Minister of State for Disability Sulaiman Madada has called upon all manufacturers and service providers of various technologies to be mindful of relevant and appropriate technologies which can be used by different categories of persons living with disability to access physical environment, information and participate along with others.
Some of the items that Minister Madada recommended computers with Jaws programmes, Braille paper and machines, talking lifts for the visually impaired, hearing aids, wheel chairs and other modern technologies which can be put in place to improve on their participation.
Madada also called on different stake holders including cabinet to place issues of persons with disabilities on the development agenda especially in the going discussions of the 2015 millennium development goals and beyond in order to remove obstacles in all areas so that persons with disabilities can fully participate in development on equal basis as others.
“Some of the barriers that persons with disabilities face include negative societal attitudes, discrimination and inaccessible physical environment, information and communication technology to those resulting into insensitive disability friendly legislation and policies” he stated.
“These result into unequal access to services in the area of education, employment, health care, transportation, political participation and justice in communities by persons with disabilities” Minister added.
He continued that women and girls with disabilities face double discrimination which places them at a higher risk of gender based violence, sexual abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation.
Speaking during the main celebrations held in Kayunga on Wednesday 3rd December to mark International day of persons with disabilities President Museveni blamed many cases of disability on poverty and laziness.
“Most disability cases could be averted if mothers visited ante natal care where some of these cases can be detected using scans” Museveni noted.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) there are 150 million children living with disability worldwide while many disabled people especially from poor families are out of school and in Africa it is up to 90 percent. According to a report by the UNICEF there are 2.5 million children in Uganda living with disabilities.
