Digital Access As a Fundamental Right

**Nishita Sharma

Introduction: 

On April 30, 2025, the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark constitutional judgment in Amar Jain v. Union of India, marking a significant evolution in the interpretation of fundamental rights in the digital age. The bench comprising Justice Pardiwala and Justice Mahadevan established a significant precedential by recognising the “right to digital access” as an integral component of fundamental rights. They interpreted Article 21 of the Constitution, which enshrines the right to life and personal liberty, to include the right to digital access. 

This judicial pronouncement represents a progressive interpretation of constitutional principles, acknowledging that the contemporary exercise of fundamental rights increasingly depends upon digital infrastructure and technological access.

Brief Summary of The Case: 

The bench, consisting of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice R. Mahadevan, JJ., ruled that inclusive digital ecosystems are a constitutional imperative. The PILs filed by Pragya Prasun and Amar Jain challenged the existing digital KYC procedures for being discriminatory. 

Pragya Prasun is an acid attack survivor who was unable to complete the e-KYC to open a bank account, as it included uploading a live, blinking photo. Amar Jain is a visually challenged advocate. He filed the case highlighting the barriers to completing e-KYC procedures, including handling OTPs and self-portraits. The PILs challenged the e-KYC procedures as violative of the rights of persons with disabilities under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Rules 2017, and Article 21 of the Constitution. 

The Court’s reasoning reflects an understanding that denying digital access can nullify other constitutional guarantees in an era where essential services, civic participation, and economic opportunities are mediated through digital platforms. By incorporating digital access within the ambit of Article 21, the Court recognised that meaningful life and liberty in the twenty-first century require freedom from interference and affirmative access to digital infrastructure.

The bench notably mentioned: 

“At this juncture, we wish to observe that in the contemporary era, where access to essential services, governance, education, health care and economic opportunities are increasingly mediated through digital platforms, the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution must be re-interpreted in light of these technological realities.

Bridging the digital divide is no longer a matter of policy discretion. Still, securing a life of dignity, autonomy, and equal participation in public life has become a constitutional imperative. Therefore, the right to digital access emerges as an instinctive component of the right to life and liberty, necessitating that the state proactively designs and implements an inclusive digital ecosystem that serves not only the privileged but also the marginalised and those historically excluded.”

The bench directed the states to enact stringent requirements for digital inclusion. To achieve substantive equality, it is imperative to make all government portals, learning platforms and financial technologies universally accessible. Paragraph 17 of the judgment asserts that Article 21 needs to be re-interpreted to include emerging technological realities to achieve substantive equality. 

The judgment is particularly significant for its forward-looking approach to constitutional interpretation, demonstrating judicial awareness that fundamental rights must evolve to address emerging technological realities. This decision establishes essential precedent for future litigation concerning digital rights. It may have far-reaching implications for government policy regarding internet infrastructure, digital literacy programs, and the accessibility of public services. The ruling underscores the dynamic nature of constitutional law and the judiciary’s role in ensuring that fundamental rights remain relevant and enforceable in an increasingly digitised society.

What is Access In A Digital Age? 

“Access” appears roughly twice every ten thousand words of modern English, and its frequency has increased steadily since 1950. Cambridge defines it as: (a) the method or possibility of getting near to a place or a person, (b) the right or opportunity to use or look at something, or (c) to be able to get into a place. But simple definitions rarely account for what happens.

Access has been read into fundamental rights throughout the history of legal jurisprudence. Legal scholars have developed several approaches to understanding and explaining access. Courts worldwide have affirmed access to basic rights on various grounds. 

Legal Scholars like Frank Michelman and Kenneth Karst have developed important theories about constitutional welfare rights. They posited that meaningful access to necessities is a constitutional requirement for true equal citizenship. Scholar Kenneth Karst focused on ‘equal citizenship’ as a constitutional principle that requires formal equality and meaningful access to full participation in civic life. It must go beyond mere legal status; it requires affirmative government action to ensure meaningful access to rights. 

The advent of the Internet revolutionised how human beings function and conduct various aspects of their lives. It has permanently and fundamentally altered how communication and information access take place. It has become a lifeline of survival and has diluted the social, economic, and physiological obstacles. It carries an immense impact on our quotidian actions. There are 5.35 billion people using the Internet worldwide in 2025, which would reach 7.9 billion by 2029.  

The Internet promised to democratise access, and in many ways it has. It served as a historical benchmark for transformative technologies and promises further inventions. We carry libraries in our pockets now, with billions of pieces of information, more information than the great reading rooms in history have held. And yet we find ourselves speaking of digital divides as if they were the canyons that opened overnight. It is as if the technology that was supposed to dissolve distance had not simply redrawn the map of who belongs and who does not. 

This is not ironic; this is how it has always held shape: the promise of inclusion creates new, more refined methods of exclusion, the tools of connection becoming the instruments of separation. 

