Laxmi Pradhan

Nepalese disability rights advocate transforming accessibility in South Asia

Laxmi Pradhan is a Nepalese disability rights activist who pioneered accessibility reforms across South Asia. Born in 1987 with congenital limb differences, she faced systemic exclusion until discovering digital advocacy through a UNICEF workshop in 2005. This led to her founding Access Nepal in 2008, which has trained 15,000 disabled youth in tech skills and policy advocacy. Under her leadership, Nepal's 2017 National Building Code now mandates wheelchair accessibility in all public structures.

Pradhan's 2015 campaign after the Gorkha earthquake exposed how disaster responses excluded disabled populations. Her WHO collaboration developed post-disaster accessibility guidelines adopted by 8 Asian countries. She co-authored the 2019 UNDP report here, which influenced India's new National Education Policy to include disability access in all schools.

Her digital innovations include the 2020 AccessMap app, which crowdsources accessibility data across 200+ cities. This platform now informs Google Maps accessibility features in 12 languages. Pradhan became the youngest member of Nepal's National Human Rights Commission in 2021, and her TEDx talk here has become a standard resource for inclusion training. She currently advises the Asian Development Bank on disability-inclusive infrastructure, impacting over 100 million disabled people in the region.