Mission Accessibility, in collaboration with a team of researchers and accessibility rights activists, conducted a multi-year, three-country research-in-action project titled “Accessibility, Language, and Tech for the People (ALT).” The project, supported by Whose Knowledge? a global campaign working to centre the knowledge of marginalised communities online broadly aimed to understand the collective experiences and challenges of persons with visual impairment across three linguistic and cultural contexts: Bangla, Hindi, and Urdu. ALT also sought to shed light on their use of digital technologies and their access to content in local languages. Specifically, Mission Accessibility focused on the intersectional status, challenges, and opportunities of Indian Hindi-speaking individuals with visual impairment.
Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India. As per Census 2011 data, over 43.6% of India’s population—approximately 528 million people—identify Hindi as their first language, with many more using it as a second or link language. Likewise, India has witnessed an unprecedented digital expansion. As of 2024–25, India has over 900 million Internet users, making it the second-largest online population globally.
Applying these two data points together, it stands to reason that India has a large population of Hindi speaking users who access the Internet. This group includes millions of persons with disabilities, particularly persons with visual impairments, learning disabilities and cognitive disabilities for whom Hindi is the principal medium of information, education and social participation. And yet, despite this scale, access to Hindi language content in disability-friendly and accessible formats remains severely limited.
Most Hindi digital content across government websites, news portals, educational platforms, OTT services and social media is still:
- Incompatible with screen readers due to poor semantic structure
- Image-based, transliterated, or poorly translated
- Non-compliant with WCAG accessibility standards
- Dependent on colour, layout, or visual cues alone
- Unusable without compromising privacy or autonomy
Auditing and documenting accessibility gaps
Mission Accessibility’s research as a part of ALT, titled “Accessibility of Hindi Language Content on the Internet for Persons with Visual Disabilities in India”1 moved beyond anecdotal evidence, documenting barriers faced by blind and low-vision users systematically. The study consisted of:
- A detailed focus group discussion conducted in New Delhi with nine blind and low-vision participants from diverse socio-economic and linguistic backgrounds.
- A technical and user audit of 10 high-impact platforms selected across sectors such as news, payments, e-commerce, education, social media, and government services. These included Flipkart, Jagran, Paytm, Meesho, UMANG, UIDAI, MyGov, Facebook, Pratilipi and Sanskriti IAS. The audit revealed that across platforms, between 35% and 61% of tested accessibility criteria failed, even at basic WCAG A and AA levels. Some of the most common issues included:
- Missing or incorrect labels for buttons, links, and form fields
- Absence of heading structures, breaking screen-reader navigation
- Images, icons, and graphics without meaningful alternative text
- Improper focus order and illogical reading sequences
- Reliance on colour alone to convey meaning
- Inaccessible CAPTCHA mechanisms
- Small touch targets and non-responsive controls. Equally troubling were failures unique to Hindi content:
- Literal, machine-driven translations that distort meaning
- Transliterated English product names without semantic clarity
- Complex or bureaucratic Hindi unsuitable for everyday users
- Key navigation elements remaining untranslated despite “Hindi mode”
- Inability to report accessibility issues in Hindi. At Mission Accessibility, research is not an end in itself, it is a tool for accountability and systemic reform.
- The Webinar: Centering Disabled Hindi Users in the Digital Inclusion Debate
To this end, we conducted a webinar on 1st November, 2025, to share our findings with our community, offer our best thinking on how the identified issues can be addressed and collectively resolve to do what we can to help make the Internet more accessible. We run online networks of over 1,200 persons with disabilities, including a large number of blind and low-vision users. Members of these communities were invited for the webinar. In the webinar, we shared with the audience a five-step process which we have devised. This process seeks to operationalize the oft-quoted idea that accessibility is a right and not a matter of charity. It entails first writing to the platform concerned to report accessibility issues. Should that fail, using social media and the court of public opinion. If all these measures fail, as a last resort, users are advised to send a legal notice, followed by a complaint before the appropriate legal forum to vindicate their rights. We have provided a template for each of these communications which users simply need to tweak to suit their context and use case.
Audience members resolved to implementing this process in their everyday lives when they come across inaccessible content. Further, they shared several inputs, such as developing partnerships with well-placed and sensitive bureaucrats to push for policy reforms, strengthening the efficacy and functioning of Disability Commissions and making platforms more aware of the needs of users with disabilities. Mission Accessibility will be conducting another such webinar in January, to ensure that the momentum is sustained and that the five-step process is taken to its logical conclusion