Accessibility in Northeast India: the guidelines just became the law

For eight years India's digital-accessibility rules were advice. A Supreme Court judgment, a notified standard and a draft set of rules have turned them into a floor with dates on it — and the eight states digitising fastest are the ones with the most to build.

In one paragraph. Under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, every government body and every establishment offering digital products or services to people in India has to make them accessible. Until recently the standards behind that duty were "recommendatory"; on 8 November 2024 the Supreme Court held that unlawful and ordered mandatory ones. The result is two instruments: GIGW 3.0, the operational standard for every central and state government website and app, with 88 mandatory checkpoints and an STQC audit; and IS 17802, the Indian ICT-accessibility standard modelled on Europe's EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 AA, which the draft RPwD (Amendment) Rules 2026 make mandatory for every establishment — one year for companies above ₹500 crore turnover, eighteen months below it, two years for everyone, from the date the rules are notified.

What changed, and when?

1. 2016 — the RPwD Act. Section 40 requires the government to set accessibility standards; Sections 42 and 46 put duties on service providers and set a compliance timeline once standards exist.
2. 2017–2023 — the RPwD Rules. Rule 15 listed accessibility guidelines but treated them as recommendatory. In 2023 the Rules adopted IS 17802 (Part 1: 2021 requirements, Part 2: 2022 testing) as the ICT standard.
3. 8 November 2024 — Rajive Raturi v Union of India. The Supreme Court held that recommendatory guidelines cannot satisfy a statutory duty, struck the recommendatory character of Rule 15, and gave the Union three months to frame mandatory rules with a floor of non-negotiable requirements.
4. 16 July 2026 — draft RPwD (Amendment) Rules 2026 (S.O. 3962(E)), gazetted 20 July for a thirty-day comment period. The draft makes IS 17802 the mandatory floor for ICT products and services, phased by turnover, with fines under the Act, enhanced fines for failing to remedy within ninety days, and the possibility of a regulator suspending a registration or licence.
5. GIGW 3.0, meanwhile, is already the standard every government website and app is audited against — 88 mandatory checkpoints covering accessibility, quality, security and lifecycle, verified by STQC before a site is certified.

The amendment rules are a draft at the time of writing. The direction is not in doubt — the Supreme Court ordered it — only the final dates.

Who does this apply to in the Northeast?

Two groups, and in the Northeast they overlap more than anywhere else in the country.

Government and everything built for it. State portals, department sites, scheme and benefit systems, tourism and permit platforms (the Inner Line Permit systems of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur are digital products in the fullest sense), municipal services, university and school systems. GIGW 3.0 applies to all of them now; a vendor who builds one inherits the checklist, and the state's procurement policy is required to say so within ninety days of the rules.

Every private establishment offering ICT to people in India. The draft rules use the widest possible words — "every establishment", in India or abroad, that designs, develops or makes available ICT products and services to persons in India. For the region's growth sectors that means the booking engine of a hotel in Shillong, the patient portal of a hospital in Guwahati, the admissions system of a university in Imphal, the app of a pharma distributor, an edtech product sold to students. Turnover sets the deadline, not the exemption: the smallest companies get the longest runway, but the floor applies to all.

And the language dimension nobody else has. GIGW requires government content in English and Hindi and in the official languages of the state, and IS 17802 is language-neutral by design. In the Northeast that is Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Manipuri (Meitei), Khasi, Garo, Mizo, Nepali and more — several with their own scripts, one written in two. An accessible product here is one a screen reader can read in Meitei Mayek, and a typeface choice is a compliance decision.

What does IS 17802 actually require?

The standard is India's counterpart to EN 301 549 and, for web and mobile, lines up with WCAG 2.1 Level AA — the same bar the ADA rule sets in Colorado and the BFSG in Germany. The failures that carry most of the risk are the same short list:

1. Contrast — 4.5:1 for text, 3:1 for large text and controls. Government blue on grey and most brand accents at small sizes fail.
2. Keyboard — every action reachable and operable without a mouse, in order, with a visible focus indicator.
3. Names and labels — every field labelled in the language of the page; every button and link saying what it does; every image described or marked decorative.
4. Structure — headings in order, landmarks, one h1, tables with headers; the skeleton a screen reader navigates.
5. Forms and errors — errors announced in text, explained, and correctable; time-outs extendable (OTP flows fail this constantly).
6. Language declared — the page and every switch between languages marked up, so a screen reader changes voice; the failure that is invisible to sighted testers and universal on multilingual Indian sites.
7. Documents — the PDFs government publishes tagged and readable, or provided as HTML.
8. Mobile — reflow to 320px, touch targets large enough, orientation not locked; most citizens in the region meet the state on a phone.

