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Disability Positive: Disability Inclusion Training Programs in India by ASK Insights
ASK Insights runs Disability Positive, a set of disability inclusion training programs in India built to move organizations past compliance and into genuine accessibility. The program is led by Dr. Niru Kumar, who brings both a national policy role and her own lived experience of disability to how it is taught.
What Is Disability Positive?
Disability Positive is ASK Insights’ program for organizations that want to build genuine employment pathways for people with disabilities, not just meet a hiring quota. It covers three barriers that typically keep people with disabilities out of Indian workplaces: attitudinal barriers among managers and colleagues, physical and digital barriers in the workplace itself, and financial barriers around accommodation and accessible infrastructure.
The program sits inside ASK Insights’ wider Developmental Journeys work alongside its Women Leadership, Gender Intelligence, and LGBTQIA+ tracks, but it is shaped more directly by lived experience than any of the others. Dr. Niru Kumar, the company’s Founder and CEO, has lived with a disability of over 40 percent since childhood and spent 25 years navigating workplace barriers herself before founding ASK Insights.
Disability Inclusion Training Programs in India: What Does Disability Positive Cover?
The program works across four areas, moving from individual mindset to organizational infrastructure.
Equipping Leaders and Managers
Sessions build awareness of different disability types, how they show up at work, and how global thinking on disability inclusion is evolving, so managers are not relying on outdated assumptions when they hire or manage someone with a disability.
Disability Etiquette
Practical, specific guidance: how to offer help without assuming it is needed, how to talk about disability without euphemism or discomfort, and how to run a meeting or an interview so a person with a disability is not put at a disadvantage before it starts.
Promoting Inclusive Behaviour
The training moves past individual etiquette into team behaviour, looking at how people with disabilities get integrated into day to day project work instead of being kept at arm’s length out of good intentions.
Physical, Digital, and Cultural Accessibility
Disability Positive also addresses the built environment and digital tools employees use every day, not only the training room, since a genuinely accessible office needs both an informed workforce and a workplace that is actually navigable.
Why This Matters in India?
India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 requires establishments with 20 or more employees to maintain an Equal Opportunity Policy, registered with the Chief Commissioner, that spells out the facilities, suitable roles, and training available to employees with disabilities. Having a policy on paper and having a workplace that actually functions for a person with a disability are two different things, and that gap is where Disability Positive is built to work.
The scale of the gap is real. UNDP estimates the workforce participation rate for persons with disabilities in India at around 36 percent, compared to roughly 60 percent for people without disabilities, a gap that widens further for women with disabilities specifically. Most of that gap is not about capability. It is about workplaces that were never designed, physically or attitudinally, with a person with a disability in mind, which is exactly the combination Disability Positive is built to address rather than treating the two as separate problems.
Infrastructure Accessibility Audits
Because physical space is often the first barrier, ASK Insights runs a dedicated infrastructure accessibility audit through its Audits and Assessments practice. On-site inspections are led by Suvarna Raj, an International Para Athlete, and checked against the Revised National Building Code (2016) and the CPWD Manual on Barrier Free Accessibility. Organizations get a documented report with photographs, measurements, and sketches, so accessibility fixes can be planned and budgeted instead of left as a general intention.
The Expertise Behind Disability Positive
Dr. Niru Kumar, MBBS, is Founder and CEO of ASK Insights and a Padma Shri recipient. Her role in disability inclusion goes beyond consulting: she has served as National ICON for Accessible Elections, working to make polling booths accessible and drive voter participation among people with disabilities, sits on India’s National Advisory Committee on disability, and is a board member of Sarthak, a Delhi based NGO that places youth with disabilities into skilled employment. She also works directly with the Ministry of Social Justice to connect corporates, government, and non-profits on employment pathways for people with disabilities.
That combination, medical training, national policy experience, and personal experience of disability, is not something a generalist DEI trainer can replicate. It is why Disability Positive is taught by Dr. Kumar personally rather than handed to a junior facilitator, and why the program treats disability etiquette as something to practise, not just a slide to read once and forget.
Who Disability Positive Is Designed For?
The program suits organizations that already have an Equal Opportunity Policy on paper and want it to hold up in practice, companies preparing to hire people with disabilities for the first time and unsure where to start, and businesses that have received accessibility complaints or audit findings and need a structured way to close the gap. It also fits organizations that want their accessibility work assessed against an actual code, not a general accessibility statement. Size matters less than intent here. A mid sized office preparing its first accessible hire and a large manufacturer retrofitting a decade old plant can both start with the same infrastructure audit and manager training, just scoped differently.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bring Disability Positive to Your Organization
If your organization has an Equal Opportunity Policy that needs to become a working reality, or is preparing to hire people with disabilities for the first time, ASK Insights can walk your HR team through how Disability Positive would run for your workplace.