CHENNAI: Disability rights activists have urged the Metropolitan Transportation Corporation (MTC) to make the soon to be launched Locate and Access My Bus (LAMB) app accessible to Persons with Disabilities (PwD) too. According to an MTC official, the LAMB app will show live location of buses and once the bus stop location is entered, the app would provide estimated time of arrival of the next five buses at the stop along with their route numbers.
“According to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, the deadline to make all websites (and mobile applications) accessible to PwD was June 15, 2019. However, it’s not the case with most of the government websites. Similar is the case with the MTC website too,” said Vaishnavi Vijayakumar, a disability rights activist.
When an accessibility check was done for the MTC website, it showed numerous errors, including syntax mistakes, which makes it impossible for a visually impaired person to use the website. “The visually impaired persons usually use text to speech format to use a website/application. With dynamic applications like LAMB, which show real time locations, the developers must be more careful.
Often, the forms are not labeled properly due to which a section of society (PwD) cannot enjoy these services.” Concurring, S Charan, who is visually impaired, said, “Technology is meant to help people but it is only crippling us now. Even banking applications are not accessible for us. LAMB is actually a nice idea that could be very helpful to PwD if executed properly.” Disability activists say that they are raising the issue now so that the errors are corrected before the app’s launch. An official of MTC said that they would discuss the issue with the app developers soon.
Live location of buses
According to an MTC official, the LAMB app will show live location of buses and once the bus stop location is entered, the app would provide estimated time of arrival of the next five buses at the stop along with their route numbers.