Human Rights Program
Accommodation: It’s A Right: December 3 – International Day of Persons with Disabilities
PSAC Statement on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, December 3, 2012
The United Nations reported in 2011 that more than one billion people worldwide live with disabilities.
The theme for this year's International Day of Persons with Disabilities is removing barriers to create an inclusive and accessible society for all.
Removing barriers ensures that people with disabilities can fully participate in all aspects of society, including their communities and workplaces.
Barriers take various forms:
- physical
- technological
- policy
- societal attitudes
Whatever the barriers, the results are the same: persons with disabilities are denied or do not have equal access to services, including justice, education, employment, health care, social services, transportation, recreation, or political participation.
Remove the barriers and persons with disabilities are empowered to participate fully in society, including their workplaces.
In PSAC workplaces, the rights of people with disabilities are protected by laws and contract language that establish the employer's duty to accommodate workers with disabilities.
In the climate of Federal government budget cuts, managers forced to do the same amount of work with fewer people may be more likely to terminate workers who require accommodation even though those accommodations are neither costly nor inefficient.
What can we do?
- Download and distribute PSAC's duty to accommodate brochure or the poster
- Exert pressure on different levels of government to ensure that workers with disabilities are not harmed by the budget cuts.
- Demand that the cuts do not reduce services for persons with disabilities.
- Organize forums, public discussions and information campaigns to support the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
- Support international norms and standards that promote equality and justice for persons with disabilities, both in Canada and around the world
Date Modified : 2012/12/03
