Equal Access To Joy: Disability And Right To Entertainment

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The entertainment industry makes the modern world’s mirth luminous. Entertainment provides people to experience and process emotions that ordinary life may not provide opportunities for. Be it emotional nourishment or a social knot, a person’s right to entertainment is uncontroverted. For people with disabilities, this right remains elusive. While Indian law acknowledges and recognises the reinforcement of accessibility of entertainment to people with disabilities, it fails to unveil the differentiation between physical accessibility and entertainment accessibility. The aspect of physical accessibility is grounded in the legal foundation of the RPwD Act, but the absence of any nationwide comprehensive data itself demonstrates the difficulty of examining the disability accessibility of the Indian entertainment industry. 

Even though the RPwD Act mandates accessibility to public places such as theatres, data by INOX Cinema subsequently suggest that only 63 per cent of Indian cinemas have infrastructuren the Golukam cinema case, Suresh, a person with a 60% locomotor disability, was forced to climb a staircase to a second-floor screen because the newly built complex had no lift or ramp

There exists no single regulatory framework governing the entertainment industry. Isolated frameworks subsist for different forms of distinguished entertainment, thus access to entertainment being contingent on the medium through which it is consumed.  The Rights of Persons with Disabilities disembark in outlining the void left by such statutory ambiguity. Sections 29 and 30 recognise the participation of persons with disabilities in cultural, recreational and sporting activity, while sections 40 and 42 address accessibility standards, access to information and compliance with accessibility requirements. The quagmire exist in translate this overarching statutory commitment into consistent and enforceable obligations across different segments of the entertainment industry. 

While Cinema halls are regulated under the Cinematograph Act, the Streaming platforms fall within the regulatory framework administered by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under the Information Technology Rules. The Sporting venues are governed by their respective sports bodies and venue-specific regulations while Cultural and religious establishments are subject to a combination of general accessibility law, local regulation, and the rules of their managing authorities. 

The fragmentation becomes conspicuous in its implementation. In Akshat Baldwa v. Yash Raj Films,  the matter pertained to the accessibility of films for persons with visual and hearing impairments. The Delhi High Court directed the Ministry to formulate mandatory accessibility standards. Following this, the Ministry notified guidelines on accessibility of OTT content for persons with hearing and visual impairments, requiring newly published content to carry captioning or Indian Sign Language interpretation and audio description within a phased implementation schedule. Yet these guidelines notably prescribe no penalty or consequence for non-compliance once the implementation period lapses, nor any repercussion for a publisher’s failure to submit the periodic conformance reports the guidelines themselves require.

The continuing difficulties faced by persons with disabilities illustrate the implementation problem.  In Rahul Bajaj v. Mythri Movie Makers, proceedings before the Delhi High Court concerning the inaccessible release of Pushpa 2: The Rule raised concern about the films continuing to be exhibited without accessibility features on a universal basis, and that even where such features exist, they are restricted to a limited number of screenings governed by a booking process that is itself inaccessible. The Court has since treated the grievance as extending beyond a single film to the broader question of accessibility in cinema, directing stakeholders to arrive at a workable resolution. That this litigation became necessary within two years of the 2024 guidelines being issued illustrates precisely how standards without an enforcement backbone fail to translate into practice.

Sporting venues identify a similar gap through a distinct mechanism. In January 2023, two visually impaired spectators were stopped from entering Holkar Stadium in Indore because their accompanying aides did not possess separate tickets, and were allowed entry only after intervention by senior police officials, rather than as a matter of established right. Cultural and religious spaces demonstrate the same difficulty. In 2017, a wheelchair user was denied entry to Goa’s Mangueshi Temple because her wheelchair was treated as a “vehicle,” an incident that required intervention by disability rights groups rather than resolution through any existing regulatory channel.

These incidents arise under different legal and institutional regimes, yet they reveal a common structural problem: accessibility is addressed only after exclusion has occurred, and the remedy depends on an individual’s ability to complain, litigate, or secure institutional intervention. The central issue, therefore, is not whether Indian law recognises accessibility; it does. The problem lies in the fragmented manner in which these obligations are regulated, and in the absence of any enforcement mechanism strong enough to convert a notified standard into a guaranteed experience.

