How to make evacuation drills accessible for the disabled
A new guide provides practical tips to make drills and evacuation procedures accessible for people with disabilities and the elderly
All of last week, 31-year-old Amrit Khurana tried to tune into family conversations about the heightened tensions between India and Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack. A non-verbal autistic person based in Noida, she could follow the discussions to a limited extent. “She could not chip in but would ask limited questions. A lot of our family members are in the defence services, and we would talk about them. She would ask in short sentences about their whereabouts," says her mother Aarti. “I was not sure how to explain all of this to her."
Like the rest of the country, Noida underwent blackout simulations and evacuation drills. However, there was very little information about making these drills inclusive for people with disabilities or about having these difficult conversations around conflict. Aarti ran some searches online and came across a guide published by Siddhant Shah, disability access consultant and founder of Access For ALL, and Rohan Marathe, head of A11y at the same organisation, which aims to improve access through design and advocacy. Titled ‘How Inclusive and Accessible is Your Evacuation Mock Drill’, this succinct resource focuses on inclusive evacuation preparedness and drills for all the stakeholders, whether persons with disabilities, caregivers or corporate disability inclusion leaders. Available as a free download in PDF, audio guide and screen reader formats, this document is covers three aspects—creating an emergency go bag, evacuation plans and shelter-in-place—for persons with hearing, visual and motor impairment and with neurodiverse sensitivities. Efforts are underway to create a Braille version.
“When I read the guide, which was readily available on social media, it hit me hard. We should be making conversations and drills more inclusive for everyone," says Aarti. In the context of evacuation preparedness for those with neurodiverse sensitivities, Shah mentions that caregivers ought to have a visual story to explain emergencies. Under the section ‘shelter-in-place’, he suggests limited exposure to news or loud sounds to reduce anxiety and to keep routines as consistent as possible.
Aarti decided to follow the guidelines and made visual cards for Amrit—a sort of a snakes-and-ladders game on paper. “I drew the two countries and a conflict map, and created visual cues around what we plan to do in case of a blackout or in case we are not together during evacuation. It is difficult to gauge how much Amrit understands, but it is important to make this effort," says Aarti. While the two countries have announced a ceasefire, the resource continues to be significant in case of any eventuality, natural or manmade.
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Arpan, a Vadodara-based school with which Access for All works, reached out to them on 7 May after the escalation in tensions. As it was vacation time, parents had gotten in touch with the school for help with the anxiety that children on the neurodivergent spectrum experienced due to siren noises. That got Shah thinking about ways to diminish the unease of both caregivers and children.
“I was also thinking of ways of guiding my mother, who suffers from a permanent partial visual impairment, through such drills. How do you create camaraderie among people to create an onus of assisting others in an emergency?" he says. “The National Disaster Management Authority has guidelines in place, but those are more for floods, landslides, earthquakes and tsunamis." The latest addition of precautions and measures to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, is related to covid-19.
“One has to think of many things in a conflict scenario. How do people who are non-verbal ask for help? There are small but significant measures that can be taken," says Shah. For instance, an emergency go bag should contain a whistle, which can be worn around the neck. For senior citizens or people with motor impairment, assistive tools such as braces, cushions, catheter kits, spare wheelchair parts and flashlights with head straps should be part of the pack. The drill should be practiced using accessible exits and a wheelchair or walker should be stored near the bed and the door.
For those with a hearing impairment, pack five sets of extra batteries for the hearing aid. For the visually impaired, put Braille/large-print labels on items, and the evacuation plan could include a tactile map of the house and building. The route could be practiced with a guide or family member using orientation markers like textured floor signs.
In the shelter-in-place plan, identify safe, obstacle-free indoor space and pre-attach glow-in-the-dark tape to essential items. People can install emergency alert apps with visual notifications, create emergency cards explaining specific support needs, keep a phone with a speed dial to caregivers, and use talking emergency apps such as Seeing AI and Be My Eyes. This can smoothen the evacuation process for everyone in the neighbourhood or the workplace.
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At Arpan, a school run by a not-for-profit trust, facilitators have translated the guide into Gujarati and shared it on a WhatsApp group with parents. The institution has students mostly from underprivileged backgrounds, aged 6 to 40, with disabilities such as Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy and cognitive movement challenges. “Most of the parents were not aware of how the constant news of conflict was impacting the students. They noticed minor sensory issues such as an increase in flapping of hands. Since it is vacation time, the students were confined to their homes, and were feeling triggered on seeing the flurry of updates," says Meera Rathore, principal, Arpan. “We suggested weaning them off the screen and engaging them with visual stories. For the non-verbal students, we asked caregivers to speak short sentences of reassurance to give them comfort."
Arpan communicated to parents the idea of creating a visual/pictorial emergency checklist, giving them comfort items such as fidget toys and stress balls, and doing breathing exercises to calm them. They were also asked to create an ID card explaining the disability, medication list and emergency contacts. “Some of the parents have created this for the kids. For the rest, we are creating these ID cards," says Rathore. One of the suggestions is to practice an evacuation drill by creating a dotted line around the home or the school, or using picture-based maps, and practicing these step-by-step drills repeatedly. “These are simple steps that can go a long way in case of any emergency situation," she says.
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