Persons with disabilities make up about 10 percent of the world’s population, but continue to encounter physical and social obstacles to education, employment, health care, and other basic rights. If you are a person with a disability, you may also have faced having your opportunities to live a full life and contribute to your community limited in unfair ways.
On March 11, 2010, Canada ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – meaning that government accepted certain legal obligations under the treaty.
The basic ideas of these rights are to make sure that:
- People are free to make their own choices
- No one will be discriminated against
- Disabled people have the same rights to be included in society as anybody else
- Disabled people are to be respected for who they are
- Everyone should have equal opportunities
- Everyone should have equal access
- Men and women should have equal opportunities
- Disabled children should be respected for who they are as they grow up.