This paper describes how the purpose of medical, vocational, educational and social rehabilitation is to enable the disabled person to return to society as a person of some value and with his or her self-respect restored.This goal is frustrated if the disabled person is unable to obtain transportation, or to enter buildings either to undertake employment or to participate in community activity or even to visit friends. Without transport and accessibility rehabilitation becomes a meaningless exercise. Any rehabilitation-minded person visiting Hong Kong today will quickly realize how very difficult public transport is for a disabled person, especially anyonewith a serious mobility problem. This was even more obvious around 1974 when even the able-bodied had to fight their way into and out of buses. So when word went out that year that the government was planning a Mass Transit (underground) Railway (MTR), the Joint Council for the Physically and Mentally Disabled, which is Hong KongÆs national coordinating body for rehabilitation, requested that the MTR be made accessible to the disabled.
Samenvatting