GIGW 3.0 adds what a standard does not: a mandatory accessibility statement, a feedback route, a site policy, security and hosting requirements, and the STQC audit that turns all of it into a certificate.

What does non-compliance cost?

For government, the cost is a failed STQC audit, a site that cannot be certified, and — since Raturi — a duty that a citizen can enforce in court. For vendors, it is a contract clause: departments now require GIGW conformance as a deliverable and increasingly ask for an accessibility conformance report at tender.

For private establishments under the draft rules: fines under the RPwD Act, higher fines for failing to remedy within ninety days of notice, and the regulator's power to suspend a registration or approval — which for a hospital, a school or a financial product is the real sanction. Separately, SEBI already requires its regulated entities' digital platforms to be accessible on a fixed timetable, and the DPDP Rules 2025 add consent and notice obligations that have to be designed into the same screens.

What should a department or a company in the Northeast do first?

1. Find out which list you're on. Government or built for government → GIGW 3.0 now. Private and offering a digital product to the public → IS 17802 on the turnover clock. Many organisations in the region are on both.
2. Measure before you plan. An audit, screen by screen, against IS 17802 / WCAG 2.1 AA and, for government, the 88 GIGW checkpoints — every failure written as a fix. Automated scanners catch roughly a third; the rest needs a person with a keyboard, a screen reader and the languages of the state.
3. Fix the paths citizens depend on. Applications, payments, permits, results, grievance. A certified homepage with an inaccessible application form fails the citizen and the audit.
4. Fix the system, not the page. Contrast, focus, labels, language markup and structure belong in the design system and the component library, so the next department's site passes by default. In a state with forty departments this is the only approach that scales.
5. Choose fonts and scripts deliberately. Assamese, Bengali, Meitei Mayek, Latin for Khasi, Garo and Mizo — tested on the devices people actually use, at the sizes the standard requires.
6. Publish the statement and the feedback route, and re-check as you ship. Both are GIGW requirements; the re-check is what keeps the certificate valid.

Selling in more than one market? The same standard carries deadlines in the US, the EU and the UAE too. See all four accessibility deadlines on one page.

Where Parallax fits

Parallax builds the citizen portals, scheme trackers, permit systems and internal dashboards the states of the Northeast run on, measures every screen against IS 17802 and WCAG 2.1 AA, prepares the GIGW documentation for STQC, and hands over a design system the next vendor can keep compliant. Bengaluru and the Northeast share a working day. If you're a department with a portal to certify or a company with a product to bring under the new rules, start with the brief.

Questions people ask

Is digital accessibility mandatory in India now?

For government, yes: GIGW 3.0 is the standard every central and state government website and app is audited against. For private establishments, the Supreme Court has ordered mandatory rules and the draft RPwD (Amendment) Rules 2026 set IS 17802 as the floor, phased by turnover; once notified, the deadlines run from that date.

What is the difference between GIGW 3.0 and IS 17802?

IS 17802 is the technical standard — what accessible ICT is, aligned with EN 301 549 and WCAG 2.1 AA. GIGW 3.0 is the government's operational rulebook, which includes accessibility alongside quality, security and lifecycle, and is what STQC certifies. A government site needs both; a private product needs IS 17802.

Do the rules apply to a small company in Guwahati or Shillong?

Under the draft, yes — every establishment offering ICT products or services to people in India, with a longer runway (eighteen months) below ₹500 crore turnover. There is no headcount exemption of the kind Germany's law has.

Which languages does an accessible site in the Northeast need?

For government, English, Hindi and the state's official languages under GIGW; for everyone else, whichever languages the product is offered in — each declared in the markup so assistive technology reads it correctly. The standard is language-neutral; the implementation is not.

Is WCAG 2.2 required?

No. IS 17802 (Part 1): 2021 aligns with WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Meeting 2.2 AA satisfies it and adds focus-visibility and target-size criteria that help on the low-cost Android devices most citizens use.

How long does GIGW certification take?

An audit of a typical department site takes two to three weeks; remediation depends on what it finds, with document backlogs and legacy forms the usual long pole. STQC's own review then runs on its queue. A department starting now can be certified inside the amendment rules' first-year window; one starting after the rules are notified will be racing it.

Sources: Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and apps (GIGW 3.0) · Supreme Court — Rajive Raturi v Union of India, 8 Nov 2024 (2024 INSC 858) · Draft RPwD (Amendment) Rules 2026 — IndiaLaw summary · Mondaq — the new accessibility conformance regime · DigitalA11Y — India's digital accessibility laws · W3C — WCAG 2.1