The launch of the Bengaluru Parks Observatory has turned an often-invisible civic problem into a measurable one: most of the city’s public parks still cannot be entered or used independently by many people with disabilities. An audit of more than 120 parks found that only 34.8% allowed wheelchair users to enter without encountering barriers, while basic facilities such as drinking water, toilets and navigational maps remained scarce.
The dashboard, launched by Bengaluru-based law firm and policy think tank Pacta, is presented as an interactive, citizen-audited record of accessibility in public parks. Volunteers physically assessed parks across Bengaluru between June and July using a common checklist. Their observations were geotagged and mapped to the respective municipal corporation, creating a city-level picture rather than a collection of isolated complaints.
That distinction matters. Accessibility failures are often reported as individual defects: a step at an entrance, an uneven path, a locked toilet or a missing sign. The audit shows that these problems are connected. A park can have a ramp but still be unusable if its pathway is obstructed. It can have play equipment but no accessible toilet or drinking water. It can display a sign at the gate but offer no map to help visitors understand how to move through the space.
The entrance findings are particularly significant. Only 36.2% of audited parks had ramps at their entrances, and 46.4% had step-free main entrances. The combined result was that just 34.8% allowed wheelchair users to enter without encountering a barrier. The difference between having a ramp and providing barrier-free access underlines the limits of treating accessibility as a single construction feature. A ramp may exist, but its slope, surface, connection to the pavement or relationship with the gate can determine whether it is actually usable.
Pathways performed better than entrances, but the results still show uneven access. In 62.3% of parks, surfaces were considered smooth enough for independent wheelchair use. Around 71% were free of obstructions such as parked vehicles, vendors and debris. These figures suggest that accessibility depends not only on the original design of a park but also on everyday management. A technically adequate pathway can quickly become inaccessible when public space is occupied, poorly maintained or not monitored.
The basic amenities data is weaker still. Toilets were present in only 29.5% of the audited parks, and 61% of those toilets were accessible. Handwashing facilities were found in just 5.4% of parks, while drinking water was available in 10.9%. For visitors who need to spend time in a park, these are not secondary conveniences. Their absence can shorten visits, exclude people who require assistance and make public space less usable for older residents, children and caregivers as well as persons with disabilities.
Navigation is another overlooked part of access. Although 81.9% of parks had signage at their entrances, only 10.6% had a park map. A sign can identify a park without helping visitors locate a toilet, play area, exit or accessible route. The low availability of maps indicates that access has been measured largely at the threshold, rather than as the experience of moving through the entire site.
The findings on play areas show a more mixed picture. Play equipment was available in 73.2% of the parks audited. Of these parks, 75.5% had equipment that could be used, at least partially, by people across different ability levels. This is one of the stronger results in the audit, but it also raises a broader question about how inclusion is defined. Equipment that is usable by some children across ability levels does not by itself make a play area accessible if the route to it is blocked, the surface is unsuitable or there is no accessible toilet nearby.
Pacta’s dashboard therefore does more than publish a citywide score. It connects separate elements of the park experience: entry, movement, information, play, maintenance and facilities. The citizen audit model also shifts part of the focus from planned infrastructure to actual use. Volunteers physically inspected sites, recorded conditions through a common checklist and submitted geotagged observations. That approach can reveal differences between what a park is intended to provide and what visitors encounter on the ground.
The institutional context is important. The findings come despite the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, which requires public authorities to ensure accessibility in public spaces. The audit does not establish why each park failed to meet a particular standard, nor does the supplied material identify which agency is responsible for every gap. It does, however, place the evidence in the space between legal obligation and everyday delivery.
That gap is partly administrative. Public parks are managed within municipal systems, but the conditions recorded by the audit may involve different functions: entrance construction, footpath design, sanitation, water supply, signage, maintenance, enforcement against obstructions and upkeep of play equipment. When these functions are handled separately, responsibility for the overall user experience can become fragmented. A park may receive an upgrade under one budget while remaining inaccessible because another supporting service is absent.
The dashboard’s mapping to the respective municipal corporation creates a basis for assigning these deficiencies geographically. It can help identify whether problems are concentrated in particular areas or repeated across the city. The supplied findings do not provide a ward-by-ward comparison or identify the worst-performing parks, so those conclusions cannot yet be drawn. But a continuously updated map could make accessibility visible to residents and administrators in a way that one-time inspections or general commitments cannot.
The decision to invite citizens, volunteers and persons with disabilities to continue submitting findings is also central to the project. Pacta said its aim was to maintain an updated record rather than treat the exercise as a one-time assessment. This matters because accessibility is not fixed at the moment a park is built. Debris, parked vehicles, damaged surfaces, locked facilities and broken equipment can change the experience over time. An updated record can capture those operational failures, although the effectiveness of the system will depend on whether authorities respond to the evidence.
The audit also shows why public-space policy cannot be reduced to the presence of green areas. A park may count towards a city’s open-space provision while remaining inaccessible to a substantial part of the population. Public access is a functional outcome, not merely a land-use classification. The entrance, route, information system, toilet, water point and play area must work together for the park to operate as shared civic infrastructure.
Nivedita Krishna, Pacta’s founder, said at the launch that accessibility was about whether anyone could step out of their home and use the shared spaces of the city with ease and dignity. That statement frames the issue at the scale of the neighbourhood rather than the individual facility. If a resident cannot cross the approach, enter the gate, find a usable route or access basic amenities, the formal existence of a park does not translate into equal access to the city.
The Bengaluru Parks Observatory cannot by itself repair entrances, remove obstructions or install water points. Its immediate contribution is evidentiary: it establishes a baseline from more than 120 parks and makes specific shortcomings visible. The numbers confirm that accessibility is uneven across nearly every part of the park experience, with the sharpest gaps in barrier-free entry, toilets, drinking water and navigation.
What remains to be established is how the mapped findings will be taken up by the relevant municipal authorities, whether corrective work will be prioritised and how conditions will be monitored after intervention. The next important development will be the continued submission of citizen audits and the public response to the dashboard’s evidence. Bengaluru’s test is no longer whether accessibility is recognised as a principle, but whether it is delivered as a routine feature of the parks residents are expected to share.
