Disabilities Act sparks hope of increased inclusion

With ways to go in making public spaces and buildings more disabled-friendly, chairman of the Combined Disabilities Association, the Reverend Arthur Taylor, is hailing Monday’s long-awaited effecting of the Disabilities Act as a “bittersweet moment”.

Speaking with The Gleaner on Tuesday, Taylor pointed out that Portmore – the city in which he lives and which is being pushed to become the island’s 15th parish – lacks the infrastructure to allow the disabled to fully benefit from provisions under the new act.

“Portmore does not have enough sidewalks all around and sidewalks with easy access for persons in wheelchairs. Many blind persons have to counteract with gullies in Portmore, and many buildings don’t have the infrastructures in place to facilitate persons with disabilities,” said Taylor, a visually impaired Roman Catholic Church deacon and music teacher.

He noted that capital city Kingston was also not fully prepared in terms of infrastructure.

“In terms of physical access to a number of these buildings, it’s very, very difficult. I’ve been up and down all those steps. I’m able to do it, but there are persons who have to use wheelchairs, crutches, and they have difficulties,” he said. “They’re old buildings and we know it’s going to take a while for some of these buildings to be retrofitted, but we want to ensure that, in the new buildings coming up, they are built with the disabled in mind to ensure that we can easily go in and out.”

Lamenting how slowly the Government has moved in effecting the law, which was passed in 2014 after being held up in Parliament for more than a decade, Taylor said that he was nonetheless pleased.

“We are happy for it; happy because we want to ensure that disabled persons have the opportunity of being included in planning and have a voice and also have the opportunity to access not only physical access, but access to educational institutions, access to all the different amenities, public spaces that we can go to socialise, access to be a part of cultural activities and all the different works.”

He is also elated that a tribunal will be formed for persons living with disabilities and those related to them.

“I can tell you that, for someone who was born with limited vision and lived quite a long life, there is so much discrimination that we encounter. So now we have a tribunal that we will be able to go to, not just to dispense our rights, but also to bring clarity to persons who might encounter challenges and those things – the whole protection – and [now have the right to be] included in government and governance,” he said.

Taylor is a music teacher at both Lannaman’s Preparatory School in St Andrew and the Mustard Seed Communities’ Jerusalem home in Spanish Town, St Catherine, and his students love the energy he brings to his classes, whether online or face-to-face.

Witnessing him conduct a lesson, one would be amazed at how well he engages the students.

It was pure joy among the special-needs and disabled students at Jerusalem when The Gleaner dropped in on one of the classes on Tuesday.

Despite most of the students being diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, they all listened keenly for instructions on when to knock their individual drums and engage other musical instruments, based on the tune Taylor sang or played on the keyboard.

His visual impairment did not prevent him from guiding them through effective note-taking on the various aspects of music.

Lannaman’s Preparatory Principal Trudy Hardy said Taylor’s two decades of service there has enriched the students’ lives.

“Being disabled doesn’t stop him from doing what he really ought to do. He’s very capable, very reliable, always early, always on time, [and] he does his class very effectively. I don’t know how he does it, but he surely does. He always has new ideas,” Hardy told The Gleaner, noting that he has helped the students to win many national awards, including at the Jamaica Festival of the Performing Arts.

“He is very effective, articulate, gets to the point, and I’m proud to have him on staff here at the school,” she said.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com

Key areas in Disabilities Act

• The provision of disability certification

• The right of education and training

• The right to employment

• The right to healthcare and facilities

• The right to participate in public office and political life

• The right to housing and to enter premises

• To establish the Jamaica Council for Persons Disabilities as a body corporate to promote and protect the rights of persons with disabilities

• The right to access public passenger vehicles

• To establish the Disabilities Rights Tribunal to hear and settle complaints of aggrieved persons on matters of discrimination.