There are over 30,000 people who suffer from disability in Malta. They are a sizeable minority in our society, which is swelled each year by many people suffering from disabilities who visit the island as tourists.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the government is bound to provide access to people with disability to such matters as education, employment, transport, infrastructure and public buildings. It is a mark of a civilised country and an act of social justice to ensure that everything possible is done to help the disabled, none more so than in the matter of access to buildings.

According to the National Commission for Persons with Disability, a third of buildings inspected last year did not meet basic accessibility standards and the majority required alteration.

In its annual report for 2013, the commission – which works closely with the planning authority to ensure buildings are properly vetted – said that one third of the 71 properties inspected were not awarded a compliance certificate and, therefore, could not be connected to the mains water and electricity utilities. The two thirds of finished properties that did pass commission and Mepa inspection checks were only certified after modifications had been implemented.

Since assessment of building plans starts even before physical construction of the building has begun, the commission was able to advise the planning authority to refuse permission to over 60 per cent of the 1,060 building plans brought to its attention. The majority of these plans failed to meet the building guidelines that are laid down in the Equal Opportunities Act.

The commission, nonetheless, accepts that, given Malta’s often haphazard urban development over the centuries, especially in the past 50 years, and other physical constraints, not all buildings are able to comply with full accessibility requirements. In such cases, properties are assessed by a ‘reasonableness board’, which is tasked with determining whether the urban obstacles being presented in the building application are insurmountable. These include such matters as limited access because of a steep street gradient or a flight of steps.

Last year, the board concluded that half of the buildings it examined faced “reasonable” restrictions to accessibility. Perhaps more contentiously, any exemption comes with a price tag, as building contractors must pay €20 for every square metre of inaccessible space. But this seems a necessary incentive to comply with the commission’s guidelines for Access for All and the planning authority’s building regulations.

Another issue to which the commission has drawn attention concerns so-called accessible transport arrangements through the issuing of blue parking badges, which number 7,000.

In a country where pressure on parking spaces becomes ever more intense, the commission found itself inundated with requests for about 2,000 blue parking badges last year alone. More than half of these went to pensioners and 84 to parents of disabled children.

While it would be unreasonable to carp about the need for blue parking badges for those who genuinely need them, it is to be hoped that the many pensioners who get them are genuinely ‘disabled’, not simply ‘elderly’ but fit.

The great majority of people are able-bodied and are fortunate to suffer no disability. It is the duty of society to ensure that every effort is made to help those who are disabled to lead the most normal lives possible,and of the government to enable this to happen through a policy of inclusiveness, employment equality and access to public and domestic buildings.