The Daily Observer (Banjul)
Yahya Mohammed Bah
1 December 2008
opinion
In spite of the fact that there has been tremendous improvements over the past decades, a number of obstacles remain and continue to account for the under participation of persons with disabilities in their societies.
Distinct among these, though differing from country to another are for example, education, many children are still excluded from the mainstream schools simply based on grounds of restricted mobility, sensory impairment, communication and/or learning disabilities, and because those are not adequately aware of, nor sensitive to, their abilities and potentials.
All too often, children with disabilities are confined during their schools years and even beyond to institutions which, while providing special care, nonetheless isolate them and give drastically reduced or no opportunities for mainstreaming social engagements.
Employment, different records suggest that persons with disabilities are at least three times more likely to be unemployed and to be so for longer periods than the rest of the working population. In addition, they are likely to be affected disproportionately during economic turndowns.
Consequently, they bear a higher cost than most during periods of economic uncertainty, dislocation etc. Since economic independence is so fundamental to the exercise of other freedoms, this form of discrimination has serious repercussion on the quality of life experience by the persons with disabilities.
There is often tendency on the part of the employers and prospective employer to look at the disability than the actual ability of the persons in question and, in consequence, the value that can be accrued to the company from doing so can be under rated.
Inadequately adapted workplaces, inflexible work arrangements as well as the prevalence of discrimination are all contributory factors. Not enough on the part of the employers is put into thinking how the needs of employees with disabilities can be adequately accommodated.
Access and mobility, although high level of access, broadly defined, prevail largely in Europe's highly mobile society, for example, many transport systems and public buildings continue to be inaccessible or accessible only with difficulties. This is aggravated with architectural and infrastructure barriers.
Even though technological breakthroughs have been made in the field of communication, more could be done to optimise the liberating potential of technology and ensure that future developments take full account of the needs of persons with disabilities.
Accommodations, which are only in short supply in most countries, not enough adapted or lifetime adaptable accommodations are available to persons with disabilities.
Subsequent adaptation is prohibitively expensive. This situation has adverse implications not only for persons with disabilities but also for their elderly society. Welfare support, in many nations, high proportion of persons with disabilities still live close to, or even below the poverty line.
Welfare systems in most cases provide minimum assistance which is often insufficiently tied into the goals of facilitating participation. Too often there is insufficient or no recognition of the extra costs and continuing needs of persons with disabilities that go beyond those of the average person.
Recognition for and support for independent living is still uneven. The complexity and growing mass of rules in the welfare system and service delivery, as well the division of responsibilities between government ministries and administrative agencies can be sometimes confusing and alienating in themselves.
Information about available services can be diffused and in some cases this can account for the under utilisation of supports. Societies that structurally exclude approximately 11% of its human resources can hardly be described as efficient, much less fair. Since exclusion and discrimination on the grounds of disabilities also impose onerous cost on the nation.
But whatever the functional limitations associated with a particular disability, persons with disabilities have been saying for years and still saying that their major obstacles are not inherent in their disabilities alone, but arises from the barriers that have been imposed externally and unnecessarily, as international group of experts concluded.
"despite everything we can do or to do, to assist each physically or mentally disabled achieve his/her maximum potential in life, our efforts will not succeed until we have found the way to remove the obstacles to these goals directed by human society - the physically barriers we erected in the public buildings, housing, transportation, houses of worship, centres of social life, and other community facilities.
The social barriers we have evolved and accepted against those who vary more than a certain degree from what we have been conditioned to regard as normal. More people are forced into limited lives and made to suffer by these man-made obstacles than any physical or mental disability."
To illustrate some of these hardships that persons with disabilities encounter as they interact with the surrounding world that occurs as a result of a loss of mobility, let me recount and produce the experiences of some of my fellow persons with disabilities as they travels in Europe and the rest of the globe either as tourists or an ordinary persons going on their daily business.
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