A disabled person is one who has a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities - the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, section 1 (1).

Mental impairment includes an impairment resulting from or consisting of a mental illness only if the illness is clinically well recognised. Long-term refers to an illness which has lasted at least 12 months or is likely to last till the end of the life of the person concerned. Curzon, Diction-ary of Law, fifth edition, p. 116.

Medical science defines disabled people according to the view of the World Health Organisation in 1980, wherein three categories were established, namely: impairment; disability; handicap.

Impairment refers to the physical or mental loss or abnormality which may take many forms. Disability refers more properly to the reduction in the range of functions considered normal for a human being as a result of the impairment. Handicap refers to the social and other disadvantages experienced by such persons which compound the impairment and disability.

Thus, handicap refers more specifically to the social or economic impediments that magnify the effect of an impairment. Many international NGOs criticised the above definitions since they give rise to the impression that disability subsumes the person.

In fact, the current recent revised draft version of the International Classification of Impairments, 'Dis-abilities and Participation' replaces the term 'handicapped' with the word 'participation', which reflects the barriers placed in the way of the person by society.

Conceptually, situating the problem of disability in the person tends to reinforce a self-fulfilling prophesy of exclusion and low levels of participation.

However, when the person sees himself as the problem he internalises an externality, namely, the particular perspective and value (or rather lack of value) which society takes on as a disability.

A new focus should thus be placed upon society and on how it compounds the impairment by constructing social and economic processes that fail adequately to take account of the disability in question.

Therefore, emphasis should be placed upon how society disables by failing to provide equal opportunities for participation. (D. Stone, 1984, The Disabled State)

A rights-based perspective to disability conjures the idea that people are not problems - they simply have rights. According to official estimates around 38 million European citizens have some form of disability or other. With EU enlargement on May 1, this figure will undoubtedly rise considerably.

The well-attested experience of Europeans with disabilities is one of needlessly low levels of educational attainment, persistently high levels of under-employment, inadequate access to transport, as well as daily occurrences of small but cumulatively significant acts of discrimination.

The inevitable consequence is endemic social and economic exclusion, poverty and endless dependence on welfare. Unfortunately, lacking an effective and visible presence in the mainstream and being subject to unfavourable coverage in the media, simply reinforces the perception that people with disabilities lack ability or have no right to be there. This in turn leads to a self-perpetuating cycle of exclusion (C. Barnes, 1992, Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representation of Disabled People).

The rights-based perspective on disability translates into a claim for public freedom and the right to participate in all facets of life on genuinely equal terms with everyone. As shown, the traditional approach to disability was to view it as a problem of the person (M. Oliver, 1990, The Politics of Disablement). The language itself is revealing in this regard (see Alston, Bustelo & Heenan, 1999, The EU and Human Rights).

The very term 'disabled person' reinforced an impression deeply embedded in culture - that the entirety of the human personality is negated by disability. Disability was not generally viewed as one facet of a person but as something that invaded that person and spoiled the entirety of his/her personhood.

This was also reflected in legal systems which distinguish between full legal capacity and utter incapacity. In various laws within Europe, little allowance was made for the possibility of different kinds, levels and degrees of capacity or for the positive role to be played by independent lawyers who can act and speak on behalf of the person.

Early attempts to combat this undesirable situation include:

(a) bridging the gap between the norm and the deviation by attempting to eliminate the disability or rehabilitate the person to the greatest extent possible given the boost in scientific and technological innovation

(b) accepting the gap as given and endeavouring to compensate for it through relatively generous welfare support systems.

Authors have expressed the idea that disability is a social construct (C. Liachowitz, Disabi-lity as a Social Construct: Legislative Roots 1988). This entails that society creates disability with an associated label by implicitly accepting some idealised norm as given and by measuring the derivation therefrom. At this stage some considerations are pertinent.

1. Human rights violations (for example, torture, the use of children as soldiers or human shields, etc.) can cause disability. Not only violations of civil and political rights but also of economic, social and cultural rights.

Malnutrition, avoidable industrial incidents and inadequate provision of health care can cause directly, or at least contribute, to disability. To this extent, disability is not an issue which solely concerns the 'disabled' but all of us.

2. The human rights mission may be viewed as greater than the sum of its various parts. In this context, the core right implicated is equality. The right to equality and equal treatment, in its plenitude, addresses the rationality or otherwise of various overt and more subtle forms of exclusion.

It is the equality perspective that gives added meaning to the infringe-ment of other rights such as liberty, the right to health care, the right to education, and the right to work. For it is not so much these rights that are at stake in isolation but the securing of equal effective enjoyment of these rights to people with disabilities.

In the light of the above, the only practical solution pivots on implementing an effective equality strategy - a strategy that reverses the effects of exclusion, that sets the terms of entry and participation into all areas of public space on a genuinely equal footing, that displaces the person as the locus of the problem, and locates the main problem in the way social and economic structures are designed. (see G. Hales, 1996, Beyond Disability - Towards an Enabling Society; J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French and M. Oliver, 1993, Disabling Barriers - Enabling Environments.)

This necessitates the categoric prohibition of direct discrimination, which receives explicit attention by EU law itself, but suffers a setback owing to a major contradiction. In fact, to achieve equality, the would-be discriminator is required to ignore the difference disability entails when making certain decisions, such as whom to admit to a restaurant, and, on the other hand, to address the human difference of disability by taking into account all reasonable steps to overcome obstacles and render the right of access genuinely equal to all by designing a coherent programme to undo existing hurdles.

The difference causes a massive policy dilemma. To take it into account means to do justice to the difference but at the possible price of perpetuating stereotypes about the nature of the difference. To ignore the difference means avoiding perpetuating stereotypes but at the price of failing to do justice to the reality of the difference.

Removing indirect discrimination, whereby unequals are treated as if they were equal, entails suppressing barriers to inclusion, thus ensuring that all preparatory processes for participation are made available on genuinely equal terms, eliminating access barriers, such as transportation, so that all pathways remain open and readily usable. This seriously hinders all forms of discrimination within public space by promulgating legislation to reach private actors within the market sector, including private employers.

This enabling tool can facilitate and achieve equal opportunities since it is familiar to and compatible with market dynamics. It has also gained international support and recognition, manifested in various non-binding declarations and resolutions of the UN General Assembly and in UN-sponsored studies (see final report of Special Rapporteur Leandro Despouy on the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities, Human Rights and Disability, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1991), the way general human rights treaties are being interpreted, the drafting of thematic human rights treaties and the ongoing work programmes of various international specialised agencies.

The following is a collection of international instruments and events which strengthen the above observations:

1. The UN General Assembly Proclamation in 1982 entitled the World Programme of Action Con-cerning Disabled Persons;

2. The International Decade of the Disabled, 1983-1992;

3. The 1992 Council of Europe Recommendation R (92) 6 entitled 'A Coherent Policy for the Rehabilitation of Disabled People';

4. The 1993 Vienna declaration and World Programme of Action;

5. The 1993 UN Standard Rules on the Equalisation of Opportunities for People with Disabilities;

6. The 1995 Copenhagen Declara-tion and Programme of Action adopted by the World Summit for Social Development;

7. The proclamation of 2003 as the year of the Disabled;

8. General case-law, jurisprudence of international courts/tribunals and reports of, for example, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights;

9. International Conventions such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 23), General Comment-ary Number 19 to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, General Commentary Number 18 (x) on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Principle 15 of the 1961 European Social Charter.