United Nations General Report

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.