After five years of preparation, the new system for determining who is physically and mentally disabled and for evaluating the needs of the disabled will take effect on July 11.
On June 11, the League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled opened an information hotline, and most of the disabled people or their family members who have called in have asked why they need to have their disability reappraised, since they have already been determined to have a permanent disability. That is a question we cannot answer, because the new system has lost its legal rationale.
In the past, someone who was functionally impaired or suffered from an anatomical loss or abnormality was considered disabled, thus basing the assessment on medical standards. However, the new system uses the WHO’s definition, which in addition to looking at bodily organs and mental impairment also wants to understand the impact on a person’s activities and social participation, in addition to measuring environmental factors.
Simply put, the international community is of the opinion that if a person cannot easily perform activities due to a physical impairment and therefore has problems participating in society, providing support in the living environment will diminish the obstacles raised by the disability.
The change of this concept has changed our view of disabled people. In the past, we thought that disabled people required constant rehabilitation and stressed that people can overcome nature with individual effort. However, the new system acknowledges that individual efforts at rehabilitation can be exhausted, and the government must look at the relationship between external environmental and social factors and the disabled individual. It is also responsible for building an obstacle-free living environment to diminish the factors interfering with the social lives of the disabled to give them the opportunity to live an independent and dignified life.
Implementing the new system for determining disability is valuable in that it reshapes our perception and makes us understand that anyone is at risk of becoming disabled. It is also valuable because it highlights the special characteristics of being disabled and stresses that the behavior of every person can be a factor in creating obstacles for the disabled.
For example, a visually impaired person with a guide dog is able to move around freely and live an independent life, but as soon as he or she encounters a prejudiced person, that individual creates an obstacle to the visually impaired person’s social participation.
However, the Ministry of the Interior and the Department of Health are only focusing on how to create an assessment tool and on the assessment process, without doing any overall planning or making policies for dealing with obstacles created by environmental factors. Instead, they are making massive cuts to the evaluation part of the system, thus coming up with an inferior solution.
Originally, the new assessment system offered an opportunity for reviewing the obstacles in our living environment. We also need a comprehensive review of laws and systems and to compile environmental factors that are a hindrance to disabled people living free and independent lives.
If the government does not take action, try to inform the public about the obstacles to the disabled, investigate environmental factors that create obstacles and does not eliminate them, then the new certificate for the physically and mentally disabled would have to list the government as the biggest of all environmental obstacles.
Wang Yuling is secretary-general of the League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
Every day since Oct. 7 last year, the world has watched an unprecedented wave of violence rain down on Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories — more than 200 days of constant suffering and death in Gaza with just a seven-day pause. Many of us in the American expatriate community in Taiwan have been watching this tragedy unfold in horror. We know we are implicated with every US-made “dumb” bomb dropped on a civilian target and by the diplomatic cover our government gives to the Israeli government, which has only gotten more extreme with such impunity. Meantime, multicultural coalitions of US