The Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities
is a convention that describes many facets of what needs to be done
by state parties to support those who have disabilities.
One of our key challenges is really making sure that
authors know what to do.
Because, you know, we can make the most fantastic
tool out there, but there's still a need for authors
who are creating content to do the right thing with that
information and to provide equivalence for visual imagery
to provide structure that can be used by people with
a variety of disabilities.
And education is really a key issue for making sure
that can happen.
Now, if you've got a company like ANZ Bank
down in Melbourne, Austraila
it resonates very well with them.
They've got an accessibility policy.
They're executing on that policy.
And doing as much as they can to make their websites
accessible.
In some other company's case, there...honestly,
is indifference.
There's the mindset that, "Gosh, would blind people
come buy my stuff, and, uh... I don't even know any
blind people."
So, it really varies.
That's where, in the private sector, we certainly have
a responsibility to continue to raise awareness
with customers as to the business value of accessibility.
I think it's not just a matter of legislation.
It's implementing the legislation... abiding by the
legislation by people, by governments, by citizens, by businesses.
This is the main issue.
You can have a lot of legislation, but
it could be useless if it's not applied.
Logically speaking, governments will not care about
disabled people and help those disabled people
unless it's a matter of culture... a matter of priorities.
If people, if countries, don't have weapons there will
be no wars.
That's my own personal point of view.
And, unfortunately, nobody tackles this issue
whether here at the Conference of Disabilities, or any
conference about disabilities, you don't tackle the issue
of disabled people due to wars.
And they don't connect between wars and weapons
and, at the same time, you do not connect between
weapons and business
and how it creates weapons
internationally and locally.
Chile signed it and ratified the convention in
2008; and, since that time, we start working in
adapt... all our law... to accomplish the convention.
So, that's why in 2010, we issue a new law
for equal opportunities and inclusion of people
with disability.
And that law, the National Service for Disabled People, was created.
So, the service I am in charge of
we decided, as government, to start working in the
public sector.
We are working for a couple of big study to know
how many people with disability are today employed in
the government and what the condition is
because, many times in my country, people doesn't
want to say that they have disability because they feel like
they're going to be discriminated.
So, they're are a lot of people that maybe they are
working for so long in different institution, but
we don't know they have disability.
And that means that, probably, they needs some
special (Chet: off - camera, "accommodation")
Yeah.
And we didn't do it because we don't know.
And now we are doing this study and we're going
to finish in January.
We'll see how the government and the whole country
how many people are working, and then we're going
to get our own data base information,
and from that, we're going to put ourselves
some difference scores... we're going to try to increase
the number of people of disabilities working with us.
And, with that, we want to show to the private sector
how they can do the same.
So, over the last 30 to 40 years, there's been a great
wealth of experience that we've gain
through our laws and through the strengthening
of our civil society.
These are very positive things
that, when we travel abroad, or even when we're
working with people in our communities in the United States
who maybe immigrants from other countries where
they didn't have Rights.
It's important to help people understand
why are legislation is important and how it can work.
As I said, we have many people in the United States
who come from other countries
where the governments were very repressive
and where families and disabled people
and others never really understand what their rights are
under our law now that they are living here.
So, I think we have a lot of opportunities
and I think it's really
the responsibility of every body looking at this film
online
to really think about the important role the US can play
in sharing our messages overseas, and what we can
learn from others overseas, and how we can work
with people within the United States
to help advance their Rights also.