Aide Memoire
Population of persons with disabilities has been increasing in the ESCAP
region and the world. Many factors such as aging of society, civil
conflicts, natural disasters, poor roads, increasing number of accidents and
new types of diseases, contribute to the increase. It is said that
two-thirds of the currently estimated 650 million persons with disabilities
in the world live in the ESCAP region. The increase cuts across different
economic and social status of people and all generations. More and more
persons with disabilities are becoming a significant portion of society in
the region.
However, this raises a serious issue. The “Biwako
Millennium Framework for Action towards an Inclusive, Barrier-free and
Rights-based Society for Persons with Disabilities in Asia and the Pacific
(BMF),” the regional policy guideline for the Second Decade of Disabled
Persons for Asia and the Pacific points to the fact that inaccessible
environment and the public transport system in the countries and areas of
the region prevents persons with disabilities from actively participating in
social and economic activities. As the population of persons with
disabilities increase, this problem has to be seriously tackled with.
ESCAP 2003 publication entitled “Barrier-free Tourism for People with
Disabilities in the Asian and the Pacific Region” provides one strategy
for such problem: Barrier-free tourism (BFT) offers a new opportunity for
tourism industry reaching towards one of untapped markets, namely, persons
with disabilities and older persons, and at the same time for communities
creating more accessible environments and new employment opportunities.
Promotion of BFT will both economically and socially benefit communities in
the region, and persons with disabilities from all over the world to enjoy
larger freedom of both economic and social participation.
The current project, “Regional Workshop on Promotion of Barrier-free
Tourism” will be held in Sanya City of Hainan Island, China, with the
aim to enhance knowledge on benefits of promoting barrier-free tourism and
to formulate action plan for a given country or an area. Hainan Island has
been actively promoting BFT and will be able to showcase its good practice
to the participants. The participants will be from both countries which
already have good practices on promoting BFT and those who seem not to start
the efforts yet. The main participants of the Workshop will be representing
three sectors: 1) disability policy and implementation sector; 2) tourism
sector and 3) consumers sector.
The Workshop relates to the following two priority areas and eight
targets set out in the BMF.
E: Access to built environments and public transport;”
Target 13. Governments should adopt and enforce accessibility
standards for planning of public facilities, infrastructure and transport,
including those in rural/agricultural contexts;
Target 14. All new and renovated public transport systems,
including road, water, light and heavy mass railway and air transport
systems, should be made fully accessible by persons with disabilities and
older persons; existing land, water and air public transport systems
(vehicles, stops and terminals) should be made accessible and usable as
soon as practicable;
Target 15. All international and regional funding agencies for
infrastructure development should include universal and inclusive design
concepts in their loan/grant award criteria;
F. Access to information and communications, including information,
communication and assistive technologies;
Target 16. By 2005, persons with disabilities should have at
least the same rate of access to the Internet and related services as the
rest of citizens in a country of the region;
Target 17. International organizations (e.g., International
Telecommunication Union, International Organization for Standardization,
World Trade Organization, World Wide Web Consortium, Motion Picture
Engineering Group) responsible for international ICT standards should, by
2004, incorporate accessibility standards for persons with disabilities in
their international ICT standards;
Target 18. Governments should adopt, by 2005, ICT accessibility
guidelines for persons with disabilities in their national ICT policies
and specifically include persons with disabilities as their target
beneficiary group with appropriate measures;
Target 19. Governments should develop and coordinate a
standardized sign language, finger Braille, tactile sign language, in each
country and to disseminate and teach the results through all means, i.e.
publications, CD-ROMs, etc;
Target 20. Governments should establish a system in each country
to train and dispatch sign language interpreters, Braille transcribers,
finger Braille interpreters, and human readers and to encourage their
employment.
At the Workshop, the participants will be also discussing on how each of
these target is achieved, and make inputs to the draft Biwako Plus Five, a
supplementary BMF document for the second half of the Decade. Thus, at the
end of the Workshop, the participants are expected to produce the following
three outcomes:
- inputs to the BMF Plus Five;
- recommendations on promotion of barrier-free tourism in the Joint
Statement;
- Plan of action for each country or area.
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