The Delhi High Court has issued a permanent, operation-long directive compelling ride-hailing platform Rapido to maintain full accessibility for persons with disabilities across its application, covering every function from booking to ride cancellation, marking one of the first judicial orders to treat digital transport accessibility not as a corporate courtesy but as a non-negotiable statutory obligation under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.
The matter was set in motion by two visually impaired individuals, one of them a disability rights activist, who approached the court after finding that the Rapido application was fundamentally incompatible with assistive technologies, including screen readers, effectively locking them out of core app functions that any sighted user could access without friction.
Their petition demanded accessibility audits, mandatory implementation of digital accessibility standards, staff training, and financial penalties for non-compliance. Rapido, for its part, had on March 19, 2025 tendered a formal undertaking before the court committing to keeping the app disability-friendly and conducting periodic accessibility audits, preferably on a quarterly basis, an undertaking the court has now crystallised into a binding, permanent judicial direction tied to the platform's continued operation.
Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav anchored the ruling squarely in Section 42 of the RPwD Act, 2016, holding that the provision imposes a clear affirmative obligation, not a policy aspiration, on service providers to ensure that information and communication technology remains genuinely accessible to persons with disabilities. The Court took particular care to extend this obligation beyond static platforms, ruling that dynamic, technology-driven services offering essential functions such as transport fall entirely within the statute's contemplation, stating that "any failure to incorporate such design principles would amount to a denial of effective access, thereby undermining the substantive equality guaranteed under the Act."
The court also trained its scrutiny on the government, observing that while the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways had issued accessibility guidelines for motor vehicle aggregators, guideline issuance alone is constitutionally insufficient, the obligation extends to verifiable, uniform enforcement across all digital and transport stakeholders. Disposing of the petition, the court directed that Rapido's March 2025 undertaking and all associated directions shall remain binding for as long as the application remains in operation.
Case Title: Amar Jain and Anr Vs. Roppen Transportation Services Pvt Ltd (Rapido) and Ors
Case No.: W.P.(C) 14735/2023
Coram: Hon'ble Mr. Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav
Advocate for the Petitioner: Adv. Amritesh Mishra
Advocate for the Respondent: Sr. Adv. Apoorv Kurup, CGSC Mukul Singh, CGSC Nishant Gautam, Adv. Vardhman Kaushik, Adv. Dhruv Joshi, Adv. Nidhi Mittal, Adv. Vineet Negi, Adv. Aryan Dhaka, Adv. Vikrant Badesra, Adv. Sunidhi Tyagi, Adv. Kavya Shukla, Adv. Vineet Negi, Adv. Vibhav V. Nath, Adv. Theresa,
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