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International Disability Alliance was founded with objective to facilitate negotiation

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of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

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Today we were signing a memorandum of understanding between two groups,

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International Disability Alliance and Internation Disability and Development consortium.

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The disability movement is very diverse.

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We came together with many difficulties, with many challenges to produce one unified voice.

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Respectability USA is a new non profit non partisan organization that is devoted

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to helping people with disabilities achieve the American dream.

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How do we change the fact that for 23 years since the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act, that

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there has been absolutely no improvement in the outcomes for Americans with disabilities.

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70% of Americans with disabilities were unemployed before the ADA and here 23 years later identical numbers.

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Its time for radical significant positive change.

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Its very important that in our disaster recovery centers

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that we provide equal access to all disaster survivors who come in looking for services.

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So we've assembled kits - we have 175 of them - to provide tools for accessible communication.

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The Organizations of Persons with Disabilities have constructed a universally designed office building.

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It is approximately 100,000 square meters and it is totally accessible to all needs of all kinds of disabilities.

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If we can show that it is possible to make an office building where 300 people are working,

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and we can make this fully accessible

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then there will be no reason for not doing that when you build new office buildings in Denmark.

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In any country, you will find that you have three or four mobile service providers, one telecom regulator.

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You could meet all those people in that room here.

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And if all those decision makers get together with persons with disabilities, with appropriate government agencies

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you can really make a huge difference very quickly. And from a government standpoint,

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developing policies and programs for accessible mobile telephony costs nothing.

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And think about the 6.5 billion mobile users around the world and the likelihood that persons with disabilities

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would be some of the prime users of the technology. Its a huge impact on millions of people.

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We some strong level of interest in progress. Practical progress.

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So as you look at the glass, half full or half empty,

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we are looking at a half full glass and we just need to increase the level of the water in the glass.