World Disability Day: The way society sees the physically challenged must change

New Delhi, Dec 3: Every year, December 3 is observed as the World Disability Day. The main aim of this day is to make people aware about the rights of the disabled persons and change the way society treats them. Since 1992, it has been celebrated continuously every year with a lot of success all over the world.

If we look around us, we will find that people with disabilities face a lot of difficulties. These difficulties are not just related to their disability but also due to the way society treats them. They find it hard to get jobs, are not treated with dignity and strive hard to lead a normal life.

One of the reasons why despite all good intentions, we as a nation have not been able to move forward towards including people with disabilities in the mainstream, allowing them equitable access to the same opportunities that are available to every other citizen, is because we have not been able to understand and accept the idea of disability as a part of human diversity.

Every year celebration of the international day of disabled persons focuses on the different issues of the disabled persons all across the world. This year's theme focuses on empowering persons with disabilities for an inclusive, equitable and sustainable development as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

What society can do?

Firstly, we must stop seeing a disabled person as different. It is not sympathy that they need but empathy. Being a person with a disability is as normal or abnormal as being of a certain gender, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

Most of the people even do not known that how many people are disabled in the society around their houses. They are getting their equal rights like normal people in the society or not. They need some assistance by the normal people to rise in the life, to get dignity and life of well being. But, generally the people in the society never know all the needs of them. According to the record, it is found that approximately 15% of the total population of the world is disabled people.

So, it is very necessary to celebrate this event to get people aware about the real condition of the people with disabilities. People with the disabilities come under "the world's largest minority" and faces a lot of obstructions in all the aspects of life because of the lack of proper resources and rights for them.