Indigo Airlines, Hyderabad Varsity bag NCPEDP-Mphasis awards

Indigo Airlines and University of Hyderabad are among the 12 winners of the seventh edition of NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Awards that recognise organisations that design their products keeping disabled people in mind.

National Informatics Centre (NIC), Newzhook, Planet Abled and SAP Labs India are the other recipients of the awards in the companies/organisations category.

In the category of working professionals, Prem Nawaz Khan Maraikayar of PayPal Inc; Sandeep Sankat, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal; and Sujatha Srinivasan of Rehabilitation Research and Device Development (R2D2) lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Madras bagged the awards.

The three winners in persons with disabilities category are - Danish Mahajan and Divya Sharma of Radio Udaan; Nirmita Narasimhan, policy director with the Centre for Internet and Society; and Sathasivam Kannupayan of www.enabled.in.

The National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP)-Mphasis Universal Design Awards were incepted in 2010. About 60 applications were received from across the country this year.

"Through this award, we want to be able to tell organisations in India that accessibility is a huge commercial opportunity as well as a social responsibility," said Javed Abidi, Honorary Director of the NCPEDP.

The awards in persons with disabilities category are given to those who have created an impact in accessibility and universal design -- either in service provision, ICT, policy framework, grass-root level implementation, design and development, access audits, or even the rights movement/advocacy.

In the working professionals category, the awards are given to people who work for the cause of accessibility.

The awards are also given to companies/oOrganisations who have taken up the cause of accessibility, which has led to them recruiting or serving people with disabilities and providing them equal opportunities to participate to the best of their abilities.

NCPEDP is a non-profit voluntary organisation working as an interface between government, industry, international agencies and voluntary sector towards empowerment of persons with disabilities.

Mphasis was named by American Banker and Bank Administration Institute (BAI) as one of the top companies in FinTech and as the "Most Distinguished Digital Company in 2015" by The Economic Times.

--IANS

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