The structural gaps identified above are not simply the result of poor implementation by cinema owners, streaming platforms, or sports bodies. They trace back to weaknesses within the RPwD Act itself, which was meant to be the primary legal answer to exactly this problem. The clearest sign of this weakness came from the judiciary’s own reading of the Act. In Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, the Supreme Court found that Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, which used merely “recommendatory” language for accessibility compliance, was ultra vires to the parent Act, and directed the government to frame genuinely mandatory rules instead. This is significant because it shows that even where Parliament intended accessibility to be a binding obligation, the rules meant to operationalise that obligation were drafted in language weak enough to require judicial correction. If this is true for accessibility rules in general, the entertainment specific duties under Sections 29 and 30, framed in similarly soft language and never tested this way, are open to the same objection.

A second weakness lies in who the Act actually binds. Sections 29, 30 and 44 are addressed to government and local authorities, not to private cinema owners, streaming platforms, or event organisers. Yet most entertainment in India is delivered by private players. The only reason private entities have begun to bear any accessibility responsibility at all is that courts extended the reasonable accommodation principle laid down by the Hon’ble Court in Vikash Kumar v. UPSC into this space, most notably in Akshat Baldwa v. Yash Raj Films, where a producer was directed to make a film accessible on its OTT release. This obligation exists today only because one litigant pursued one film. The Act itself created no general duty on private industry, meaning the entire private sector accessibility regime currently rests on judicial precedent rather than statutory command.

Taken together, these two weaknesses, which are soft rule-making language and a narrow set of duty bearers, explain why the structural deficiencies survive despite a law that appears, prima facie, to address them. The RPwD Act names accessibility as a right, but leaves its technical content and its private sector reach to be filled in later, by rules not yet framed and litigation not yet filed.

The deficiency existing within India’s legal framework summons a comparative examination of jurisdictions that have sought to construe the principles of disability access into concrete requirements for entertainment providers. The differentiated framework offers possible legislative solutions in addressing the enforcement gap that has been previously identified. 

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability by private entitites operating places of public accommodation, including movie theatres. More specifically, 28 C.F.R. § 36.303(g) requires covered movie theatres exhibiting digital films distributed with captioning and audio description to provide these accessibility features, subject to applicable exceptions. The provision also addresses the equipment through which they can access those features, such as the provision of minimum captioning devices or such as the provision of minimum audio description devices and the requirement of notices signifying information about accessible screenings, and mandated staff assistance. For India, where the accessibility of theatrical releases has continued to generate litigation despite the issuance of standards, examination of such a framework assists us in recognising the value that is carried while actually translating accessibility obligations into specific duties. 

The European Model offers a complementary model. It addresses the regulatory deficiencies within the OTT platforms. Article 7 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, 2010, as amended, requires Member States to ensure that audiovisual media services within their jurisdiction become continuously and progressively more accessible to persons with disabilities through proportionate measures. It also requires media service providers to report regularly to national regulatory authorities on the implementation of accessibility measures. Member States must encourage accessibility action plans and designate an accessible, publicly available point of contact for information and complaints concerning accessibility. Thus, in the present comparative approach, accessibility extends from just being a standard issued, but rather provides a regulatory platform which serves and through which users can raise concerns. 

The United Kingdom provides a further comparative point through its Equality Act 2010, with reference to Sections 20 and 29 read with Schedule 2. Section 29 prohibits discrimination in the provision of services to the public, while Section 20 establishes a duty to make reasonable adjustments where existing arrangements place persons with disabilities at substantial disadvantage. The interesting part is that the duty in the services is anticipatory. The service providers are expected to recognise the needs of a person with disability before an individual encounters a barrier and requires an adjustment. The appropriate adjustment depends upon the circumstances and the reasonableness of the technical accessibility requirements. For the Indian framework, it raises questions on how the general principles of non-discrimination and reasonable accommodation under the RPwD can be converted into something which is lucid and enforceable.

The deficiencies identified in India’s existing framework require more than just some additional accessibility guidelines. The challenge remains in how the statutory recognition provided under Section 46 of the RPWD Act is translated into clear obligations and into a more potent and operative mechanism of enforcement. The formative step should be to establish a comprehensive and binding set of accessibility standard which covers different form of entertainment. The general provisions provided in the RpWd Act shall translate into requirements that entertainment providers can implement and regulators can objectively assess. The American model can serve as the aspirational framework, which specifies requirements for captioning devices, audio description equipment and staff assistance.

The law must then also clarify the respective responsibilities of the private entertainment industry, and the service providers should be required to consider disability related disadvantages in their own practice. The accessibility standard then must be accompanied by adequate monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. The framework should clarify the consequences of non-compliance, which include corrective decisions or, in appropriate cases, proportionate sanctions. The implementation of such propitious measures must be phased, quantifiable and shall be governed by the experiences of persons with disabilities. The law must not allow its silence to become the reason a person with disability is denied the joy of entertainment.

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