Disability accessibility: We don’t need another promise, we need the laws we already have to be enforced 

By Chelsea NYANTAKYI

Kafui arrives at the clinic in pain. The entrance sits at the top of a short set of stairs. There is no ramp nor lift. His wheelchair cannot go any further, so he stops and looks up at the doorway meant for everyone, yet not built with him in mind.

In that moment, his choices shrink to two: wait and hope that someone passing by will notice and lift him up or pull himself out of his wheelchair and crawl up the stairs. These are the only ways he can enter the clinic.

So, he waits. This should never be acceptable because it mocks the idea of inclusion. Yet, it is the daily reality for many persons with disabilities across Ghana even though accessibility has been a legal requirement for nearly 20 years.

This lack of accessibility is not limited to hospitals. The same barrier exists in schools, workplaces, transport systems and public institutions across the country. We do not have an absence of law. We have an absence of implementation.

The Persons with Disability Act (Act 715), passed in 2006, did not encourage inclusion; it mandated it. Section 6 requires public buildings and services to be made accessible.

Section 7 guarantees free basic education for children with disabilities, with necessary support. Section 9 obliges employers to make reasonable adjustments so persons with disabilities can work with dignity. These are not aspirations. They are obligations. Yet the everyday reality continues to contradict the legal promise.

SOFA Foundation’s recent research found that many basic schools do not have ramps, braille materials or teachers trained in sign language or neurodiversity-inclusive methods. So, although education may be free in principle, it is not accessible in practice. Many children with disabilities leave school long before they reach junior high not because they are unable to learn, but because the environment is not built for them.

Ghana’s education system integrates children with disabilities into mainstream classrooms, but often without the support required for them to fully learn and participate. If a child cannot move freely in the school compound, cannot engage with teaching methods or cannot access the language and learning materials used, the child may be enrolled in the classroom, but they are not truly included.

This is the foundation upon which all later educational opportunities depend. Recently, the government introduced a tertiary education fee waiver for students with disabilities. This is a meaningful acknowledgement of the need to reduce financial barriers. We must, however, confront a difficult truth: only a small number of children with disabilities currently make it to tertiary education. If nursery, primary and junior high environments cannot support them, they are unlikely to reach the level where fee waivers matter.

To move forward, we must be honest: progress announced at the top cannot succeed when the foundation at the bottom has not been secured. A student cannot reach university if the basic school classroom was never accessible to begin with. The same pattern repeats in employment. The renewed commitment to enforce a 5 percent employment quota for persons with disabilities in public and private sectors is significant. It recognises that persons with disabilities are part of Ghana’s labour force. It recognises the value they bring. It recognises dignity and economic participation.

But a job offer on paper is not the same as employment in practice. If a place of employment has stairs but no ramp or lift, hallways are too narrow for a wheelchair, staff meetings exclude anyone who communicates differently, toilets are inaccessible or inclusion is treated as inconvenience rather than mandatory, then employment is symbolic, not real. Without accessibility, the 5 percent quota risks becoming another well-intended headline with limited real-world impact.

When persons with disabilities are excluded from the workforce, Ghana loses skilled labour, economic contribution, leadership, innovation and human potential. The country pays the cost in productivity, social care burdens, inequality and lost national capacity. To be clear, accessibility is not charity. It is the foundation without which inclusion cannot exist. So, the question is not whether Ghana should support persons with disabilities. The law has already said we must. The question is how we translate that legal commitment into everyday access.

Where the path forward begins

If the tertiary fee waiver and the employment quota are to produce real progress, accessibility must be treated as the first step and not something to be addressed later.

Accessibility is what allows:

• A child with a disability to enter a classroom, communicate, learn and progress.
• A student with a disability to complete secondary school and qualify for tertiary study.
• An employee with a disability to work independently, earn a living and build a career.

This means:

• Basic schools must be accessible.
• Teacher training colleges must treat inclusive education as core training not optional training.
• Workplaces must be audited for accessibility and not just encouraged to “do their best.”
• The enforcement mechanism for the 5 percent quota must include verification of accessibility not just headcount.

And these are but minimum standards. Ghana does not need new promises before fulfilling old ones. The law already exists. The commitments have already been made. What remains is the work, the steady, practical work of making accessibility visible where people live, learn and work. The question is no longer whether the rights of persons with disabilities are recognised. The question is whether we will finally build the conditions that make those rights real. If accessibility has been a legal obligation for nearly 20 years, then the moment for implementation is not tomorrow. It is now!

>>>the writer is a disability advocate and safeguarding trainer informed by lived experience, co-founder of SOFA Foundation and a clinical pharmacist by profession.

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