In negotiating the Rules, I was particularly involved in the working group that dealt with education. Organizations of persons with disabilities recognized that if education was not equally accessible, then no other area would be either. We were careful to draft rules that were fair and practical, but which were far-reaching.
Access to education by persons with disabilities is a key to obtaining other opportunities including especially livelihoods .
A basic principle is that children with disabilities -- and adults, for that matter -- should be able to participate in the regular education system at every level from primary through secondary to tertiary. That means that education for persons with disabilities should be built into all aspects of the education system –what is often called “mainstreamed”.
I was very pleased to find that there was little resistance to that idea by the government representatives who were negotiating. But I wondered then, as I wonder now, whether governments will have the will power to implement this norm.
Applied to livelihoods, it means that persons with disabilities should be able to take the same general and specific training as anyone else and the education system should make reasonable accommodations to ensure that this happens..
