CHENNAI: The feeling of being ‘abled’ for many disabled people comes only while swimming.
Wheel-chaired people
experience the freedom of moving their limbs inside water, something that they would never be able to do on land. Many take up
hydrotherapy
(water exercises) and sometimes even become paralympic champions. But that's a tall order for most.
Chennai, with 1.5 lakh disabled people, lacks accessible public swimming pools for the disabled except at two out of seven pools maintained by GCC and Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu (SDAT).
In SDAT’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, a ramp leads into the pool. There is a seating lift that should lower a wheel-chaired person into the pool, but is defunct. At the SDAT pool in Velachery, there is a seating lift but no ramp. “This pool is not completely accessible to the disabled. Toilets do not have ramps,” said Madhavi Latha, 53, a
paralympic swimmer
. “Sometimes, they put up wooden ramps.”
Other pools are inaccessible, with no ramps or seating lifts, said Sathish Kumar, a Disability Rights Alliance member. People come from faraway places to swim in these accessible pools. “I have to spend Rs1,000 on a cab from Tambaram if I have to come to the pool at Nehru Stadium. My family members drop me,” said Geetha Kannan, 42, a wheel-chaired person and paralympic swimmer with a gold medal.
According to an official, children with autism and other disabilities use SDAT pools on the ground floor which have ramps at the entrance of the pool complex. But none of these pools are heated for hydrotherapy. A trainer at one of the accessible public pools said, “Around 20 people come to the pool every day for practice. Earlier, 30-40 people used to come. During monsoon, many do not come because the water is cold.”
None of the GCC pools were accessible. When TOI asked if the GCC pools would be made accessible, the contractor maintaining the pool near Marina said, “We cannot make changes now.”
Madras High Court had insisted all buildings should follow harmonized guidelines and standards for universal accessibility in India, 2021. A GCC official said, “We will include accessible infrastructure when we tender out the maintenance of the other two swimming pools.”
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