This year’s theme ‘Inclusion matters’ really says it all – here’s why.
By Tom Jamison, Editor of Able Magazine.
Every year the United Nations declares a theme for its International Day of Persons with Disabilities. For 2015 it’s ‘Inclusion matters: access and empowerment for people of all abilities.’
The fact is that inclusion is empowerment. To be part of a collective means drawing upon that all-important ‘strength in numbers’. We all have qualities and attributes of value that we can share out for the benefit of the common good. The challenge that we should be looking at today on International Day Of Persons with Disabilities is how to unlock those gifts and apply them to a world that’s just beginning to understand the concept.
Disabled people are still too often defined by their weaknesses. I’d like to think that today will help to inspire both able bodied and disabled people consider how we could go about making changes for the better. With simple adjustments that utilise carefully thought-out, universal design ideas, our complex world of humps, bumps, steps and barriers could be transformed. This of course, means harnessing the ingenuity of disabled people in problem solving that they’ve developed after a lifetime of working out the ‘how to’.
Similarly, disabled people have a responsibility to provide International Day of Disabled Persons with every chance of success. Wherever possible, I’d hope that disabled people can get out and just be visible, be admirable and show resolve in finding solutions in order to do the things that they want to do. It’s a truism that just as a smile causes others to smile; those that help themselves are often the people that stir others into getting involved.
The sub-themes of the day are: Making cities inclusive and accessible for all, improving disability data and statistics and including persons with invisible disabilities in society and development. Indeed, there are few areas when we really look at it, where adjustments couldn’t make our world a better, more efficient, wealthier and wiser place.
