At a convention of the Florida Council of the Blind a speaker from Vispero mentioned Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) which happens on May 21, I think. It occurred to me that this might represent a good topic for us to look at. There are huge differences in accessibility even among developed countries. Some of those countries model what they do on what we do in the United States. Many have very different models. No country that I am aware of has a comprehensive accessibility infrastructure that is better than the one that operates here.
While we will talk a little about laws, I am more interested in what the consequences of inadequate accessibility are. How is braille affected? What are the consequences for mobility? Does poor accessibility affect employment? What should we do about it? What is being done now?
While blindness is an extremely low-incidence disability in this country, there are places where the proportion of blind people is larger. Nevertheless, there are many more people with other disabilities than there are people with vision loss virtually everywhere. In countries in the developing world are asked to make room in their laws and infrastructure and spending for accessibility, there often is simply neither the will nor the money to make it happen! Many countries still rely on charities rather than the government for much of what is done for people with disabilities! What this means is that there can be huge differences in terms of what is done from country to country. We will explore some of what is real about inaccessibility and what we can do to try to narrow the gap between what we take for granted and what other countries lack!
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