On Monday, December 3, Israel will join the rest of the world in marking the International Day of People with Disabilities. Two timely surveys by Access Israel highlight the shocking and illegal discrimination stemming from the fact that most public facilities and consumer businesses are partially or wholly inaccessible to people with physical disabilities. Access Israel reveals that 65 percent of cinemas, 70% of pubs and bars, 80% of restaurants and 92% of public swimming pools have architectural barriers which effectively preclude the disabled from frequenting them.Outright exclusion of people with disabilities from the economic and social life of the community is due not only to architectural barriers. Numerous attitudinal barriers exist, too, as in the case of taxi drivers who refuse carriage to blind guide-dog users or in the case of insurance companies which deny coverage to people with disabilities, without having any statistical evidence that a person with a disability is necessarily more prone to accidents. Such exclusionary discrimination is overt and easily documented. However, there are many other types of discrimination against people with disabilities, widespread in government policies and private sector practices, which are discrete and subtle but no less insidious and demeaning. The discriminations are born of a world view that perceives people with disabilities as inherently helpless and unable to compete on an equal footing with the so-called “able-bodied.” Consequently, so the thinking goes, people with disabilities must be dealt with differently and with compassion rather than accorded equal treatment, and they cannot be expected to shoulder the same responsibilities of citizenship as those normally assumed by non-disabled Israelis. Employment, military service and airline travel are but three arenas in which prejudicial misconceptions and behaviors toward people with disabilities are particularly pervasive.Few employers are willing to consider hiring people with severe disabilities, particularly for positions with professional or supervisory responsibilities. All too often, they screen us automatically out of consideration, never looking beyond our disabilities. If they do hire us, they typically equate what is our narrowly circumscribed disability (such as absence of sight, hearing loss or limited mobility) with total inability, and ignore the fact that we also have brains, a normal capacity for exercising judgment and a normal range of skills and interests. As a result, they often steer us to a restricted set of stereotyped occupations and environments which they believe are “suitable” for our particular disability: massage or call center work for the blind, graphic design or noisy work places for the deaf, and occupations requiring no travel for people in wheelchairs.The government permits the payment of sub-minimum wages to workers with disabilities, applying a productivity standard to them, as opposed to the minimum wage paid to all other workers, regardless of productivity. In addition, government policies that impose on employers percentage quotas of disabled workers to be hired not only have rarely achieved their purpose but are demeaning to competent disabled workers, as are financials incentives offered to employers for hiring people with disabilities. Either we are qualified for the job or we are not! If we are qualified why should our numbers be limited by a quota and why should employers be bribed to hire us? If we are not qualified, we should not be hired in the first place, and the government should focus its efforts and resources on improving the vocational rehabilitation of the disabled.The IDF considers people with disabilities automatically eligible for exemption from mandatory service, even if they are found to be “kshirim”, or fit for duty. Why? It does offer to people with disabilities, who are fit for duty and who insist, to their credit, on serving, the option of voluntary enlistment. However, this is a patronizing alternative which automatically labels recruits with disabilities as different, second-class, and only there thanks to the IDF’s charitable impulses.Airline travel is yet another area rife with discrimination and dehumanizing treatment of people with disabilities. Although I am a blind person with perfectly healthy legs, I am invariably requested, sometimes insistently, by airline and airport staff, including by El-Al and Ben-Gurion Airport staff, to use a wheelchair. This is inappropriate and annoying. Almost as often, I am asked by flight attendants to remain seated until all other passengers have disembarked. Why? Might I not be in a hurry for a business meeting, like other passengers? Four years ago, in Hong Kong, the entire crew of a Dragon Air flight insisted that I move from my aisle seat to a window seat, so that I would not impede the exit of other passengers during an emergency evacuation. When I refused, they summoned the Chinese police who hauled me off the aircraft. Is my life less valuable and my evacuation less urgent than that of other passengers? And just two weeks ago in Bangkok I was required by Turkish Airlines to sign a document releasing the airline from any liability for my safety, just because I was traveling alone. It is widely believed that the principle challenge facing people with disabilities is the disability itself. To be sure, our disabilities did present serious problems when we first became disabled. But as the weeks and months (and, in some cases, years) passed, we came to accept our disability, and today, the wheel chair or reading Braille no longer feel physically awkward or socially outlandish. Instead, they have become the passport to a normal (yes, normal) and fulfilling life. No, the real problem facing most people with disabilities is the policies, attitudes and behaviors described in the foregoing paragraphs. Since we are just seven weeks away from an election, I urge all political parties to outline in their manifestos their plans for eliminating all discrimination against people with disabilities and for integrating us fully and equally into Israeli society.The writer is a blind person and former diplomat who retired from the US Foreign Service in 2007.
