Why making live events accessible for people with disabilities makes sense for everyone

Last December, Delhi hosted a concert by AR Rahman and his Sufi ensemble. On paper, this was an accessible concert, at least for wheelchair users who could afford the premium tiers priced at Rs 6,000 or Rs 25,000. The lowest-priced ticket, at Rs1,000, offered no wheelchair access at all. The Rahman concert was symptomatic of a larger issue – one where accessibility is treated as a luxury feature rather than a basic design requirement.

Many other musicians like Sunidhi Chauhan, AP Dhillon, and Papon came and captured Delhi in the same month. Unfortunately, unlike Rahman, even money could not buy you access to these concerts.

And we are only talking about accessibility for wheelchair users here. People with visual, hearing, or sensory impairments do not even enter the conversation in most cases. Are they not seen as individuals who have a right to access and enjoy public spaces?

Some countries such as the United Kingdom have made considerable progress in terms of mainstreaming accessibility for different disabilities. In addition to the Equality Act of 2010 that makes access a statutory right, many organisations including universities, event management and ticketing platforms and charities have guidelines on designing inclusive events.

This is an outcome of years of disability rights advocacy that has made accessibility a core part of how people think about public spaces.

Attitudinal barriers

So, why are live events still not universally accessible nearly a decade after the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act came into force? In India, people with disabilities are treated with indifference at best and prejudice at worst. We grow up consuming television and popular culture that ridicules difficulties in speaking (“atki hui cassette” in Aankh Micholi), hearing (Bunty Malhotra in Housefull 3), walking (“Langda Tyagi” in Omkara), normalising disdain and embedding it deep within our collective consciousness.

These attitudes do not remain on screen – they actively shape how public infrastructure is imagined, funded, and prioritised. When people with disabilities are stereotyped as belonging to “special” schools or distant, segregated spaces, they are rendered invisible in everyday public life.

This institutionalised invisibility means event organisers do not perceive them as a legitimate audience. And when a group is not recognised as an audience, its needs are never designed for. This results in them being systematically excluded from the very public spaces where leisure, culture and social life unfold.

Apart from attitudinal barriers, organisers often point to practical concerns such as fear of backlash “if something goes wrong” or the additional resources required to make venues accessible. But these claims ring hollow because when accessibility is built into planning from the outset, it does not significantly inflate costs.

Another common argument is that accessible venues offer poor returns as not many people with disabilities attend such events. Of course they wouldn’t if the venue itself isn’t accessible. This argument is circular: without access, there is no attendance; without attendance, access is never built.

Some bright spots

Not all is grim in India, though. The recently concluded Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa is an exemplar of accessible and inclusive events. In addition to being wheelchair accessible, exhibitions were curated with multisensory elements such as tactile installations, Braille, audio descriptions, and visual cues to include Deaf and Blind audiences.

Coldplay’s 2025 concert provided vibration jackets that enabled deaf individuals to feel the rhythm and beats and actually feel the music. In fact, Coldplay has been prioritising inclusivity and has ensured that their events cater to people with different needs. Another example is the India Art Fair, which not only offers tactile and Braille artworks along with sign language interpretation but also provides quiet rooms for people with cognitive disabilities who may need respite from sensory overload.

Making live events accessible is ultimately a matter of intent. People with disabilities are not a niche market but citizens with equal rights to culture, leisure and public life. Investing in accessibility is both socially just and economically sound – brands gain goodwill, loyalty, and reach, while people with disabilities get to participate in leisure and culture on equal terms and with dignity.

While having a legislation which mandates accessibility is certainly necessary, its objective falls flat if there is no concomitant effort to visibilise people with disabilities and bring them into public discourse.

On paper, India has an extremely strong legislation in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act. However, on the ground, its implementation continues to be dismal, especially when it comes to events. This is reflected in an absence of a commitment towards accessibility by most Indian musicians.

As Siddhant Shah, Founder of Access for ALL (the organisation that made Coldplay’s India experience accessible), puts it, “Accessibility should not be seen as a virtue. It should become a habit. It should be something we live by every day, not something we do only to look good.”

Seventy-nine years after Independence, the conversation around disability still often gets restricted to skilling, employment and pensions. However, persons with disabilities are complete human beings with a spectrum of needs and desires. It is time we start looking at them as complete human beings with a right not just to life, but to live. It is time we start looking at them as a market and not just as a charity.

More importantly, it is time to look for “us” in them because everyone in the world is temporarily able bodied and when we are designing for the disabled, we are designing for universal access.

Nipun Malhotra is a disability rights advocate He is the founder of Nipman Foundation and director of The Quantum Hub. Teesta Shukla is a senior analyst at The Quantum Hub.