Attitude-challenged

This is the 21st century. Man landed on the moon over three decades before the previous one bowed out and is planning to revisit it soon. Billionaires can indulge in the wild extravagance of paying multi-millions of US dollars to get a place on a space vessel, shoot off into the stratosphere, circle and view the Earth from on that high, and return safely to gasp and splutter up to their last breath at the thrill of it all.

Marvellous man-made robots complete an incredible journey through space to lift the lid off and photograph planet Mars. Astronauts representing the major powers rendezvous in space. Other sky-drivers sleep together up there in platonic but proactive friendship.

One of those currently in orbit, so a local newspaper reported, spent some of his young years here in Malta.

On this lovely island where, in this Year of Our Lord 2004, the mobility-challenged can now accede to most public places but not to Students' House at our teeming University.

That, despite the incessant efforts of the National Commission for Persons with Disability (KNPD, by its Maltese acronym). Chuffed that seemingly deficient administrative organs impeded their drive from penetrating with its representations to the university to arrange for accessibility to their Alma Mater House to all its students, the commission had to take an extraordinary measure.

After three full years of impatient insistence it was constrained to file a judicial protest in the hope the courts would set a definite deadline to our centre of academic excellence, but which took insufficient action.

"Insufficient" takes into account that - as the commission was careful to acknowledge in its report on the services it provides, its activities during 2003, as well as on outstanding issues - accessibility to the university has improved a lot in the past 15 years.

Not, though, to Students' House.

Is that so important? If disabled students have access to the lecture halls and, presumably, to the rooms of their lecturers, is that not what counts?

That does count for a lot. Yet it is not the same as saying that it counts for enough.

University life is not just about lecture rooms, tutorials, across-the-room-or-desk exchanges with one's lecturers. The intermingling on the campus during non-academic activities is what rounds off the meaning of going to a university, making it a first choice over enrolling for distance learning, without diminishing the benefits of this latter method to those who cannot get the former.

The relaxed forum common room, Students' House, where students from any-whatever university course drop in to draw breath, exchange notes, views, gossip, or just to listen in, is a key ingredient of physically attending a university.

Those who administer the University of Malta know this. They surely cannot but share the commission's concern. They cannot but subscribe to the view, forthrightly put by Marie-Louise Coleiro, the MP who speaks on social affairs for the Labour Opposition with such passion, that inaccessibility to Students' House (for the disabled) was unacceptable, especially since public funds finance our highest institution of learning.

So what is keeping the university from taking appropriate action?

Last year was the international year for the disabled. Every year is the year when what ought to be done, must not be delayed.

Delay, however, is not restricted to the University. The report presented by the KNPD chairman at a news conference on Tuesday said that the commission had also taken action against the Armed Forces. It believed that institution had been guilty of discrimination when it discharged a disabled soldier.

Assertion is not proof and allegation has to be sustained by admissible evidence that becomes recognised as proof.

The commission, whose chairman, Joe Camilleri, is one of the most level-headed persons one can be privileged to know in any walk of life, would not have resorted to legal pressure - against the armed forces, the University or any other body - unless it felt it had been constrained to do so.

What exactly is going on? Much is moving in the right direction. The Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) is doing its best to see to that.

If developers are careful enough they should be able to construct their projects in a manner that conforms to strict accessibility provisions.

Owners of existing buildings open to the public have to adapt as well. Yet, not all do, certainly not as speedily as they ought to.

The commission's report specifies various private companies who fell foul of its patience and forbearance. It has brought lawsuits against them.

Meanwhile at the last count it was investigating some 27 other complaints filed with it last year in relation to (lack of) accessibility. Another 22 complaints deal with issues of education, and 30 more are of a general nature.

The overall tone of the report, while recording unsatisfactory areas as indicated above, acknowledged progress and better awareness. Mr Camilleri, reported The Times, observed that the work carried out last year, as well as feedback from various sector, showed that the stigma often associated with the condition of disabled persons was being overcome.

That is comforting - not simply to those of us with some disability or other, but also to society in general.

Society cannot be whole if parts of it are stigmatised by any of the rest. For whatever reason, let alone because of a physical, sensorial or mental difference or disability.

Social stigma is a more difficult handicap to overcome than any given by mysterious nature, accident or illness.

Less stigma and more positive awareness, welcome as they are, need concrete backing. That cannot not be viewed only in terms of monetary assistance and training offered by the state. Nor by the unquantifiably precious contribution made by voluntary organisations.

Above all those who are disabled and can work yearn for an opportunity to do so. No thinking person would be so crass as not to appreciate the significance of social solidarity and redistribution.

Yet so many of us value income that we can earn by our efforts and talents more than we do social assistance.

Are there enough job opportunities open to the disabled? Ms Coleiro, in her intervention at the KNPD, indicated, not for the first time, that she did not think so.

I'd say she is right.

The minimum required by law is not invariably satisfied, though it is modest enough: for employees with more than 20 persons on their books, one for each 50 over the 20 threshold, starting with the 21st employee.

Reading the in-flight magazine on an Air France plane last week I was somewhat surprised to learn that the requirement in France is six per cent for companies with 20 or more employees. The French airline exceeds that legal minimum.

More striking still was the comment in the magazine feature that Air France offers employment to disabled persons in terms of the skills they bring to it.

What it goes on to do, among other things, is to ensure that accessibility is not an impediment to them.

I am not aware that Air France had to be subjected to legal pressure with regard to meeting the legal minimum, or to ensure accessibility to all their employees.

Levelling the field for people with a difference, where it is necessary to do so to bring about equal treatment, should not really require legal action.

Those who deny fair treatment to all the human resources that can be available to them, also deny, as well as diminish, themselves.

That they also do not realise this means, sadly, that they have they have face and bear the cost of their own particular attitudinal challenge.

The commission for persons with disability should be magnanimous and offer them its assistance.