Editorial | Full access for the disabled

It is good that they are on to it, but it should not have taken a public brouhaha over what would happen to a wheelchair-bound child for the education ministry to fast-track efforts to make the Merl Grove High School in Kingston accessible to disabled students. Or, for that matter, any other government school on the island.

Indeed, the Government, like the private owners of buildings that are open to the public, has a legal obligation under the Disabilities Act to make those premises accessible to people with disabilities, unless they can demonstrate that it would be structurally impracticable to meet the requirements of the law, or that doing so would constitute a “disproportionate or undue burden” on the owner.

With respect to the Government, however, this ought not to be construed only as a legal responsibility. It is a profoundly moral obligation, owed to a segment of the island’s citizenry that is often subjected to insidiously casual discrimination. It happens without anyone thinking about, or taking notice of it.

There are not absolute clear figures on the number of Jamaicans who suffer with disabilities. However, various analyses have placed the number of those who self-identify as having at least one physical or other disability between three and six per cent of the population. But 15 per cent of persons globally are estimated to have a disability. Jamaica’s figure could well be an undercount.

According to one study, of the people who identify as having disabilities, one in three said their problem was physical. The next most common issue was sight impairment, although one in four (25 per cent) of the group admitted to multiple disabilities.

DIFFICULT TO FIND

Up-to-date data on the educational performance of people with disabilities are difficult to find, but what is available suggests that primary schooling is the highest level of education achieved by a plurality of the disabled population – 42 per cent. Only 28 per cent of non-disabled Jamaicans finished their education at primary school. A mere 35 per cent completed high school.

Put another way, notwithstanding the poor educational outcomes across all groups in Jamaica – or perhaps because of – high educational achievements of people with disabilities is worthy of celebration. A poor education system is further stacked against them – like it was against Celine Lobban, the deaf young woman who graduated from the University of Technology last November with a degree in computer sciences. She, as this newspaper reported, had to hire personal sign language interpreters during her years of study. The specific issues may be different, but Ms Lobban’s situation was not particularly unique.

So the possibility of a new student turning up at Merl Grove – or any other high school in September – without the possibility of full access to the campus was understandably a matter of concern. It matters little that her old school or parents may not have declared her disability in her entry forms for the grade-six Primary Exit Profile exams. Whatever may be the education ministry’s concerns about that supposed failure – which it has used as a rampart to publicly whinge – or any action it may have had already taken at Merl Grove, family members should not be pressured into retracting or apologising for statements about their perception of the school’s initial attitude towards accommodating the child.

SERIOUS ATTENTION

Instead, Merl Grove, and indeed all schools and the public, should welcome that this family shed light on a matter that deserves serious attention. More importantly, the ministry was spurred into action.

The Disabilities Act was passed in 2014 to make illegal many forms of discrimination and indignities that are callously heaped on people with disabilities. Critically, too, it opened a formal avenue for people with disabilities to complain and seek redress.

Unfortunately, it took seven years between the passage of the act and the writing and approval of its accompanying regulations so that the law could come into force. It is emblematic of the state of affairs that at the time the Government was preparing to promulgate the Disabilities Act in February 2022, Parliament was scrambling to repair its hydraulic wheelchair lift, which had been out of service for years.

Under the law, as it now stands, all new public and commercial buildings must be designed and built with access for the disabled in mind. Which the education ministry said is happening with new schools. That does not remove the obligation to renovate old ones, such as is happening at Merl Grove.

Karl Samuda, the labour and social security minister at the time of the law’s promulgation, gave a five-year timetable for the Government to retrofit all its buildings. More than a year and half has passed. His successor, Pearnel Charles Jr, should provide an update of the work so far. Parliament might also report on the state of its wheelchair lift.