etc. were also being prepared for voting awareness of PwD voters in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections-2024. In this context, cooperation would also be obtained from CRC Sundernagar of Mandi district. He said that all the basic facilities prescribed by the Election Commission of India would be provided to the PwD voters as per the appropriate standards at all the polling stations in the state. Special training would be given to polling personnel to make them sensitive to the needs of PwD voters, he added.