The National Medical Commission’s (NMC) revised guidelines for admitting persons with disabilities to undergraduate medical courses mark an overdue shift towards making medical education more inclusive. Issued on Monday, the new benchmark stipulates that a candidate’s eligibility for the MBBS course will be based on a functional assessment rather than merely a certificate recording the disability. The guidelines recognise that technology, institutional support and accessible infrastructure play an important role in determining whether disability becomes a barrier. Applicants could be declared ineligible simply because they belonged to a particular disability category or crossed a prescribed threshold, regardless of whether they could complete the MBBS course. Last year, the Court observed that “systemic discrimination against persons with benchmark disabilities should be eliminated”.