Accessibility compliance guides · India

RPwD Act 2016 website accessibility

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 is India’s legal foundation for accessible websites and apps. In April 2025 the Supreme Court held that digital access is part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21.

Statute: Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and the 2017 Rules
Standards in practice: WCAG, GIGW 3.0 for government, and IS 17802
Constitutional backdrop: Supreme Court, April 2025: digital access is part of Article 21

What it is

The RPwD Act and its Rules require establishments to make information and communication technology accessible, in line with standards the government notifies. The standards people actually implement are WCAG (2.1 or the latest version), the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW 3.0) for government sites, and IS 17802, the Bureau of Indian Standards’ ICT accessibility standard, harmonized with EN 301 549.

In April 2025 the Supreme Court held that the right to digital access is an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty. That ruling gives accessibility complaints and public interest litigation real force against services that exclude people with disabilities, including consumer-facing businesses that are not government departments.

Sector regulators have turned the same idea into deadlines. SEBI’s digital accessibility mandate for regulated entities, with audits and remediation due by October 31, 2026, is the sharpest example. The Reserve Bank of India has issued accessibility direction for banking. Government sites remain bound by GIGW.

Indian companies that export software inherit a second set of duties from their customers: Section 508 and the ADA in the United States, the European Accessibility Act, and the Accessible Canada Act.

Who needs to comply

“Establishment” in the Act is wide. Regulators then add sector-specific deadlines on top.

Government. Websites and apps of government bodies, measured against GIGW 3.0 and WCAG.
Establishments covered by the Act. The duty to provide accessible ICT is not limited to ministries. The Supreme Court’s Article 21 reasoning strengthens complaints against consumer services.
Regulated finance. SEBI-regulated entities have a dated mandate. Banking faces RBI direction. Those are separate pages in our India set because the deadlines differ.
Exporters. A product built in India and sold to a U.S. agency, an EU store, or a Canadian bank has to meet the buyer’s law as well.

Timeline

The Act is in force. The Supreme Court ruling and the SEBI deadline are the recent clocks.

2016–2017. RPwD Act and Rules. ICT accessibility is tied to notified standards.
2023. GIGW 3.0 updates the government website guidelines and stays aligned with WCAG.
April 2025. Supreme Court holds that digital access is part of Article 21.
October 31, 2026. SEBI-regulated entities: audits and remediation. See our SEBI guide for that sector’s detail.

What the rule requires

Build to the standards the Act points at, not to a scanner score.

WCAG 2.1 or later, Level AA. The international benchmark named alongside India’s own standards. We test 2.2 AA as the latest practical level.
GIGW where you are government. GIGW 3.0 is mandatory for government websites and covers quality and lifecycle as well as accessibility. Our IS 17802 / GIGW guide goes into that standard.
IS 17802 where a regulator names it. The BIS standard harmonized with EN 301 549. SEBI names it explicitly.
A way to complain and get the service. Accessible grievance channels matter under the Act and under sector circulars. We test the form, not only the marketing homepage.

How we help

We help Indian organizations and global companies with Indian obligations audit to WCAG, GIGW, and IS 17802, then fix the product.

An audit that states which of WCAG, GIGW, and IS 17802 applies to this organization, so a government site is not scoped like a private brochure.
Remediation by developers who ship production code, including the onboarding and KYC flows regulators look at.
Manual testing with NVDA, JAWS, and VoiceOver, plus keyboard-only use and browser zoom. The failures these rules care about are often invisible to an automated scan.
Remediation in your production code by our developers, so the fix lives in the product and not only in a report.
An accessibility statement and, where a buyer or regulator expects one, a VPAT-based Accessibility Conformance Report grounded in the audit.
Training for the people who publish pages, documents, and campaigns after the audit.
A retest after major releases, so a later deploy does not quietly undo the work.

Web accessibility audit and remediation

Our process

Confirm what applies to you. We identify whether you are government, a regulated financial entity, a consumer establishment, or an exporter — the standard and the deadline change with that answer.
Audit the live experience. We review the pages, flows, documents, and apps people actually use, with assistive technologies as well as automated checks, and map each finding to the standard this rule points to.
Fix the barriers that block access. Our developers remediate structure, keyboard access, forms, contrast, names, and media in your codebase, starting with the journeys that gate a service.
Document what was tested. You receive the findings, what we fixed, and the statement or conformance report your team, counsel, or procurement office needs on file.
Keep it from slipping. We train publishers and retest after significant releases so new content does not reopen the same gaps.

Longer background: Web accessibility in India.

Frequently asked questions

Does the RPwD Act name WCAG 2.2?

The Act points to standards the government notifies. In practice those are WCAG, GIGW, and IS 17802. WCAG 2.1 is the version most circulars name, with “or latest” language in the SEBI framework. We test 2.2 AA so “latest” does not mean a second project.

Does the Supreme Court ruling create a new technical standard?

It confirms that digital access is part of the right to life. It does not publish a WCAG checklist. The checklist still comes from WCAG, GIGW, and IS 17802. The ruling changes the weight of a complaint when a service is unusable.

We are a private company with no SEBI registration. Are we done?

SEBI’s deadline is for regulated entities. The Act and the Article 21 ruling are wider. If people in India depend on your site to get a service, treat accessibility as a current duty and use the SEBI date only as a sector clock, not as a general exemption.

Can one audit cover the RPwD Act and a U.S. customer?

Yes. WCAG 2.2 AA covers the web criteria behind IS 17802, the ADA Title II rule, Section 508’s older floor, and EN 301 549. We map the report to each regime you sell into.

Related guides

This page is general information from Peradeo Technologies Inc., not legal advice.

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