
	Peter Korn's Weblog The collected occasional commentary by Peter Korn, Accessibility Architect at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

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Tuesday November 04, 2008

President Elect Barack Obama on Disabilities

I am so very proud to say that the next President of the United States, Barack Obama has one of the most thoughtful, detailed, and well articulated set of policies on people with disabilities I have ever seen. I encourage you to read them on his website. His key stated initiatives include:

Becoming a signatory to -- and having the Senate ratify -- the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
To provide Americans with disabilities with the educational opportunities they need to succeed
To end discrimination and promote equal opportunity
To increase the employment rate of workers with disabilities
To support independent, community-based living for Americans with disabilities

In addition to his full disability plan, he has also articulated specific policies for people with autism-spectrum disorders. And his campaign held an incredibly open and direct captioned conference call with the disability community wherein they discussed their policies.

Come January 20, 2009, Americans with Disabilities - and people with disabilities worldwide - will have an incredible advocate in the White House. (2008-11-04 23:13:04.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Comments:

Fantastic Peter. I'm glad to hear your take on this, it has great meaning to me.

What a night. I'm proud to be an American today.

Posted by Richard Wanderman on November 05, 2008 at 05:30 AM PST #

lets see if it really happens i hope it does but i doubt that it will

Posted by learning disabilty programs on November 05, 2008 at 10:47 AM PST #

Obama's transition website is up already.

http://www.change.gov

It has an accessibility page, which both states the policy points you've listed above and commits to providing an accessible website.

http://www.change.gov/about/accessibility

And the job application page, which looks pretty straightforward (though I didn't test the forms for accessibility) has "if you're having trouble, contact us directly" info at the bottom.

Posted by Madeleine Rothberg on November 06, 2008 at 12:27 PM PST #