In 2006, while working as a Legislative Researcher for a local politician, I had the privilege of working and interacting with People With Disabilities (PWDs). My office partner and I then decided to draft an ordinance and hoped that it would pass the local council’s final reading, just in time for the National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation Week (NDPR Week), which is celebrated every third week of July. What my partner and I had in mind was a comprehensive local legislation, something like a Magna Carta for the Physically-Challenged (as PWDs are also called).
This particular (self-imposed) assignment was something close to my heart. My youngest and favorite sister (I know eldest children should not play favorites, but…) is a PWD, who is entirely dependent on her family. And somehow knowing the kind of help that my sister needs gives me an idea of what kind of assistance PWDs need.
In the course of doing research for the proposed ordinance, I was informed by the Director of the National Council on the Welfare of Disabled Persons (NCWDP), now the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA), that technology has made life much easier for PWDs. They asked for our help if we could request the local officials to sponsor the provision of special computers to the hearing-, speech-, and visually-impaired among all public schools in
Two years after, I look back at those times. My partner and I might have been successful in having the ordinance passed in time for the NDPR Week. Its being implemented though, is a different issue altogether. Also, we were not able to secure the support of the local government in funding the computer units the PWDs were requesting. Maybe, these occurrences are what jurisprudence brands as Pyrrhic victories.
My recent online search on the progress of local and national legislation on this matter leads me to House Bill Number 03774 (An Act Providing Telecommunications Systems Accessibility to the Hearing-Impaired and Speech-Impaired) or the "Telecommunication Accessibility Enhancement Act", which went through the First Reading on April 22nd of this year, or almost a month from the time it was filed by Congressman Rufus Rodriguez (co-authored by Hon. Victoria Reyes, Hon. Eufrocino Codilla, Hon. Narciso Santiago, and Hon. Emmanuel Joel Villanueva). The bill seeks the adoption of a national telecommunications system that is fully accessible to the hearing-impaired and speech-impaired.[1]
My friends working in Congress told me that the bill remains to be in the House Committee on Information and Communications Technology. According to them, legislation of this kind might not immediately be signed into law despite it being of a “National” Significance, but usually go unopposed (well, depending on the funding involved in the bill).
Methinks my friends working in Congress are right. And me hopes, too, that its passage does not become another Pyrrhic victory.
(for the week 24 until 30 August)
[1] http://www.congress.gov.ph/bis/hist_show.php?save=1&journal=&switch=0&bill_no=HB03774
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