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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130510/editorial/Welcome-progress-on-disability-rights.469054 The upsurge in awareness of minority rights issues in this country in the years since accession to the European Union can only be welcomed. These included the acceptance that legally-separated coupes, a sizable minority in society, should have the right, if they wished, to remarry after obtaining a divorce. The Government has also declared its intention to introduce civil unions for lesbian and gay couples. Another minority in our society, those with some disability, accounting for over 30,000 people, has just celebrated what the chairman of the National Commission for Persons with Disability has called “an extraordinary year”. He cited several advances registered during the past year to justify his statement. Malta finally ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which had enabled the commission to prepare a report on its implementation. The UN convention promises that the government will provide access to people with disability to such matters as education, employment, transport, infrastructure and public buildings as well as ensuring full legal capacity of all people with disability. While it may seem extraordinary that the convention took five years to be ratified, it is fair to note that considerable groundwork had first to be completed before the legal and other commitments flowing from its ratification could be properly implemented. The Commission for Persons with Disability has just celebrated its silver jubilee. Mass to mark the occasion was held in the church of the Immaculate Conception, in Cospicua, a building that had previously been inaccessible to the disabled but which has now been exemplarily converted. It is hoped that this example of improved disabled access would be repeated in other churches. And not just in other churches but in all public spaces all over Malta and Gozo. Some of the pavements in Valletta, for example, are a hazard to disabled people and the availability of public toilets for people with a disability is in short supply. To underline the importance of disabled access, 2012 also saw the publication of the national commission’s booklet Access For All, a set of guidelines that the chairman hoped would be adopted as the national standards and, ultimately, as legal regulations. He also reported that, following 15 years of lobbying, the University of Malta had set up a Disability Studies Unit, coordinated by a disabled person. This is an advance that should lead to greater awareness-raising among this country’s future graduates and opinion-formers. The great majority of people in Malta are able-bodied and are fortunate to suffer no significant disability. But for those couples who have disabled children or disabled partners, the overriding worry concerns what will happen after their death. The commission chairman rightly highlighted the need for legal safeguards on the lines previously envisaged under the guardianship law. As each step forward in the elimination of discrimination against disabled people is taken, new challenges will emerge. It is both a mark of a civilised country and also an act of social justice to ensure that everything possible is done to help the disabled. Anybody who saw the extraordinary achievements of disabled athletes at the Olympics in London last year will have been hugely inspired by what disabled people are capable of doing. It is the duty of society to ensure that every effort is made to help those who are disabled to lead the most normal lives possible. The government, on its part, must enable this to happen through a policy of inclusiveness, employment equality and public support.