Attitudes towards disability improving

The attitude towards people with a disability has improved over the past years and was translating into higher expectations by those with a disability, the chairman of the National Commission for Persons with Disability said yesterday.

Joseph Camilleri said young people with a disability were now aspiring to have more independence and wanted to be able to take their own decisions.

Speaking during the launch of the commission's annual report, Mr Camilleri said schoolchildren were "quite accepting" of their classmates with a disability and reports of bullying or other problems were rare.

Moreover, the fact that a number of young people with a disability spent all their school years within mainstream education meant that they completed their schooling with the same expectations as their peers when it came to finding a job and being financially independent.

This, he said, was translating into more requests for post secondary education, training and employment, which, in turn, has exerted pressure on existing services.

Families were, however, still facing problems in relation to what would happen to their children when they died.

Mr Camilleri said some 95 per cent of planned developments that were reviewed by the commission were accessible, which indicated that the culture of ensuring the buildings were accessible was getting stronger.

The majority of the commission's proposals for this year's budget had been accepted, including a measure to help people with a disability find a job, access to Blue Flag beaches and public toilets and the opening of another residential home in Cospicua.