A promise is a promise. And last month, on the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) President Obama made it clear he had every intention of keeping his vow to form a more perfect (and inclusive) union for 54 million U.S. citizens with disabilities. In addition to proclaiming July 26 the official anniversary of the ADA, Obama announced that the United States would become an official signatory to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
Six days later, on July 30, the President kept his promise as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice placed her signature on Convention. The signing ceremony at U.N. headquarters in New York was attended by a select group of advocacy leaders and people with disabilities, including Carl Augusto, President and CEO, American Foundation for the Blind, and Marca Bristo, President and CEO of Access Living. At the request of the White House, IBM also attended as the single industry representative.
The most significant human rights legislation of the 21st century so far, the Convention sets an ambitious global agenda and according to the President, "represents a paradigm shift in protecting the human rights of 650 million people with disabilities worldwide." The CRPD, which is only 32 pages in length, is short on political rhetoric but long on straight-forward guidelines protecting the civil liberties of people with disabilities. Governments or countries signing and ratifying the Convention commit, in part, to:
- Eliminating all forms of discrimination at work on the basis of disability—including in hiring, promotion, working conditions and pay equality.
- Ensuring that people with disabilities enjoy the same rights to life, inheritance, control over financial affairs, and privacy as the able-bodied.
- Preventing the exclusion of people with disabilities from mainstream education systems.
The Convention also notably creates the first universal framework addressing the accessibility of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and assistive technologies (ATs). The implications of this framework in countries implementing the CRPD mandates are potentially significant. It will certainly drive the global market for ATs and accessibility in general, and likely foster continued innovation like IAccessible2, which enables people with disabilities to do more with ATs on more computer platforms.
While signing the Convention is just the first of many steps the U.S. will need to take to truly level the playing field for citizens with disabilities, the act itself is a harbinger of the kind of change the President promised in last fall's campaign and an altogether fitting way to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the ADA.