Designated parking spot, high toilets for the disabled, and priority lanes, these are just a few the things provided for the disabled for their convenience. But who are considered as “disabled’?
“Disability is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives,” as stated by the World Health Organization or WHO.
Election pollsters and watchers concentrate on subgroups of any number. However, one cluster that’s not frequently chosen in analyses and surveys is people with disabilities, despite the fact they are as involved as the general public in terms of politics and the election. The disabled’s potential as a voting bloc has also caught the attention of political campaigns.
“People with disabilities comprise at least 15 percent of the global population, and approximately 80 percent of this population lives in developing nations. Yet they remain largely invisible to the decision- and policy-makers who design and implement government programs,” as per the International Foundation for Electoral Systems.
Political Participation For The Disabled
Individuals with disabilities encounter a lot of hurdles to political participation, and several opt not to involve and engage themselves in politics since issues that involve them are frequently overlooked and/or they have the impression that they have inadequate power to influence and impact decision-making and change.
Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities considerably declares, “States Parties shall guarantee to persons with disabilities political rights and the opportunity to enjoy them on an equal basis with others, and shall undertake to… ensure that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others, directly or through freely chosen representatives, including the right and opportunity for persons with disabilities to vote and be elected… .”
Several of the drawbacks that the disabled and their families deal with are existent for the reason that governments and policy-makers are unsuccessful to handle some major problems concerning disability. It is terrible that essentials of people with disabilities are hardly at the top of the list of the policy agenda of the public.