A Case for Digital Access for Persons with Disabilities 

The World Health Organisation tells us that close to 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of disability. Arithmetically, this translates into one in every six people; for many of them, the digital world remains as remote as ever. 

Banking, healthcare, education, and employment, the basic architecture of daily life now assumes digital fluency. The transition of essential government and private services to digital platforms has fundamentally altered the landscape of civic and economic participation. 

This shift happened gradually; suddenly, accelerated by a pandemic that made physical distance a public health imperative, the real world shifted online. What we called “going digital” was the final stage of a process underway for decades. These technological transformations represent a systematic shift in how citizens access fundamental services, creating new barriers that disproportionately affect populations. 

Now, people who cannot navigate a smartphone or lack reliable internet access are not simply inconvenienced; they are functionally excluded from participating in society. 15% people living with disabilities find themselves facing a new kind of segregation. This segregation is built not by physical barriers but by code and interfaces designed without the consideration that not everyone experiences the world the same way. 

Despite the Internet being indispensable to everyone’s lives, only 3% of it is accessible. We digitised access, but we forgot to digitise equity, in ways that may have profound implications for democratic equality and social inclusion.

Legislative Frameworks: 

Several legal theories have established that constitutional rights must be understood not merely as negative constraints on government but as positive guarantees. This requires examining whether citizens have meaningful access to exercise their rights. In this judgement, the honourable bench emphasised that the state must design an inclusive digital ecosystem accessible to all. 

Digital India was an initiative that aimed to promote efficiency and accessibility through digital means. In the context of this case, both the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (Sections 3, 40 and 42) and Rules (Rules 8 and 15) make it the statutory duty of the government to implement ‘reasonable accommodations’ for persons with disabilities. Section 42 of the act discusses explicitly access to information and communication technologies. Several courts have reiterated this in multiple cases, namely Vikash Kumar v UPSC & Ors, and Rajive Raturi v Union of India. 

Most welfare schemes and government services use online platforms, and bridging the digital divide is indispensable to ensure a dignified life under Article 21. It is not only necessary to have such services in place; they should be made ‘universally accessible’ to all vulnerable and marginalised sections. 

International frameworks like the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) impose three significant obligations on each state party. These include respecting the rights and freedoms of people with disabilities, preventing others from violating their rights, and fulfilling these rights by taking appropriate legislative and administrative decisions. 

Digital Divide: Bridging the Gap

The digital divide represents a multifaceted phenomenon that extends beyond simple classifications of connectivity. This phenomenon represents a technological manifestation of persistent inequality rather than a novel form of exclusion. The divide operates along established socioeconomic lines, with certain sects of the population experiencing disproportionately limited access to digital resources. This mirrors the traditional socioeconomic stratification between advantaged and disadvantaged populations. It has simply adopted new measurement metrics, with access and participation now quantified through bandwidth capacity and data allowances rather than traditional markers of social capital.

Digital platforms often lack accessibility features, creating barriers for users with disabilities through poor screen reader compatibility, missing captions, or interfaces requiring fine motor control. Essential services moving online without accommodations effectively exclude persons with disabilities from civic participation. This compounds existing inequalities and violates principles of equal access to government services and employment opportunities. In this case, paragraph 15 details how digital exclusion happens due to mandatory KYC requirements that inevitably prove discriminatory to persons with disabilities. 

The Internet is a fundamental enabler for all the bare necessities of life, from education to social inclusion. Not affording them the necessities because of their physical or mental disability amounts to discrimination and a denial of their legitimate right.

Concluding Remarks

The discourse around accessibility for differently abled people advocated for it as a civil rights issue. With the increase in technology, the question of whether it is liberatory or exclusionary has come to the forefront. While there is incessant emphasis on rapid innovation by various national and international initiatives, inclusive design and assistive technologies are pushed to the backseat. Digital accessibility is one of the most dynamic, contentious areas in the disability discourse, and this judgment is a seminal one in that sense. The debate on whether digital technology is fundamentally liberating or a new mould for exclusion has existed for years. 

Technologies present new opportunities for the world to go into a new dimension, and they should be universally inclusive. Inclusivity should be built into the systems as a universal design and should not wait for individual accommodation demands. New technologies like virtual and augmented reality, brain-computer interfaces, and Internet of Things devices raise fresh questions about accessibility.

There are more profound philosophical questions on inclusion, independence, and the indispensable role of technology in creating a different society that caters to all types of people. As the honourable bench also mentioned, the right to digital access becomes an intrinsic component of the right to life and liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution. This warrants that the state must proactively design inclusive digital ecosystems.

**Nishita Sharma is a final-year student from NALSAR, University of Law, Hyderabad. Interest in law- Data privacy, Technology regulations, Constitutional law and an intersection of all of them. 

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily align with the views of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.